KFSK - Petersburg

A team of students from Petersburg High School finished up their latest calculations Thursday on the LeConte Glacier position.

The annual survey has been recording the retreat of the ice mass since 1983, when teacher Paul Bowen started the program.

This year students witnessed massive ice blocks breaking off the face and documented a small retreat of the southernmost tidewater glacier in the northern hemisphere.

Seven students and two teachers helicoptered out to two positions on the steep wall of the rocky fjord.

Survey markers are fixed in the rock, one on the north side and one on the south side.

The students use survey equipment to record angles to different spots on the ice. A couple days later, they’re back in the classroom going reviewing the math needed to calculate the position of those points.

The points sighted on the glacier are constantly changing.

Giant blocks of ice the size of city buildings fall off the face of the glacier into the water of LeConte Bay, in a process called “calving.”

Teacher Victor Trautman explained the ice was doing a lot of that during the team’s visit.

“It surprised me because usually in the spring when we’re there, it’s pretty benign,” Trautman said. “But we basically saw at least half of that face go away over the period of time we were there.”

The students worked smoothly to take their sightings despite this dynamic situation.

“They had just finished collecting all their data from one side and a third of it calved off. They just sat down and reshot another six more points, just so that we’d have the data, without being told.”

Senior Helen Martin made the trip for her second year and witnessed the big pieces of ice falling into the bay.

“They kind of compared it to a 20-story building falling off the face of the glacier and then of course that made a lot of different waves. It was really cool because once all the like glacial debris was in the water we could really see which way the current was taking it because it was like a total divide between ice and then just glacial waters,” Martin said.

Another senior Josh Thynes was on his first trip to survey LeConte.

“You can drive a skiff into that area but there’s nothing really comparable than actually being there up on the rocks, up on the cliffs,” Thynes said. “You can’t really get that view anywhere else.”

Thynes called it a once-in-a-lifetime chance and thinks more students should apply to make the trip.

The older students work with juniors and sophomores who will be making the trip in future years.

Sophomore Maria Pfundt is learning the math and waiting her turn to do the survey in the next two years.

“I like that we’re like all together like trying to figure out together so that if we have questions we can ask our peers which is nice,” Pfundt said.

Next to her, senior Julia Murph calculates another point on the ice.

She was making her first survey trip and she described the vast scale of the glacier and the ice falling from the face.

“The sound from the glacier when it calved was disconnected because it was so far away from actually watching it,” Murph said. “You kind of got to a point where you’d hear it and you’d be like well it’s pointless to look ‘cause like it’s already fallen. But sometimes it’d go for long enough where you’d hear the sound and you’d turn and look and there’d be more falling after that so that was really interesting.”

“We’re a mile away and it was hard for me to understand that just because all of your reference points are huge,” Murph said. “There’s huge mountains and a very large glacier and I couldn’t tell how far it was away. It didn’t seem that far.”

This year’s trip to LeConte and the students’ work to study it were documented by a photographer working on a project through an early career grant program with National Geographic.

Ian Strachan is capturing still photos and videos.

“I’m trying to do a storytelling project where I’m describing glaciers in general, kind of the basic geology at work as well as their level of retreat, or rate of retreat and especially how LeConte is factoring into that,” Strachan said.

Strachan planned to return later in May for more recording and photographing of the ice in LeConte Bay.

He expects the community will be able to see his work sometime later this year.

The ice retreated about 300 feet from its position a year ago.

It’s been relatively stable but scientists expect to see a more dramatic change in the future.

A Petersburg borough employees union filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the municipality, prompting the borough Assembly to put off its vote on another contract offer.

Petersburg Municipal Employees Association says the borough is engaging in regressive bargaining. The union, which has about 80 employees in most borough departments and is  represented by the Alaska Public Employees Association, is asking Alaska Labor Relations Agency to rule on the complaint.

The union’s Southeast field representative Joel Hill told the Assembly to wait on a decision by the state before voting on a contract offer.

“We’re willing to come back to the table, meet you more than half way,” Hill said. “We’ve got some options that can break impasse. We haven’t been given that opportunity.”

Local employees testified about their dissatisfaction with John Hoag, the borough’s lead negotiator, labor attorney and former Assembly member.

“When you ask or put something on the table and their answer is not only ‘no’ but ‘hell no,’ that is not very professional of a negotiator,” said Joe Bertagnoli, who has chaired the local union chapter in the past. “The ‘hell no’ disposition ran through that whole negotiation.”

Employees want the borough to return to the bargaining table. The borough was calling a last best and final offer the borough Assembly was scheduled Monday to vote, which included a 1 percent wage increase retroactive in the first year, 1 percent in the second year and no increase in the third year.

The offer also decreases health coverage for part-time employees and establishes three mandatory furlough days. It was less favorable than the tentative agreement voted down by the majority of union members in March.

The borough’s negotiator Hoag has been out of town and did not attend the meeting.

He made a case that the employees have been bargaining in bad faith, in an April letter to the Assembly, noting that the Petersburg Municipal Employees Association did not recommend employees vote for the tentative agreement reached by the two sides.

Hoag wrote that he believed that the borough could successfully defend its actions in from an unfair labor practice complaint.

Assembly member Jeigh Stanton Gregor thanked the employees who testified.

“Of course I want the employees to be treated fairly by our negotiator and if you guys are speaking and saying very clearly and in no uncertain terms you didn’t feel it was professional,” Stanton Gregor said, adding, “I’m wrestling with that and how to move forward at this point in this discussion period, because that is new information to me at this point.”

The Assembly is not involved directly in negotiations, but gives its representatives direction behind closed doors about contract terms to pursue.

Borough manager Steve Giesbrecht reminded the Assembly that there’s another side to the story.

“You know John has a whole ‘nother side to the story that says, that defends the borough and the actions the assembly took and said, here’s what you can offer,” Giesbrecht said.

Hoag has represented the borough as lead negotiator in other contract talks with employees in the past.

He’s also represented employees in the past, when local police officers sought a separate bargaining unit from other borough workers.

The testimony from union members gave the Assembly pause. They voted 6-0 to postpone their vote on an offer to employees until their June 4 meeting.

Assembly member Brandi Marohl is sitting out Petersburg Municipal Employees Association votes because her husband is an impacted employees.

The employees are local police officers and workers in elderly housing, finance and administration, public works, sanitation, water and waste water, harbor, library and parks and recreation among other departments.

The PMEA has been working under the terms of their last three-year contract which ran through June of 2017.

The workers also went through a drawn out contract dispute with the city of Petersburg in 2010 and 2011.

As for the unfair labor practice complaint, the borough and union will make their case to a hearing officer with the state agency, who will make a decision.

The municipality has until May 25 to respond to the union’s complaint.

Alaska pharmacists celebrated the passage of a bill making changes to prescription drug benefits and how businesses are reimbursed for that medication.

House Bill 240 was opposed by health insurers and the companies they hire to oversee pharmacy drug sales. The Senate passed the bill and it awaits the governor’s signature.

Petersburg Rexall Drug Store pharmacist Cate Kowalski and two employees answer phones and fill prescriptions.

After trying with other pharmacists to get it passed for about a decade, Kowalski’s elated.

The change will give the state the authority to decide appeals on the reimbursement that pharmacies receive for medication impacts her business the most.

“We’ve been getting squeezed and squeezed for years,” Kowalski said. “To the point where it’s not covering the cost of what we pay for these drugs. When you try to appeal them we had no recourse. We would send things in. They would say, ‘Oh yes this is how you do it,’ but we would never get anything back.”

Insurance providers hire pharmacy benefit managers, or companies that provide oversight of the medication reimbursement. The managers have the authority to negotiate drug prices between insurers and pharmacies and decide appeals.

HB 240 creates a more transparent appeal process for pharmacies disputing reimbursement, and also gives the state’s Division of Insurance final say in disputes.

Express Scripts is  a national pharmacy benefit management company headquartered in St. Louis. Senior Director Cindy Laubacher testified April 20 before the Senate Finance Committee.

She outlined multiple problems she saw in the legislation. Turning over appeal authority to the state was a huge concern.

“We have appeals processes,” Laubacher told the committee. “We are happy to sit down and talk about creating an appeals process in statute that makes sense, that is fair for everyone but we would say that handing the state the authority to make, taking that authority away from our clients and giving it to the state to make reimbursement decisions is hugely problematic for us and for our clients.”

Laubacher explained her company was not trying to put community pharmacies out of business.

Small independent businesses say they are being forced to close, though.

Alaska Pharmacists Association legislative co-chairman Barry Christensen of Ketchikan told the committee the group has seen a 25 percent decrease in independently owned community pharmacies.

Pharmacy benefit management companies played a big role in those closures, he said.

Alaska Pharmacists Association supported the legislation, as did the state’s Board of Pharmacy.

Legislators were convinced to make changes in the pricing practices.

On the Senate floor, Anchorage Republican Cathy Giessel gave the example of Tamiflu, used to treat influenza.

“Wholesale distributors in this example last year was selling Tamiflu for about $58 for a prescription,” Giessel said. “But the PBMs were reimbursing the pharmacy $20 for that prescription. Every time a pharmacy dispensed Tamiflu they were losing $38. There’s not many businesses that can stay in business with that kind of loss Mr. President.”

Supporters of the bill said benefit managers prohibit pharmacies from mailing prescription medication to rural parts of the state.

They’ve also not allowed a pharmacist to tell a customer when there’s a less expensive option for medication if a customer opts to pay out of pocket.

The legislation prohibits the mailing restriction and the so-called “gag rule” for cheaper options in contracts between benefit managers and pharmacies.

It also seeks to create more reasonable procedures for PBMs auditing pharmacies and it requires PBMs to register with the state.

The bill was opposed by America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade association that wrote it will increase the cost of medication.

Insurance companies say benefit managers help prevent fraud and keep medication costs down.

Health insurer Aetna opposed it.

The bill was sponsored by Fairbanks Democrat David Guttenberg and had legislators signing on as sponsors from both sides of the aisle.

The bill passed the House unanimously in April and the Senate earlier this month and goes next to the governor for his signature.

(Editor’s note: Petersburg Rexall Drug is an underwriter of KFSK in Petersburg.)

Six new U.S. Coast Guard fast response cutters will be stationed in Alaska and two new patrol boats will be coming to the state, the Coast Guard announced Wednesday.

The fast response cutters will replace some smaller island class cutters and be stationed in Kodiak, Seward, Sitka and Ketchikan.

Coast Guard also will station two patrol boats in Juneau and Petersburg.

Sitka’s cutter will be a new addition while the others will be replacements.

The new fast response cutters will be 44 feet longer than the existing ones, which means some communities will have to build up infrastructure to support docking them.

Coast Guard made the decision to put the eight new vessels in Alaska based on their own in-depth studies.

Alaska’s congressional delegation has been advocating for the move.

“I had been concerned that we were going to lose coverage particularly in the Southeast area,” said U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, chairman of the U.S. Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard. The subcommittee fought to keep vessels in the smaller towns. “We were going to lose coverage.”

An earlier Coast Guard plan called to downsize Alaska’s cutters from seven to six, homeporting them in just a few communities.

Sullivan said he worked closely with local mayors over the past three years to include more coverage area.

But the time was right during the confirmation hearings of Vice Adm. Karl Schultz to be commandant of the Coast Guard. As the committee chairman, Sullivan was looking for definitive answers from Schultz.

“I actually specifically asked about Petersburg and he gave me a decent answer and then he kind of walked his answer back, if you watch the hearing,” Sullivan said. “I found that to be an unacceptable answer. I put a hold on the commandant’s nomination and I told him he wasn’t going to be moving anywhere until I got a better answer.”

Fifteen minutes before the deadline Sullivan set, he said the committee received the letter from the current U.S. Coast Commandant, Paul Zukunft. The letter described where the eight new ships would be stationed.

Sullivan credits Alaska’s mayors helping to advocate for keeping all the ships spread out in the state.

“We really closely strategized with all of them,” Sullivan said. “With regard to Petersburg, Mayor Jensen, I can’t say enough about how hard he worked on this.”

Petersburg’s new 87-foot patrol boat will be smaller than the current island-class cutter Anacapa and will lose three crew members.

The mission remain the same: Crew members will conduct commercial fishery law enforcement patrols, search-and-rescue and life-saving missions.

“That’s not exactly the same size as an island class cutter but it’s essentially 16 to 13 personnel, so it’s close,” Sullivan said.

The U.S. Coast Guard does not expect there to be any gap in time.

The old vessels will be decommissioned after the new ones arrive. The process is expected to take about five years, except Ketchikan’s new cutters, which arrived last year.

An environmental advocacy organization says the U.S. Forest Service doesn’t appear to be taking steps to correct costly problems in Tongass timber contracts.

The federal agency has released thousands of pages in response to its Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility says.

But those documents don’t describe any significant changes.

PEER published a review last year of two Tongass timber sales done in 2016 by Washington office staff of the Forest Service.

The document listed problems with appraisal and oversight of the Big Thorne timber sale on Prince of Wales Island and the Tonka sale on Kupreanof Island near Petersburg.

PEER asked for other agency records and then filed lawsuits when it said the federal agency did not respond to those requests.

Staff Counsel Adam Carlesco, who has been litigating the two lawsuits, said one seeks background information and documentation on the appraisals for the sales and how the agency made decisions on valuing timber.

“We saw that high-profit trees like Sitka spruce were removed, whereas the subsidized ones that were supposed to be removed, namely hemlock, were left within the forest by the harvester, against the forest plan prescription and whatnot,” Carlesco said. “We wanted to get documentation as to how this sort of thing happened.”

A second suit seeks information about what changes have been made to address problems found in the 2016 Washington office review.

The Forest Service has been responsive to the lawsuits and has released thousands of pages of documents, Carlesco said.

“In terms of producing material, yes, we’re getting material, it’s coming to us,” he said. “In terms of getting the answers that we’re looking for, we haven’t exactly seen the material there that would show us specifically what’s been done, what amendments have been made to make sure these sorts of things don’t come again and we’re not seeing the level of accountability that we were hoping for in this production.”

The 2016 agency review found the way the sales are appraised and has cost the agency revenue.

The review stated, “If the hemlock saw timber volume is not being removed, then sale value based on what is actually occurring on-the-ground has been under-represented.”

On one of the sales it noted that difference exceeded $1.7 million. It also stated, “Given the low-value to non-existent market for this material, the results from appraising this material will often (and maybe always) result in a deficit sale.”

The review recommended an independent evaluation of Big Thorne to follow up the issues identified with sale preparation and administration.

PEER is hoping the documents produced in the two lawsuits will be enough to convince the U.S. Agriculture Department’s inspector general to audit Tongass timber sales.

The Forest Service is part of that department.

PEER asked for such an audit but was denied last year.

Carlesco explained PEER wants to make sure the problems are not being repeated in new timber sales.

“There really is not clear evidence that there have been programs to prevent this sort of thing,” Carlesco said. “In actuality, we’ve been looking at documentations from contracts that have gone into place since this review has come in and we’re seeing some of the errors that were highlighted within this Washington office review be repeated. So we’re not really entirely sure specifically what the Tongass office is doing to ensure this sort of thing does not happen in the future.”

Citing the ongoing litigation, a Tongass National Forest Service spokesman declined to answer questions on the lawsuits, the timber sale review and steps taken to fix appraisal problems.

In court filings, the U.S. attorney’s office denies violating the federal law for release of the records.

Government attorneys also deny how PEER is characterizing the Washington office review of the timber sales.

The agency responded last year to PEER’s release of documents saying the Forest Service prepared an action plan to address the review’s findings and was implementing that plan.

The Forest Service said it had updated the appraisal process and administration of timber sales.

Tongass forest supervisor Earl Stewart was asked about the Washington office review at a March 7 meeting on the Central Tongass Landscape Level Analysis in Petersburg.

“A lot of this is still going on so there’s really not an absolute answer on different components of it,” Stewart said. “That’s why I say it’s a really long conversation, because now there is a whole national forest products modernization effort that’s going on that are just having sub-teams identified now. So literally you’re talking about a year and half to two years of ongoing effort.”

Both timber sales were Integrated Resources Timber Contracts, with the proceeds kept on the Tongass and used to pay for stewardship work such as replacing culverts or repairing hiking trails.

Petersburg, Sitka and a few other school districts around the state will be featured in commercials about healthy living.

The 30-second videos will be shown statewide in an effort to educate people about keeping youth active.

Child obesity is a real problem in Alaska.

One in three children in the state is overweight or obese.

And their role models are too. Two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese.

“This has been a problem that has been getting worse over decades,” said Ann Potempa, who runs a program through the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services called Play Every Day, an education campaign to prevent and reduce childhood obesity. “That’s concerning because over time excess weight increases people’s risk of serious diseases like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and more than a dozen types of cancer,” she said.

The campaign wants to change two main behaviors in children: physical activity and drinks.

Many kids aren’t getting 60 minutes of physical activity a day, which is a federal recommendation.

Children are drinking too much sugar in all kinds of beverages.

Drinks are the number one source of added sugar in daily diets.

“When we say sugary drinks we don’t mean just soda anymore,” Potempa said. “Sugary drinks can mean anything from fruit-flavored drinks, powdered drinks, sport and energy drinks, flavored coffees and teas. And even those beverages that say they’re enhanced with vitamins but really they’re enhanced with sugar.”

The campaign is highlighting ways communities are helping to fix it on a local level.

In a partnership with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, the Play Everyday Campaign is creating 30-second videos shared on TV, online and with other statewide partners like schools.

The Sitka School District and the North Slope Borough School District will be featured in their own PSAs.

Sitka has a Fish-To-School program that serves local fish for school lunches and the North Slope has made all of their schools soda free.

Petersburg School District will be featured in one for installing water bottle filling stations in their schools and giving children bottles to help make drinking water an easier choice.

“Studies show that hydration is good for our minds and so if they drink during the day, we’re all for it,” School Principal Teri Toland said.

The school district also focuses on meeting the recommended hour-of-exercise a day.

Petersburg has swimming and gym courses for all students in the grade school.

“Our swim/gym program is amazing,” Toland said. “We’re one of the few schools left in the state that still has everyday activities like that. We ensure that they get out for recess.”

Petersburg’s Healthy Living Grant coordinator Ginger Evans agrees.

“Districts are struggling with it but we’ve made it a priority,” Evans said. “We know that children will perform better academically if they are being physically active.”

The water bottle filling stations were possible through a five-year state grant.

The grant also has helped improve the school’s garden, pay for training staff and give teachers resources in their classrooms like books.

Evans said it’s not just the grant that has made the school district healthier.

“We’ve always been really fortunate in Petersburg that the community and the school board and the administrators support physical activity in education and health education in our district,” Evans said.

Petersburg’s grade school also has changed its practice for celebrating birthdays.

Instead of sharing sugary foods in the classroom, students get recognized by the principal and receive a book.

Petesburg’s PSA video will focus on the fourth-grade class.