KHNS - Haines

The Haines Borough Assembly sent a letter three weeks ago to their international neighbor, Haines Junction, Yukon.

The letter expressed friendship amid growing political tension. The Canadian mayor responded with a request that Haines publicly support Canada’s sovereignty. The Haines Assembly voted to approve a resolution that recognizes that sovereignty at its last meeting.

Haines Mayor Tom Morphet and Assembly member Craig Loomis recently crossed the border and drove 150 miles north to Haines Junction in Canada. They brought a gift basket full of local treats like smoked salmon and whiskey. At their March 11 meeting, the Assembly offered another show of solidarity when they passed legislation affirming Canada’s sovereignty.

“There’s no question that Canada is incredibly important to this community,” said Assembly member Kevin Forster. “And I spent the last week in Canada … and the conversations that I had with almost every Canadian I interacted with, they are very, very, very concerned. And I think that the more that we can express solidarity with our friends and neighbors, the better.”

The move comes after tariffs were imposed on Canadian goods by President Donald Trump. He has made repeated statements that Canada should become the 51st state and took to calling then Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Governor Trudeau. More recently, Trump reiterated this message in a meeting with the chief of NATO. NATO is an international military alliance with 32 members.

Haines relies on Canadian tourists to support their economy. The Haines Visitor Center and local businesses have received notice of individuals boycotting their town, which is nicknamed The Adventure Capital of Alaska.

Mayor Morphet hopes the town’s outreach helps soften the anger and that Canadians acknowledge his town isn’t responsible for national politics.

“There was one individual who said I am boycotting America, but I’m going to make an exception for Haines and Skagway,” Morphet said. “What we’re trying to do here is create an allowance where we don’t jeopardize the millions and millions of dollars this community has spent since 1987 promoting regional marketing.”

Haines Tourism Director Reba Hylton got a taste of what might be coming this summer when she attended an adventure travel show in Vancouver, British Columbia two weeks ago. She said that normally, her voice is hoarse by the end of the first day, and they run out of printed materials to hand out. But this time, the U.S. aisle was empty. She said the rest of the convention center was full of attendees.

“I could hear their conversations or read their body language,” Hylton said. “And you know, it wasn’t anything personal. It was just like they are taking this stance against visiting our country…”

Assembly member Cheryl Stickler voted for the sovereignty measure but had concerns about potential repercussions.

“The idea that there’s even a request for our small town of Haines to make a statement that says Canada is a sovereign nation blows my mind,” she said. “My reservation again, was the timing. Because we have these requests in for federal funding, and we know we don’t have the money to do these projects.”

Assembly member Mark Smith was the only no vote. He didn’t want the assembly getting involved in national politics.

“This is a request for the assembly to approve a resolution recognizing the sovereignty of a country that is already sovereign,”  he said.

Smith raised concerns that the resolution would violate the 1799 Logan Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from conducting private diplomacy.

Morphet said the borough attorney concluded the resolution would not violate the act.

Still, the increasing disputes between the U.S. and Canada continue to have Haines’ leaders worried.

“What we do know is that our town, being a border town, has close ties with Haines Junction and Whitehorse,” Stickler said. “And we know that we have to cross the border to get to other parts of our state … I feel like we’re between a rock and a hard place.”

After failing to receive the required four votes to pass because an assembly member was absent, the issue was reconsidered and passed four to one.

A decades-old proposal to build a controversial road between Juneau and the communities of Haines and Skagway was put to rest in 2016.

But that just changed. The state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities unveiled plans last week to launch a new study to examine the feasibility of building a road – and other infrastructure – that it says could create more cost effective and reliable transportation for the region. It plans to pay a firm at least $1 million for the study, due at the end of the year.

According to agency spokesperson Sam Dapcevich, the road could help Haines residents get to Juneau and back in one day, reducing the need for mainliner ferries in the region.

“If you knock 14 hours or more out of the mainliner schedule on Lynn Canal, you can do a lot better for some of the other communities in southeast, while even improving the service to Haines and Skagway,” Dapcevich said.

Whether such a road would achieve those goals has been debated for decades.

The state has repeatedly studied and pitched proposals, including in the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s – and now.

This time, the state is looking at the west side of Lynn Canal. Supporters say the terrain on that side is less avalanche-prone than on the east side. They also say it would open more of Haines to recreation and provide a more reliable way to get to Juneau, which is only accessible by boat or airplane.

“In the years when we first came here, in the 70s, the ferry was dependable. It was very dependable, you could almost set your clocks by it,” said long-time Haines resident Jerry Lapp, a former mayor and assembly member who supports the road. “But it’s become so undependable, in the winter time, you don’t know if you’re going to get to Juneau and back.”

Many see it differently. Critics have argued the road would be extremely costly to build and maintain, in part because each version that’s been proposed over the years would have required new bridges, ferry terminals and shuttles. State officials estimated that the version that died in 2016 would have cost upwards of $570 million.

That hasn’t changed this time around. Dapcevich, of the Transportation Department, said the new study will focus on a west-side road that would need a ferry across Lynn Canal near Juneau and bridge across the Chilkat River near Haines. Another possibility would be to extend the road further, roughly 25 miles past Haines, where it could connect with Chilkat Lake Road near Mosquito Lake. That route would require a bridge across the Tsirku River.

Maggie Rabb, the executive director of Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, said she’s interested to see the proposal.

“I’m very skeptical that they’re going to learn anything new, other than the price has gone up significantly in the last decade, and the potential environmental impacts have not gone down,” Rabb said. “But we’ll spend money to confirm that, apparently.”

Others say the money put toward the study and potentially the road would be better spent on fixing the ferry system itself.

“The road that’s made out of water works year-round. And it costs us nothing to build, nothing to maintain, nothing to pave, nothing to plow,” said Haines Mayor Tom Morphet. “If you just stop and think about it for about 10 minutes, the economics become pretty clear.”

The state will accept bids through March 25 from consulting firms interested in conducting the study, according to an agency document.

Correction: An earlier version of this story excluded a second route the road could take. The study will focus on a road that would require a bridge across either the Chilkat River or Tsirku River near Haines. A typo was also corrected in Dapcevich’s first quote. 

Skagway’s Borough Assembly meeting last Thursday was overshadowed by a topic not on the agenda. Mayor Sam Bass announced he had not – and would not – sign correspondence that was approved at the previous Assembly meeting. The correspondence included letters concerning recent federal firings and tariffs with Canada.

Skagway’s mayor said his decision not to sign his name on the dotted line is simply a change in how correspondence is handled. However, some constituents and Assembly members see it as politically divisive, and a dereliction of duty.

A heated exchange between Skagway Mayor Sam Bass and Assembly member Alex Weddell took place during the March 6 meeting.

“My question was, do you support the content of the last three letters that went out?” Weddell said.

“Assembly member Weddell, I’m not going to discuss that with you,” Bass said. “I’ve told you my reasons for making these decisions. You can accept that or not.”

“I do not accept it,” Weddell replied.

“Okay. Well, thank you,” Bass said.

The Skagway Borough Assembly approved three letters at their Feb. 20 meeting. The first letter was to Alaska’s congressional delegation, expressing the town’s reliance on Whitehorse for supplies, and how a proposed 25% tariff could harm the local economy.

The second letter, also to the delegation, highlights the importance of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park. The federal park is a cultural draw for tourists and one of the town’s few year-round employers. Skagway lost its Park Service historic preservationist amid the nationwide probationary terminations.

The third letter was sent to the premier of Yukon, and reiterates the partnership and friendship between Skagway and its neighboring country.

The Assembly first learned that the mayor would not be signing the approved letters on Feb. 28. Borough Clerk Steve Burnaham sent an email to Assembly members informing them that the mayor had declined to sign the correspondence and that the letters would be signed by the clerk if there were no objections. All three letters were sent with the clerk’s signature.

On March 6, Bass addressed the signature issue for the first time on his official Mayor Sam Bass Facebook page. He said that he was misquoted in a CBC North article regarding the tariffs letter.

Bass stated on his Facebook page that he “did not write nor sign the letter from which these quotes are extracted from.” It also said he would work with Canadian officials to help mitigate tariff effects and he believes that more needs to be done to stop the fentanyl crisis.

Comments to the Facebook page have been disabled.

The mayor told the Assembly at the March 6 regular meeting that correspondence from the mayor and the Assembly should be separate.

“I have taken this action because I feel at the Assembly, the legislative branch of our local government should sign the correspondence it generates,” he said. “And at the mayor’s office, the executive branch should sign correspondence it generates. This method increases the validity and impact of the correspondence and allows the different branches to express themselves with a different perspective and voice.”

Bass said that city code dictates the mayor signs ordinances, contracts and deeds, but he didn’t believe that Assembly correspondence was under his purview.

Former Mayor Tim Bourcy strongly disagreed with Bass’ interpretation and said that state code, particularly Title 29, requires Bass’ signature on Assembly correspondence.

“When this body approved a letter to send, you as the mayor, are required to sign that,” Bourcy said. “The moment you step up on that floor, you represent us. And the fact that you usurped the governing body’s ability and had the clerk send this out, what message does this send?”

Bourcy questioned why Bass didn’t bring up any concerns at the last meeting – when the letters were approved – or use his veto power.

Another former mayor, Andrew Cremata, also criticized Bass’ actions.

“​​This is a reason to censure somebody,” he said. “… You don’t get to unilaterally decide what you like and what you don’t. Hell, I had multiple occasions when I was mayor where I had to vocally support something that I did not like, and I did it. I saved the conversation about I didn’t like it for the bar.”

The issue came up again during the March 6 meeting when the Assembly approved a letter of support for the Skagway Child Care Council, which is attempting to open a summer day camp to ease the child care crisis. Assemblymember Alex Weddell questioned the mayor’s new protocol.

“My question was, who would sign this letter?” she asked. “If this is a letter on behalf of the assembly, typically, these are signed by the mayor. His statement earlier stated that he had some difference of opinion than that. And my question was directly to the mayor, who would be signing this letter?”

Bass agreed to sign that particular correspondence.

Bass was elected mayor in 2023. He was appointed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy to the Alaska Royalty Oil & Gas Development Advisory Board in 2022.

Regarding his decision to sign or not sign letters, Bass says it was not his intention to cause “consternation.”

“I do apologize for not letting this body be aware of my intentions before not signing,” he said.

The procedure will be examined by the borough’s attorney.

Alaskans are bracing for impact as the White House rolls out steep tariffs on goods imported from Canada, China and Mexico.

President Donald Trump first announced his proposed tariffs in early February, when he said the U.S. would slap 25% tariffs on goods imported from Canada and Mexico and 10% tariffs on goods from China. The administration then paused the policy after Canada and Mexico agreed to take steps to crack down on border security.

The tariffs took effect on Tuesday and included a higher tax on Chinese goods. The move immediately sparked retaliatory tariffs from China and Canada. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she would respond later this week.

In Alaska, the news reignited concerns about the policy’s potential to send prices skyward – and to damage the state’s relationship with Canada.

Those concerns are especially acute in the border towns of Haines and Skagway. Mike Healy owns Skagway Brewing Company. It’s the biggest restaurant in the small, coastal tourist town – and one of the few that’s open right now.

He said tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods could hit his operation in a range of ways. The obvious one is food prices.

“We know that our food costs are going to go up, our purveyors have indicated so. Much of our produce comes from Mexico,” Healy said. “So that’s going to be for Skagway Brewing company but also just [the] general public.”

But an even bigger concern, he said, is that the Trump administration’s policy could blunt the flow of visitors from the town’s nearest neighbor, Canada. Healey said Canadians may take into consideration that towns like Haines and Skagway have no control over the policy. But there’s no guarantee.

“There’s a movement in a lot of Canada to boycott travel to the U.S. as a result of the tariffs and a couple other things,” Healy said. “And we don’t know how that’s going to play out.”

The trend already appears to be hitting Haines.

The borough’s tourism director, Rebecca Hylton, was not available for an interview. But she said in a text message that she’s spent the weekend at an outdoor adventure and travel show in Vancouver, where she spoke with at least a dozen people who said they were sympathetic to the two communities. But they have still chosen not to travel to Alaska this year.

“People were kind but also steadfast in their position,” Hylton said.

Also top of mind for many residents in the area is how the tariffs might affect local businesses or residents who travel to Canada to purchase groceries or other goods.

Agents at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection stations in Haines, Skagway and Anchorage said they could not comment on how the tariffs will be enforced at the Canadian border. They directed KHNS to other contacts within the agency, who have not responded to requests for comment.

But locals have started contacting the Skagway Port of Entry themselves – with mixed results.

Skagway resident Deb Boettcher said she spoke with agents at the border twice on Tuesday. The first time, an agent told her a 25% tax would be applied to all Canadian goods brought through the border. The second time, an agent said their understanding was that anyone who purchases Canadian products for personal use and brings them back into Alaska would not be subject to the tariffs. But businesses likely would be.

Gregory Wolf, the president of the Alaska International Business Center, said in an interview last month that trade policies do not typically target residents crossing the border with groceries or other goods. He said the tariffs might affect local businesses, depending on what products they buy in Canada and how much they cost.

“The idea is more for large scale importers, exporters, where you’re talking about millions of dollars — in some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars,” Wolf said. “That’s where the tariffs will really have an impact.”

Alaskan officials at the state and local levels have scrambled to preserve Alaska’s long standing relationship with the neighboring country.

That includes a resolution moving through the state legislature that emphasizes the importance of the relationship between Alaska and Canada – and signals opposition to trade policies that would disrupt it. The resolution, which cleared the Senate Special Committee on Arctic Affairs last week, notes that Alaska imports more than $750 million in Canadian goods each year.

Trump’s statement on Monday that the tariffs would take effect Tuesday came amid speculation that he might soften the policy – or reverse it – in response to negotiations with Mexico and Canada.

For years, a prospector who discovered a controversial mineral deposit outside Haines has offered to sell federal mining claims to a state-run trust.

That entity, the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority, owns much of the land around the deposit and mineral exploration effort, known as the Palmer Project. But the trust decided in February it would not purchase the claims from prospector and former Haines resident Merrill Palmer.

Palmer staked the claims in the 1960s after discovering zinc and copper mineralization in the mountains north of Haines, near the village of Klukwan. The claims became the heart of the copper, zinc, gold, silver and barite exploration project, which has long divided the nearby communities.

Developing a mine could create high-paying jobs and inject a lot of investor dollars into the local economy. But the site sits above a tributary that runs into the Chilkat watershed, which supports a run of all five species of Pacific salmon. Critics worry the local environment, which is home to one of the world’s largest concentrations of bald eagles, could be harmed.

Why Palmer wants to sell his claims – and what the trust’s decision might mean for the project – remains unclear. But Jessica Plachta, the executive director of Lynn Canal Conservation, a Haines-based environmental non-profit that opposes the potential mine, says that a slew of factors make the project risky.

“The Palmer project is located in a remote and hazardous location. It’s inaccessible under deep snow for half the year,” Plachta said. “Not to mention that it’s dubious whether the deposit itself is worth mining, which is of course the bottom line for mining companies.”

The “best interest of the Trust”

The Alaska Mental Health Trust was created to fund programming and services for Alaskans who experience mental illness, traumatic brain injuries, intellectual and developmental disabilities and more. The state corporation does so using various resources – including roughly one million acres of land that it manages to make money.

The organization declined an interview request or to say how much money Palmer wanted for the claims, citing the confidential nature of the negotiations.

But a spokesperson, Allison Biastock, emphasized in an email that the organization’s resources must be used in the “best interest of the Trust and its beneficiaries.” She said the trust considered the cost of the claims and potential returns when making the decision.

The trustees notified Palmer of the decision after a closed-door session during its last regular board meeting, Biastock said. American Pacific Mining Corp., the junior mining company that owns the nearby exploration project, was also notified.

Palmer could not be reached for comment. American Pacific did not respond to a request for comment. And Constantine Mining LLC, an American Pacific subsidiary that operates the local project, declined to comment.

Questions about what comes next

The trust has considered buying Palmer’s claims since at least 2020.

The claims mean Palmer could earn royalties on minerals if a mine ever opens. But he offered to relinquish the claims for compensation to the trust more than five years ago. The state entity already owns much of the surrounding land and leases it out for exploration.

When Palmer offered his claims to the trust, Jusdi Doucet, who served as the deputy director of the trust’s land office, said purchasing them would be a risk. But Doucet said it could also pay off, if the minerals on Palmer’s claims connect to minerals under trust land.

“If we don’t do anything, if we don’t purchase the relinquishment of the claim, the Trust could have zero value on minerals beneath the ground on trust land,” Doucet told KHNS at the time. 

The trust had been weighing the offer ever since. Its decision not to move in that direction came after the news in November that Dowa Metals and Mining, a multinational metals company that had backed the project for years, was giving up its 70% stake in the project. That made American Pacific Mining – Constantine’s parent company – the sole owner.

The deal was prompted by differing visions for the project, American Pacific executives said in a November video announcement. Warwick Smith, the company’s CEO, billed it as a “fantastic move” for American Pacific shareholders that puts the company on “very solid footing.”

“If you were an America Pacific shareholder yesterday, you went to bed and the company had about $2.5 million in cash and owned about 29% of the Palmer project,” Warwick said. “When you wake up this morning, we have $16 million in cash and we own 100% of the 14-million-ton VMS Palmer project.”

Smith also noted that Republican control of the U.S. Senate, House and White House would also contribute to what he says are “very, very bright days ahead for American Pacific.”

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January that promised to unleash what he called Alaska’s extraordinary resource potential, including as it relates to minerals.

“The feeling, in particular for Alaska, and I’ll give an example of this, is things like permitting and these projects are going to move ahead quite rapidly,” Warwick said.

Palmer project critics, for their part, say Dowa’s exit and the trust’s decision raise questions about the project’s value – and what comes next.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of tourists flock to Glacier Bay National Park in Southeast to see towering ice formations hanging over the water.

But that ice is melting. And fast.

A new report published last week in the journal Nature examines the trend here and in 18 other regions across the globe, including the Alps, Andes and Himalayas. Researchers concluded that the world’s glaciers have lost about 5% of their ice since 2000 – and that they’re melting faster than ever.

But Alaska takes the cake. The report says the state’s glaciers have shrunk by more than 8% over the same time period – the fastest of any region. All told, Alaska alone accounts for the largest chunk, or nearly a quarter, of global glacier loss.

“Alaska is ahead of the curve in terms of losing its glaciers,” said report co-author Tyler Sutterly, a scientist at the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center.

Alaska has a lot of glaciers to lose

It’s an important finding that Alaskans and visitors alike can see with their own eyes, Suttlery added.

“You go to the ice fields in Alaska, you can see visually the bathtub ring of where those glaciers were a few decades ago and where they are now,” he said. “All a glacier expert does is take that stuff that you can see by the eye, by going to these ice fields, and just putting it all together.”

Alaska is warming two to three times faster than the global average, according to the 2023 National Climate Assessment. And the state has a lot of glaciers to lose. According to the National Park Service, Alaska is home to nearly 20,000 glaciers, which cover an area nearly the size of West Virginia.

The vast majority of melting is happening in mountainous, coastal regions like Southeast, where glaciers are more concentrated. Glacier Bay National Park, for instance, has lost about 20% of its glacial area since 1985.

“A phenomenal metric for measuring climate change”

The new report in Nature is the result of a collaboration between dozens of international scientists who study glaciers and how they’re responding to climate change. Sutterly says the goal was to compare, contrast and combine more than 200 regional estimates of glacier weight to develop one of the most comprehensive understandings of glacier loss worldwide.

“Tens of thousands of glaciers taken together are a phenomenal metric for measuring climate change,” Sutterly said.

Scientists use a range of methods to get that measurement. Satellite imagery can be used to create three dimensional pictures of glaciers. Radars and lasers fired from space help measure changes in topography. And another method, called gravimetry, gauges earth’s gravity field to shed light on things like ocean circulation and the growth and loss of glaciers.

Scientists have conducted similar research on the massive ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. But this project instead looks at the smaller glaciers that are found in more places.

It’s a more challenging task, Sutterly said, because they’re smaller, more difficult to see from space, and located in less accessible places. Think: the ragged mountains that tower over Haines, Skagway and Gustavus. But they’re also crucial sources of information – and have major impacts on nearby ecosystems and communities.

“So these are individually smaller, but are huge parts of the landscape, and are very important for freshwater resources, tourism, river health,” Sutterly said.