For months, scientists have been on watch for a possible eruption at Mount Cleveland. Now, another Aleutian volcano is acting up, too.
The Alaska Volcano Observatory issued an advisory for Kanaga Volcano after it experienced tremors and released a small ash cloud on Saturday. Kanaga lies just 16 miles west of Adak, but so far there are no reports that this weekend's explosive activity has affected residents. The community suffered disruptions to air travel when the volcano last erupted in 1995.
The aviation warning for Kanaga is at code-yellow, while Cleveland remains at orange. Both volcanos are located along major international flight paths.
Part of the Cold Bay airport could be left in the dark.
The Federal Aviation Administration is considering decommissioning the approach lights on one of the runways, which could impact air travel to the Aleutian region.
Cold Bay has one of the state’s longest runways, and the airport often serves as a halfway point for PenAir flights traveling to Unalaska. The airline stops at least a couple of flights there daily to refuel or to wait out bad weather. And during busy times of year, they’ll land as many as 15 passenger planes in Cold Bay.
Cold Bay is an ordinary refueling point for PenAir flights. Their planes leave from Anchorage, touch down on the Alaska Peninsula, and then usually continue on to the Aleutian Islands. But this weekend, one of those planes took a big turn south. Instead of traveling to Unalaska, PenAir Flight 364 went all the way down to Hawaii.
It’s pretty exciting. You don’t see a Saab turboprob going all the way from Anchorage, Alaska to Honolulu very often,” says Melissa Anderson, the company’s vice president of sales and marketing.
Gov. Sean Parnell joined The Exchange to discuss the legislative session and answe questions from our listening audience.
Gov. Parnell has been in office since 2009, and before that he served as Lieutenant Governor under Sarah Palin, worked for ConocoPhillips and the lobbying firm Patton Boggs, and represented the Eagle River area in both the Alaska House and Senate.
Listen to hear his thoughts on oil tax legislation, rural infrastructure, broadband internet, and more.
The National Marine Fisheries Service is asking for at least 15 months to assess the impact of their Steller sea lion protection measures.
Last month, a federal judge determined that the agency had violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to produce an environmental impact statement before shutting down two commercial fisheries in an effort to stop the decline of an endangered stock of sea lions. While Judge Timothy Burgess generally favored NFMS in his ruling and stated that he plans to keep the fishing restrictions in place, he still called upon the agency to review the environmental and socioeconomic effects of the closures as quickly as possible. In a brief filed yesterday, NMFS gave the court two potential timelines for doing so.
The Aleutians must stay together. That was the conclusion of Alaska Superior Court Judge Michael McConahy in his ruling on the 2011 state redistricting plan.
The plan divided House District 37 at Unimak Pass. Aleutian communities to the west ended up paired with the Yukon-Kuskokwin Delta region while communities in the Aleutians East Borough stayed connected to the Bristol Bay region. A lawsuit brought by two Fairbanks area residents contended that the configuration violated the state constitutional requirement that voting districts be contiguous and compact.
The Alaska Department of Labor has released their jobs data for December, and the unemployment rate for the state remains at 7.3 percent.
But in Southwest Alaska, the number of people without jobs has gone up. While the Aleutians West Census area usually has one of the lower employment rates in the state, it shot up from 12.4 percent to nearly 20 percent. That jump can partially be explained by the seasonal slowdown in fishing. The region’s big groundfish fisheries closed up during the fall, and fishing for crab wrapped up early, leaving little product for area plants to process.
The local newspapers for the Unalaska and Bristol Bay regions are coming back into publication starting next month. However, the 2 papers are being combined into one publication.
Before publication ceased last year the Bristol Bay Times and the Dutch Harbor Fishermen were separate newspapers but the new publisher is combining the papers into one paper and hopes to begin printing the papers early next month.
Jason Evans is the co-publisher of the papers and he and his wife purchased the papers from Alaska Newspapers Incorporated, which shut down 6-newspapers last summer.
”It will have the masthead of the Bristol Bay Times-Dutch Harbor Fisherman. As time goes on, we’ll take a look if we should separate them back out or if we should rename the paper altogether.”
The rats are gone from Rat Island and the name might follow suit.
The Aleut Corporation and the Aleutian Pribilof Island Association recently voted to ditch the now-inaccurate moniker and revert to the traditional Unangan name.
