Clarise Larson

In this newscast:

• Juneau’s recycling center is closed again in order to repair damaged critical equipment. And it could be quite a while before the center opens back up again.
• New public art is coming to downtown Juneau this spring. Murals will soon adorn the Marine View building parking garage near the cruise ship docks. It’s part of a project years in the making that teaches artists about the legal and creative sides of murals.
• The City & Borough of Juneau tip-toed toward a federal buyout program for homeowners on View Drive this week, a street that’s been hit the hardest by annual glacial outburst flooding. And the city’s asking those residents if they’ll help pay for their own buyout.
• More than 200 people gathered in the capital city on Thursday to speak out against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, following recent killings of two citizens in Minneapolis.

Juneau’s recycling center is closed again in order to repair damaged critical equipment. 

It could be quite a while before the center opens back up again, according to Denise Koch, the city’s director of Engineering and Public Works.

“Recycling is a really important service, and we recognize that the people of Juneau really value this service,” she said. “What we are doing right now, we hope that we’re talking about a timeframe of weeks.”

The city contracts with Waste Management — the private company that runs the landfill — to operate its recycling program in Lemon Creek. The center has been closed on and off since late December, after Juneau was hit with back-to-back record-breaking snowstorms. That inundated the open-air warehouse with a backlog of materials to process. 

The closures have left many residents and businesses without a place to recycle. That’s a problem, Koch said, because the alternative to holding onto the recyclables is to throw them in the landfill, which is estimated to run out of space in the next decade. She said having the city’s recycling program up and running again is crucial to extending the landfill’s life. 

The closure is due to multiple issues with the recycling baler, Koch says. The baler is the machine that compresses the recyclables into blocks, which are then shipped by barge to recycling facilities in Seattle that repurpose the materials. Koch said it’s the most critical piece of equipment for the center to operate. 

“We’ve identified three different problems with the baler. So we’re trying to solve three problems, and that’s part of why we are working as quickly as we can to try and solve those problems,” she said. “But, it’s challenging to identify a date certain when all three problems will be solved.”

In the meantime, Koch recommends people hold onto their recycling as long as they’re able before they opt to throw it in the garbage. She said the city will provide updates about the status of the center as it becomes available.

The Juneau Assembly has stalled on deciding whether to disempower the Eaglecrest Ski Area’s board of directors until a joint meeting in March. 

Earlier this month, Mayor Beth Weldon proposed an ordinance to reduce the status of the city-owned ski area’s board from an empowered board to an advisory board. She cited the recent leadership turnover at the mountain and ongoing financial challenges.

At a committee of the whole meeting Monday night, Weldon further explained her reasoning for the proposed ordinance to the Juneau Assembly and the roughly 20 members of the public in the audience. 

“I’m literally trying to save Eaglecrest, and I think with the empowered board making the decisions, I don’t see the status quo changing,” she said.

Right now, as an empowered board, Eaglecrest has its own set of laws, rules and responsibilities. But, if it became an advisory board, members could only make recommendations to the Assembly. It would lose the authority to establish policies or make decisions without Assembly approval. 

At the meeting, Weldon argued the ski area needs more oversight, given the high amount of funding the city has funneled toward it in recent years, specifically on a new gondola project.

“If we are investing large amounts of money on things such as the chair lifts or maybe even the gondola, we want to have more of a say in how that money is spent, and currently, we don’t,” she said. 

In the coming years, the ski area is slated to run into a multimillion-dollar deficit. The deficit is a part of a plan to repair some broken and aging infrastructure while boosting pay to employees and preparing to operate year-round. 

Its expansion into summer operations relies heavily on the success of the gondola, which the ski area hopes to get up and running by the summer of 2028. However, many city leaders are worried the timeline — and cost — of the project will run far over what the board projected. 

The Assembly agreed to hold off on any decision-making until it holds a joint meeting with the Eaglecrest board on March 4. Assembly member and Eaglecrest Ski Area board liaison Neil Steininger said he thinks that’s the best option. 

“I think we owe it to everybody in the community to have a joint meeting with the Eaglecrest board to actually hash this out,” he said. 

The Assembly will then vote on whether to move the ordinance forward during a committee meeting on March 16.

Juneau teens and residents are calling on the Alaska Legislature and Gov. Mike Dunleavy to call off the state’s longtime push for a natural gas pipeline in Alaska. 

On Saturday, more than 40 people gathered at the steps of the Alaska State Capitol in downtown Juneau to protest the long-sought Alaska LNG project. The protest was led by Alaska Youth for Environmental Action, a youth-led environmental advocacy group with chapters across the state. 

Paige Kirsch is a senior at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé and a member of the group’s Juneau chapter.

“I think it’s really important to be cognizant of the future of Alaska, especially because I do want to live here when I grow up, and I don’t want to live somewhere that’s purely for economic profit,” she said. “I just don’t think it’s really that fiscally responsible to keep investing in non-renewable resources.”

Alaska officials have been pushing for the proposed pipeline for decades and the state has already poured more than half a billion dollars into the project. If it’s built, the project would move natural gas from the North Slope to Southcentral for export overseas. A portion of the gas would be reserved for in-state use. The project has already been federally permitted. Last year, the Texas-based Glenfarne Group assumed majority ownership of the project from the state. 

Since then, it has announced a handful of nonbinding gas purchase and supply agreements. Last week, the company announced several more agreements it says moves the project’s first phase into an early development stage.

Proponents for the project say it would tap into an underdeveloped natural resource and provide energy security to a region facing shortfalls. But others remain skeptical about whether the project will actually be built, citing high costs and competing global energy projects.

At the protest on Saturday, multiple teens took to a microphone to share some of the negative impacts they believe the pipeline would bring, including bisecting land, disrupting habitat and emitting carbon dioxide. Atagan Hood, a junior at JDHS, says Alaska’s dollars would be better spent on renewable energy to mitigate human-caused climate change. 

“We are told that the 800-mile Alaska liquid natural gas pipeline is a bridge to a cleaner future, but you cannot build a bridge to a stable climate out of fossil fuel infrastructure,” he said. 

Last year, an Anchorage Superior Court Judge dismissed a youth-led lawsuit challenging the pipeline.  

There was one counter-protester at the event on Saturday. Kevin Nye, a retired engineer, stood on his own holding a sign that read “Build the Pipeline.” He said he wanted to represent those in Alaska who support the economic benefits the pipeline would bring to the state. 

Glenfarne told reporters last week it expects to begin laying pipe later this year. But project skeptics say that the timeline is unrealistic. The company also initially said it planned to make a development decision by the end of 2025. That decision is now expected to come in February at the earliest.

More than 200 Juneau residents gathered downtown at Overstreet Park Sunday evening for a candlelight vigil. They were there to honor a man who was fatally shot by a U.S. Border Patrol officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during protests against ongoing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. 

“There’s a lot of grief, there’s a lot of anger — and there’s also a lot of hope,” said Claire Richardson, a volunteer with ReSisters, a local group of women who work for social justice and equality. 

The crowd gathered just a few hours after the pop-up event was posted on social media by several advocacy groups in Juneau. 

Multiple local and state leaders spoke to the crowd as snow fell Sunday night, including Juneau Assembly member Maureen Hall. She says immigrants are the bedrock of the community. 

“Let us keep praying, let us keep speaking out, and let us keep standing in solidarity with those in the community that are too afraid to show up at something like this tonight,” she said. 

Juneau’s vigil on Sunday night joins a wave of vigils and protests in Minneapolis and across the U.S. that erupted over the weekend following the death of another person killed by federal officers during immigration enforcement protests. 

The man killed was identified as 37-year-old Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse. His death marked the second person killed in Minneapolis during encounters with immigration officials amid a crackdown in the city. Just weeks prior, an ICE officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good in her vehicle while the agency was conducting an operation in the city. 

The deaths have ignited fierce debates, with Minnesota and Congressional leaders pressing the Trump Administration over the facts and legality of actions by ICE officers as immigration enforcement ramps up across the country. 

In Anchorage and Fairbanks, residents gathered in similar protests this weekend, according to social media posts. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, along with other congressional Republicans, has called for an investigation into Pretti’s shooting. 

Eaglecrest Ski Area’s board of directors is pushing back against the mayor’s proposal to remove most of the board’s decision-making authority. This comes after recent leadership turnover at the mountain and ongoing financial challenges.

Last week, Mayor Beth Weldon told the Juneau Assembly she asked the city’s attorney to draft an ordinance to reduce the status of the board from an empowered board to an advisory board. The Juneau Assembly will discuss the draft ordinance at its committee of the whole meeting on Monday evening. 

As an empowered board, Eaglecrest has its own set of laws, rules and responsibilities and makes decisions without direct Assembly oversight. If it became an advisory board, members could only give advice or make recommendations to the Assembly. It would lose the authority to establish policies or make decisions without Assembly approval. 

“As we know, they’re having major financial issues, and I just think the city needs to have more oversight over what’s happening to Eaglecrest,” she said. “I think the government is standing in its way right now, and it needs to be changed.”

But, at a special meeting on Thursday evening, Eaglecrest’s board moved to draft a letter to the mayor and Assembly asking to remain an empowered board. The board intends to finish the letter this weekend, in time for the Assembly discussion during its committee of the whole meeting on Monday. 

Board member Jim Calvin said remaining an empowered board is in the community’s best interest. 

“The board is deeply engaged in gondola planning work, and we’re deeply engaged in recruiting a new GM (general manager),” he said. “We’re initiating some business planning work, and all of that is at risk of completely derailing if we’re not an empowered board.”

The tension between the Eaglecrest board and the mayor comes after the ski area’s general manager resigned and the board chair stepped down earlier this month. Eaglecrest has also had several issues with its facilities that sullied the beginning of its season, including a broken water line and issues keeping Ptarmigan lift open. 

Eaglecrest is expected to run into a multimillion-dollar deficit in the coming years to repair some broken and aging infrastructure, while boosting pay to employees and preparing to operate year-round. Its plan toward financial stability relies heavily on revenue from the gondola, which the ski area hopes to get up and running by the summer of 2028.

According to the board, the city plans to post the general manager position online next week, which will remain open until it’s filled.