A logged area of Admiralty Island sandwiched between stands of old-growth forest regrows. Logging and environmental protection were among the issues the Tongass Futures Roundtable tried to address.

• Southeast forest compromise group ends workCoastAlaska NewsDownload

The Tongass Futures Roundtable is shutting down. The organization tried to resolve Southeast Alaska forest-issue conflicts.

It formed about seven years ago.

Organizers hoped to bring together all parties involved in the forest to craft compromises on land-use issues, such as logging and habitat protection.

“The roundtable brought people together who had never had to sit across from each other at a table. The normal environment was a courtroom,” says Bruce Botelho, the group’s facilitator and moderator.

A map of the Tongass National Forest. Image courtesy USFS.

The former attorney general and Juneau mayor says roundtable members decided to end their work during a meeting earlier this month.

“One of the benefits for us to dissolve right now is to create the opportunity for people to come together and perhaps learn from our experience, but also build on it. And one would hope that any assembly of stakeholders would truly bring back the whole range of participants,” he says.

Membership originally included industry, government, tribal and environmental leaders. But about two years ago, the state, timber representatives, four towns and some conservation groups pulled out.

“We didn’t have enough movement in the direction we felt needed to occur,” says State Forester Chris Maisch, one of the original roundtable members.

“So the governor decided it would be best to put state energy and time and resources into a task force, which he established through an administration order,” he says.

Maisch chaired that task force, which released its final report a few months ago.

It recommended a number of actions meant to increase logging. One was expanding state forests. Another was revising state rules to help small timber operators.

Yet another called for the federal government to turn two million acres of the Tongass over to the state to be managed for harvest.

Maisch says the timber task force has since shut down.

Botelho says the roundtable eventually decided it couldn’t fully do its work without the groups that left. It will cease operations July 1st. But he says it achieved some of its goals.

“We devoted a great deal of time to examining the proposed mental health land exchange between the state and the trust and ended up endorsing a process, which is underway. And I think that, absent the support of the roundtable, would have been more difficult,” Botelho says.

He says some of the roundtable’s working groups will also continue meeting. One focuses on Alaska Native issues, another on sustainable forests.

The Tongass Futures Roundtable had about 35 members and tried to reach decisions by consensus. State Forester Maisch says that just didn’t work.

“It was a well-intentioned effort. And a lot of people spent a lot of time in trying to make that process work. And unfortunately, it just wasn’t the right time and the right place. So it’s too bad that it didn’t come to a better conclusion,” he says.

The roundtable had funding support from the Rasmuson Foundation and other donors. The Juneau office of the Nature Conservancy, an international conservation organization, staffed the group.

Roundtable Coordinator Norm Cohen says money was not the reason the group decided to dissolve.

Alaska Airlines used to have a plane nicknames the Salmon-30-Salmon which donned a large fish painted on each side. (Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

The first planeload of Copper River salmon from Cordova, Alaska, landed Friday morning at Sea-Tac Airport and the Alaska Airlines pilots carried a 40-pound king to waiting chefs.

The annual cook-off among local chefs this year includes Master Sgt. Robert Schulman, a 31-year Air Force Reserve chef representing the 446th Airlift Wing at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

The arrival of fresh Copper River king and sockeye salmon is a rite of spring in Seattle where the fish are prized for their flavor. They typically bring the highest prices at restaurants and fish markets.

The plane carried 24,600 pounds of fish, and Alaska Airlines scheduled three more salmon flights Friday. The airline says it will ship more than 2 million pounds of salmon this year across its 95-city network.

Alaska Rep. Don Young oversees a Thursday House Committee on Indian and Alaska Native Affairs hearing on Sealaska land-selection legislation. Image courtesy the committee.

A new, smaller Sealaska land-selection measure faces opposition from the federal government.

The legislation would transfer 3,600 acres of the Tongass National Forest to the Southeast-based regional Native corporation.

Sealaska’s timberlands have been logged of much of their harvestable trees. Officials say the acreage will keep timber operations going.

At a Congressional hearing Thursday, U.S. Forest Service official Jim Peña objected to a requirement to transfer the land within 60 days of passage.

“These two parcels would be conveyed without the carefully negotiated replaced to special use authorizations and public access that many stakeholders view as essential,” Peña said.

One parcel is on the Cleveland Peninsula, between Wrangell and Ketchikan. The other is at Election Creek, on Prince of Wales Island. (Read the measure.) (See maps of the parcels.)

Peña spoke before the House Committee on Indian and Alaska Native Affairs. The bill’s author, Alaska Congressman Don Young, chairs that panel.

The acreage is also part of a much larger measure that would transfer about 70,000 acres to Sealaska. (Scroll down to read earlier reports on both bills.)

• Feds oppose smaller Sealaska land billCoastAlaska NewsDownload

That bill was also before the committee.

Young said it’s a compromise. (Read the larger bill.)

“First introduced over six years ago, this bill has undergone an extensive vetting process throughout the region. It has resulted in meaningful changes, such as providing for continued public access to lands, and modified certain lands among them,” he said.

The Forest Service’s Peña said the larger measure is much improved. But he wants further changes before the administration lends its support. 

He said the bill “leaves out key provisions essential to a balanced solution and adds others that make reaching a solution more difficult. Consequently the Department of Agriculture does not support enactment.”

Some environmental groups and towns near areas to be logged oppose the measure.

Southeast hunting guide Jimmie Rosenbruch spoke for sportsmen’s groups against the land transfers.

He said Sealaska’s logging will reduce access, as well as wildlife numbers.

“It’s kind of Sealaska to offer access for guides to utilize these lands for a 10-year period after their Forest Service permit expires. (But) I don’t know there will be much benefit. Having access to clearcut areas wouldn’t be worth anything. There’s no wildlife there. They are D-O-N-E … finished,” Rosenbruch said.

Last year’s version of Young’s bill passed the House, but not the Senate.

And the Senate’s latest version, sponsored by Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich, has undergone more negotiation and changes.

Sealaska board member Bryon Mallott said that measure is more likely to be the final legislative vehicle.

But he prefers the House version.

“In my personal judgment, there is more equity and justice in the House bill. But I also know from long, long experience, that what the Native community can easily and passionately feel is equity and justice for others is often very hard to ultimately make possible,” Mallott said.

Young’s Sealaska bills now head to the full House Resources Committee. If either passes, it will go to the House floor for a full vote.

It would most likely be packaged with other legislation. That’s what happened last year.

Read earlier reports on the legislation:

• New Sealaska land bills introduced in Congress
• SEACC backs Sealaska bill, 9 towns oppose it
• Congress Looking At Sealaska Lands Bill
• Second bill proposes smaller Sealaska land transfer

Juneau’s only McDonald’s boasts the United States’ most expensive Quarter Pounder with Cheese. (Photo by Heather Bryant/KTOO)

Perhaps you’ve heard by now that Juneau has topped another “most expensive _______” list. The culprit this time? The McDonald’s Quarter Pounder with cheese.

And here it is:

This new honor comes from the Quarter Pounder Index (QPI) billed as a basic cost of life estimator from the group NerdWallet. The QPI is NerdWallet’s effort to help people understand the purchasing power of a dollar by using cheeseburgers.

Juneau’s Quarter Pounder with Cheese came in at $4.82.

The country’s cheapest Quarter Pounder is approximately 3,000 miles away in Conway, Arkansas where the Quarter Pounder rings up at $2.24.

The Quarter Pounder pictured here was purchased at Juneau’s only McDonald’s, however it now costs $4.99 and totaled $5.24 with sales tax.

Anchorage and Fairbanks are ranked fifth and sixth respectively for the cost of Quarter Pounders.

Great Bear said the company could pump one million barrels into TAPS a day, however production has yet to start. (Photo by Timothy Widley/Creative Commons)

The company caught many by surprise when it snatched up 500,000 acres in a 2010 lease sale.

But two years after executives told lawmakers the company could pump one million barrels into TAPS a day, it isn’t even close to serious production.

Former Alaska revenue commissioner Patrick Galvin, now deputy general counsel at the company, said Great Bear is analyzing geological data from wells drilled last year.

“We’ve got a lot of information that we’ve obtained from those first two wells and the seismic data, and we’re still in the process of evaluating that,” he said Tuesday evening.

That’s taking place in the San Francisco Bay Area. Galvin would not say how many wells he hopes the company will frack, or whether initial projections were too high.

“We’ve got a lot of acreage and a lot of determinations to make as to what a full field development would look like,” he said.

Great Bear plans on cracking the source rock on the North Slope with a mix of chemicals to release oil. About a quarter of the wells in the state have been hydraulically fractured.

Unlike the Marcellus Shale in the Eastern U.S. – these wells would primarily harvest oil, not gas.

And unlike the Lower 48, some environmental groups are welcoming the possibilities. The water table near the proposed well sites is filled with brackish water, so it couldn’t be consumed by humans.

Lois Epstein, an engineer who works with the Wilderness Society, said the conservation community could get behind this proposal; in part because the operations will be on state land, land she said is less sensitive than federally protected acres.

And as an Alaskan, it’s good to see more oil in the pipeline.

“It could be a good thing for the state of Alaska to increase flows through the Trans Alaska Pipeline by tapping into resources near the existing infrastructure,” Epstein said.

The company’s two existing wells are near the Dalton Highway.

“They’ve chosen it for more than just the geology,” said Cathy Foerster, chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. “They’ve chosen it because it’s got some ‘close-ology’ – it’s close to existing infrastructure.”

Foerster said in the past companies have started near existing gravel roads and infrastructure and then moved further away as production scaled up.

“Unless you’re going to find another Prudhoe Bay, you can’t afford to build your own infrastructure. You need to rely on what’s already in place,” she said.

The company has not applied for any permits beyond the ones it has for six well sites along the Dalton Highway.

Foerster said she remains optimistic the project will still pan out even though the state is considering new regulations on fracking. A public comment period on proposed rule changes – like requiring producers to disclose fluids online – just ended.

“We’re not proposing anything that’s out of line with other states that are doing hydraulic fracturing of shale,” she said.

Great Bear’s Pat Galvin said he too remains optimistic about the prospect. But the project appears to be taking longer than expected.

The company’s founder Ed Duncan told legislators two years ago that he’d be pumping oil into TAPS by last summer.

Mining wages are a small part of private sector wages in Alaska-two percent in 2011, but total wages from mining have more than doubled since 2002. That’s according to economist Mali Abrahamson, the author of an article on the Alaska mining industry in the May edition of Economic Trends, a publication of the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

“The annual wage paid by the mining industry has increased 22% from 2002 to 2011. In perspective, the same rate for all private sector jobs in Alaska, their wages have only grown 8%. In that same time period, ten-year interval, you see almost double the wage growth.”

While state records show thousands of active mom-and-pop mining claims, most of the jobs and production are at seven major mines: Red Dog, Fort Knox, Nixon Fork, Usibelli, Pogo, Kensington, and Greens Creek. Abrahamson says the growth in wages is due in part to the shortage of skilled workers:

“If firms were able to find less costly workers elsewhere and if they were able to bring them in from Outside, you wouldn’t see quite so much wage increase as we’ve been seeing.”

The latest figures available, from 2011, showed 300 or more openings for electricians, heavy- and tractor-trailer drivers, and construction laborers… and strong growth anticipated in jobs for miners, extraction workers, and mining and geological engineers.

Abrahamson says the growth is driven by increased production… and higher commodity prices -  the price of zinc doubled in 2006 and gold and silver prices surged in 2011. The price of gold has dropped by 20 percent since its high last year. However, Abrahamson says mining companies have increased spending for exploration. She says although it takes large projects years to reach production, she foresees continued increases:

You expect growth to occur in a kind of stair-step method, in kind of fits and starts. And that’s exactly what we see in the job growth, is that you’ll see one year in which a firm will start up a new operation and you’ll see 250 job growth in one year. And then it’ll kind of have slower growth.

Abrahamson says that same scenario has played out several times since 2005 in different locations across the state.

It’s stopgap legislation turning 3,600 acres over to the Southeast-based regional Native corporation. Two parcels are proposed, one on the Cleveland Peninsula and the other at Election Creek on Prince of Wales Island.

A much larger bill before Congress would transfer about 70,000 acres.

Sealaska CEO Chris McNeil says it’s needed to keep logging operations going.

“Obviously we’d like the more systemic bill, but it’s important for us to be able to recognize that we have important timing and operational considerations to achieve. And that’s why there’s the second bill, which is really a subset of the first,” McNeil says.

Both measures are sponsored by Alaska Congressman Don Young.

They and four others will go before the House Committee on Natural Resources’ Subcommittee on Indian and Alaska Native Affairs at 10 a.m. Thursday, Alaska time.

Similar legislation is before the Senate.

The House version of the larger measure includes more of what Sealaska asked for. The Senate bill shows more changes resulting from negotiations with environmental groups, small communities, tour operators and other critics.

Young’s measures are House Bill 740 and House Resolution 1306. The main Senate bill, sponsored by Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich, is Senate Bill 340.

Clouds over the Arctic Ocean. Photo by Patrick Kelley, U.S. Coast Guard. Flickr/Creative Commons.

The U.S. Senate is expected to a pass a sweeping bill authorizing dozens of water projects Wednesday.

Included is a provision that Alaska’s senators say could ease the way to an Arctic port.

The Senate agreed by unanimous consent – meaning the chamber found it to be noncontroversial enough that it didn’t require a vote – to allow private companies to partner with the federal government in deep port construction.

Senator Mark Begich says over the last few months many shipping companies and other investors have expressed interest in possibly building an Arctic port. But federal rules make it too difficult to form public-private partnerships with the Army Corps of Engineers.

He says this amendment, sponsored by both he and Senator Lisa Murkowski, will ease the burden for private companies.

“It allows for some flexibility for port development in Alaska that can tap into private sector resources to build ports with federal, and or state governments, and the Corps is part of the equation.”

While the delegation is hopeful for infrastructure prospects in the Arctic, this bill only authorizes the partnerships.

It does not appropriate any money for specific projects.

In Alaska, the state provides up to 26 weeks of unemployment benefits. Then, people can apply for federal benefits, which are organized into tiers based on how many weeks the person’s been jobless Bill Kramer is chief of the unemployment insurance program for the state of Alaska. He says the federal spending cuts required under the Budget Control Act passed by Congress in 2011, will affect people as they move through the system:

“For all new emergency unemployment compensation claims or for people transitioning from one tier of benefits to the next tier of benefits on or after May 19, the weekly benefit amount will be reduced by 23.92 percent.”

The budget cuts won’t affect the state’s 26-week program. They apply to the 37 weeks of federally funded assistance people can apply for after their state benefits run out. Kramer says the state has sent out letters to about 14,000 Alaskans who are expected to be affected:

“The average weekly benefit amount is $245 per week, so under the sequestration cut that would reduce that weekly benefit amount to about $186 per week.”

George Lamont says he hasn’t been able to find another job after getting laid off last year from his job as tribal administrator for the village of Tuluksak. He says his family has already cut out all non-essential spending, so it’s hard to figure out how to handle the coming reduction:

“It’s going to affect me in a lot of ways. It’ll be harder for me to purchase fuel or get enough fuel, plus of a lot of other things that are necessities.”

Kramer says the state operates 23 job centers offering employment services, as well as a labor exchange website where employers post jobs and unemployed people can search for work, and post their resumes’ online.

The view down the valley towards Denali with the park road winding its way in the summer of 2006. (Photo by Nic McPhee/Wikimedia Commons)

Denali National Park and Preserve is gearing up to open for the summer despite some lingering snow cover.

KUAC reports entrance-area facilities, like the visitor center, are scheduled to open for the season Wednesday. Sled dog demonstrations are also scheduled to begin that day. However, park spokeswoman Kris Fister says officials are trying to remove snow from the track used for the demonstrations. Fister says the interpreters who do the demonstrations typically aren’t mushers and are trained using a wheeled sled.

Meanwhile, shuttle buses that bring in most summer visitors are scheduled to begin running Monday. They will provide access as far as Toklat River, at mile 53. Buses are set to begin running the enter length of the 92-mile road on June 8.