Casey Kelly

A 60-year-old woman suffered a broken leg last Thursday when the tour boat she was on got too close to a calving glacier in Tracy Arm.

A video of the incident posted on the website LiveLeak.com on Sunday shows a large chunk of the glacier break off, sending waves and ice flying toward the vessel.

Passengers’ shouts of “Danger! Danger! Danger!” soon turn to concern as a group of people crowd around the woman lying in obvious pain on the deck of the boat.

The Coast Guard says the woman was aboard the 65-foot Captain Cook, operated by Adventure Bound Alaska. She apparently lost her balance and fell when the wave hit the boat. The vessel contacted Coast Guard Sector Juneau as soon as the accident occurred, but determined it would be faster and easier to return to town without waiting for a Coast Guard vessel to deploy. An ambulance met the woman upon her return to shore.

The Coast Guard is investigating the incident. A spokesperson for Adventure Bound Alaska was unavailable to comment.

Organizers of a citizens’ initiative in Juneau to tax plastic shopping bags at certain retailers have collected the required number of signatures to put the measure on the ballot. But it might have to wait a year before going to voters.

The 15-cent “plastic bag tax” would be levied at the point of sale, and apply to all retail outlets with annual gross sales of 15-million dollars or more. It’s aimed at reducing the use of plastic bags by encouraging people to go with re-usable shopping bags. Organizers collected more than the required 2,271 signatures to put the initiative on the ballot.

The CBJ Charter gives the assembly the option of adopting an ordinance bypassing a citizens’ initiative, as long as the ordinance doesn’t change the substance of the proposal. If the assembly fails to act in 45 days the measure goes to voters as is.

The plastic bag tax initiative is on the agenda for tonight’s regular assembly meeting. Because of the deadline for preparing this fall’s municipal election, if the assembly delays action beyond August 22nd, the measure would appear on the October 2012 ballot.

Also on the agenda for tonight’s assembly meeting is a public hearing on an ordinance asking voters to extend the CBJ’s temporary 3 percent sales tax another five years. The tax is due to expire July 1, 2012. The current 5 percent CBJ sales tax has three components – the temporary 3 percent tax, a temporary 1 percent tax, and a permanent 1 percent tax. Among the city functions covered by the 3 percent tax are police, fire, street maintenance, parks and recreation, libraries, and some capital improvement projects.

Tonight’s meeting starts at 7 p.m. in City Hall Assembly Chambers. It can be heard live on KTOO.

The Juneau Assembly tonight (Monday) will settle a simmering controversy over a zone change request in the Mendenhall Valley.

At issue is a property on the corner of Atlin Drive and Loop Road, and whether it should go from medium density residential to light commercial. Homeowners in the neighborhood, along with the city’s Community Development Department and Planning Commission oppose the change. The property owner says it’s warranted, but has yet to say what he wants to do with the land.

Casey Kelly has more.

The full US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will not take up the State of Alaska’s latest petition in the Juneau Access case.

In May, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit upheld a lower court’s order for a new Environmental Impact Statement for the road project. The state petitioned to have all 11 members of the appeals court hear the case, but not one judge asked for a hearing.

In light of this latest defeat, Alaska Department of Transportation Spokeswoman Brenda Hewitt says the state is looking at its options.

“We’ll be meeting with the Federal Highway Administration, because they’re actually key in this,” said Hewitt. “So, we’ll be meeting with them and discussing alternatives. So, we’re not giving up.”

In 2006, the highway administration issued a record of decision approving the project. But in 2009, the federal agency declined to participate in the state’s appeal over the EIS decision.

Juneau Access would extend the road north of the Capital City to a ferry terminal at the Katzehin River, where a boat would shuttle passengers the rest of the way to Skagway.

A citizens group is already urging the state to appeal to the US Supreme Court. Citizens Pro Road Chairman Dick Knapp says the project has been studied enough, and a new environmental impact statement would be a waste of time and money.

“Let’s be realistic. You’re going to go back and do a supplemental EIS, okay? That takes time, probably more time – running through the hoops again – than it would take to go to the Supreme Court,” Knapp said. “Not only that, we’ve been at this now, for what? Twenty years. What do you think has been happening to the cost of construction with all the delays?”

The Southeast Alaska Conservation Council challenged the original EIS, saying it didn’t adequately consider improvements to existing Lynn Canal ferry service. SEACC Communications Director Dan Lesh says if the state wants to move the project forward it should do another EIS.

“What we want is investment in the ferry system. But if the state thinks the road needs further study and wants to a full Environmental Impact Statement that looks at all the options, that’s fine with us. I think it’ll show that ferries are a cheaper and better way of moving things around in Lynn Canal and throughout Southeast Alaska,” Lesh said.

The latest estimates put the project cost at 500-million dollars. It’s been a regional transportation priority of the past three state administrations.

Juneau Police say an 18-year-old woman made up a story about being abducted and sexually assaulted because she was having problems in her personal life.

At about 2:45 last Saturday morning, the woman’s mother called police saying her daughter had reported being abducted at knifepoint by three men. The girl said she was taken to an unknown location and sexually assaulted by one of the men.

On Tuesday, she confessed to making the story up because she was upset by relationship issues.

Juneau Police Lieutenant Kris Sell says filing a false report is a Class A misdemeanor. But in this case investigators didn’t feel it was necessary to charge the girl.

“We’re hoping in this case that it’s a young girl who learned her lesson from this experience,” said Sell. “Of course, as a police department we really hate to see false reports about sexual assault, because it damages then the credibility of women reporting legitimate sexual assaults.”

The girl’s name is being withheld, because she wasn’t charged. Sell says the investigation is now closed.

The man found dead Tuesday from an apparent fall on the Herbert Glacier Trail was a nursing supervisor at Bartlett Regional Hospital.

Forty-two year old James “Steven” Reese had worked at the hospital about ten years. Bartlett Spokesman Jim Strader says he was popular with both patients and staff, and the whole hospital is shaken by his death.

“They’re talking today about his sense of humor, his sense of caring, his sense of giving,” Strader said. “A lot of people consider Steve to be so typical of the best quality in nurses, a person who thought more about other people than he did himself.”

Strader says Reese had two children.

He helped out with the annual Project Homeless Connect event put on by the Juneau Economic Development Council, and was a member of the Juneau Human Rights Commission from 2005 to 2007.

Reese was reported missing at about 1:30 Tuesday morning when he failed to show up for work. Juneau Police found his car at the Herbert Glacier trailhead and notified Alaska State Troopers. Searchers from Juneau Mountain Rescue and SEADOGS found his body eight hours later in the Herbert River, below the glacier.

The body is being sent to the state medical examiner’s office in Anchorage for an autopsy.

Reese is the second person to die on the Herbert Glacier Trail this summer. In June, 30-year-old Adam Webb of New York was found dead, also from an apparent fall.