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Sitka voters will cast their ballots May 28 on a citizens initiative to limit the number — and days — of cruise ship passengers in town. If approved, the limits would take effect next year. The Sitka assembly approved the special election March 27. Advocates of limits on cruise ship visitors to town, Small Town SOUL, collected almost 700 petition signatures, more than enough to earn a spot on the ballot. The yes-or-no question on the ballot will determine whether or not Sitka limits cruise ship port calls May through September; sets aside at...
Sitka-based Silver Bay Seafoods has reached a deal to acquire a 50% stake in OBI Seafoods, expanding the company’s processing capacity in Alaska. The company announced March 19 that it will take over management of all OBI facilities and operations including plants in Southeast, Southcentral and western Alaska, and Washington state. Silver Bay is buying Icicle Seafoods’ 50% stake in OBI, partnering with the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corp. (BBEDC) which holds the other 50%. OBI was created in 2020 by a merger between Ocean Beauty Sea...
The scope of mass firings at U.S. Forest Service offices around Southeast Alaska is becoming clearer as former and current employees confirm the numbers. The agency’s public information offices have not provided any details of the dismissals. Nearly all U.S. Forest Service employees at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center in Juneau have been fired in the large-scale, ongoing purge of the federal government workforce undertaken by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, according to officials and former employees. In Petersburg,...
GCI notified Sitka customers by text message Sept. 16 that it had successfully restored cell phone and internet services which had been disrupted for more than two weeks by a fiber optic cable break on the bottom of Salisbury Sound. The break in the cable on Aug. 29 shut down GCI’s internet service and also affected texting and phone service. Company spokesman Josh Edge said Sept. 16 the cause of the break still wasn’t known. The undersea cable repair ship was headed back to its homeport of Victoria, British Columbia. The repair work started Se...
A neighborhood of historic Sitka houses on Katlian and Kaagwaantaan streets, the Sitka Tlingit Clan Houses, has been selected by the National Trust for Historic Preservation for inclusion in the 2024 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. The neighborhood was established by the Tlingit in the 1820s to trade with Russians living inside the adjacent stockaded New Archangel settlement. Russian administrators recognized their settlement was dependent on trade with the Tlingit village for survival. Scores of clan houses lined the w...
An earthquake jolted some Sitka residents awake Thursday night, Jan. 11, but no damage was reported and no tsunami occurred. The Alaska Earthquake Center at Fairbanks said the magnitude 5.9 earthquake occurred at 10:46 p.m. on the seafloor 50 miles south of Sitka. It was felt across Southeast, including Wrangell. Assistant Sitka Fire Chief David Johnson said the department received a half dozen or so calls about the momentary shaking that people experienced throughout town. Elisabeth Nadin, communications manager of the earthquake center, said...
Sitkans received a $300 credit on their December utility bills after the city assembly voted to share some of the higher-than-expected sales tax revenues with the public. The assembly voted to spend just over $1 million on the program, distributing the money to every residential utility account in town. Sitka saw a record number of cruise ship visitors last summer, swelling the sales tax coffers but also inconveniencing residents. In passing the appropriation in November, assembly members said they wanted citizens to receive some compensation...
The Southeast Alaska commercial troll fishery closed to the retention of chinook salmon at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, July 12. That’s when the Alaska Department of Fish and Game expected that the target of 77,100 chinook for the summer’s first retention period would be reached. The commercial summer troll fishery for chinook opened July 1, after the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay of a previous court order that would have prevented the fishery from opening. A lawsuit filed by a Washington state-based conservation organization aga...
The U.S. Coast Guard investigation is continuing into the May 28 charter fishing boat accident near Sitka that left four people dead and one still missing and presumed dead. The body of the Sitka-based boat captain was recovered June 8, leaving only passenger Robert Solis, 61, of California, still missing. Alaska State Troopers reported that 32-year-old Morgan Robidou’s body was recovered by divers from the Sitka Fire Department. Troopers said Robidou was found in the Low Island area in Sitka Sound as crews worked to salvage the outboard m...
The U.S. Department of Justice dispatched officials to 64 election jurisdictions in 24 states to ensure compliance with federal voting rights laws in last week’s midterm elections — including Sitka, Bethel, Dillingham and the Kusilvak Census Area in Western Alaska. The election monitors included lawyers from the Justice Department civil rights division and U.S. attorney’s offices across the nation. Federal authorities said such monitoring is a regular occurrence around election day, but this year especially civil rights groups and others have...
Look around Southeast and you will see a lot of evergreen trees that aren't so green. Southeast Alaska's hemlock and spruce trees are fending off an assault by a number of pests and diseases, most notably a caterpillar that causes the conifers to turn reddish-brown. The main culprit is the western blackheaded budworm, a moth caterpillar that feeds on hemlock and spruce needles, according to U.S. Forest Service Alaska Region entomologist Elizabeth Graham in Juneau. Graham said Southeast trees...
Sitka’s drinking water won second place in a national competition this month at the American Water Works Association’s annual conference in San Antonio, Texas. The panel of judges rated Sitka’s water second only to WaterOne, a Kansas public utility that serves the Johnson County area, just outside Kansas City, Missouri. “It’s a great honor to receive the award,” said Shilo Williams, Sitka’s municipal environmental superintendent. “We’re really lucky to have such a pristine water source, which is Blue Lake.” To qualify for the national compet...
The state Department of Environmental Conservation has determined that about 5,300 gallons of diesel spilled from the March 21 grounding of a tugboat in Neva Strait, near Sitka. The agency calculated that about 700 gallons were recovered by surface skimmers after the accident that left the tug Western Mariner stranded on the beach and leaking fuel. Additional fuel was removed from the water by deployment of absorbent materials, the state said. Before the tugboat was refloated on March 30, all of the fuel in the undamaged tanks on the vessel...
As part of its plan to accommodate a large increase in cruise ship visitors this summer, Sitka is offering grants of $1,000 or more to businesses and other entities that will open their bathrooms to the public. The community is expecting ships with capacity to carry close to half-a-million passengers this summer, more than double the pre-COVID year of 2019. The city posted the grant application on its website last Thursday. The city’s tourism office, Visit Sitka, will direct visitors to the locations of the public facilities using maps, s...
After 20 years, Southeast communities, the state and federal government are still debating whether road building should be banned in most of the Tongass National Forest. The Department of Agriculture is accepting public comments through Jan. 24 on a proposed rule change to restore roadless protections to much of the Tongass. The nationwide roadless rule was implemented in 2001 under President Bill Clinton; subject to two decades of litigation and political maneuvering that failed to upend the rule in the Tongass; then overturned in late 2020...
SITKA – Fortress of the Bear celebrated two milestones in July the 10th birthday of Killisnoo, its very first bear cub, and the sanctuary's 10th year in operation. At his birthday party, Killisnoo was treated to two special "cakes.'' One, made of bread, eggs, honey and salmon berries was in the shape of the figure 10. "It took two hours to bake it,'' said Evy Kinnear, who along with her husband, Les, runs Fortress of the Bear. The other, made of cardboard and non-toxic papier-mache, was f...