It’s been more than a month since St. Paul Island had a full shipment of groceries. Foggy weather and a lack of reliable transportation have left the Bering Sea community waiting on thousands of pounds of food from Anchorage.
“It’s been over a month now since we’ve had milk and eggs,” City Manager Phillip Zavodil said Thursday.
The Pribilof Islands are known for challenging travel, but Zavodil said this summer has been “the worst it’s been in a while.”
St. Paul depends on bypass mail, a federal program that pays air carriers to deliver freight directly to remote communities, bypassing the post office. ACE Air Cargo is the only carrier currently flying cargo to the island.
The tribal government, the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, runs the local store. Patrick Baker is the tribe’s executive director. He says more than 20,000 pounds of groceries and supplies are stuck in Anchorage, and a lot of the food they’re waiting on is perishable.
“The truth is, a lot of the stuff that's been sitting at ACE for a month is going to be flown to St. Paul and thrown out,” he said.
Community leaders are now working with the U.S. Postal Service and another cargo service, Northern Air Cargo, to try and transfer the waiting groceries to a larger aircraft. But so far, there’s no agreement in place.
ACE Air Cargo did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
