KHNS - Haines

A major rockslide has been threatening Skagway’s busiest cruise ship dock in recent years. Numerous industry experts were in town recently to present options for long-term mitigation. None of the choices were easy or cheap.

A rockslide above Railroad Dock in 2022 prompted a study by the geological firm Shannon & Wilson. That report stated the firm’s opinion that “the slide mass will eventually fail and the consequences of such failure will be catastrophic in nature with significant risks to life and property.”

Since then, the municipality has been doing routine scaling work, which is basically removing loose rock. Crews installed additional fencing and netting and instruments to measure ground movement. During tourist season, they send someone up the mountain each morning to take photographs. But, these are all admittedly short-term solutions.

“Nobody wants the big failure to happen and then not be ready for it,” said Kyle Brennan, project manager for Shannon & Wilson.

Brennan said the mountain needs long-term mitigation.

“We’re able to keep track of what’s happening up there. And right now, we have safe operation of the facility at the bottom,” he said. “But it’s time to move forward and take care of this larger hazard with these unstable rock masses at the top of the slope. Because predicting when that failure will eventually happen … is very difficult. And so right now, we have time. To be proactive about these things and take care of them is in the best interest of the community and everybody else.”

Shannon & Wilson presented four options. Option one concedes that the rock is too difficult to move and will therefore remain in place. The dock and everything below would be moved to a safer distance. Option two is excavating the unstable rock and sending it down the slope, where it is collected and hauled off-site. Option three leaves the rock mass in place and attempts to stabilize it. Brennan says this would be a “case study.” Option four would excavate the rock mass and move it up the slope, leaving it on the mountain.

The team wholeheartedly prefers option two.

“We’re looking at modifications to the dock,” Brennan said. “But for the most part, it’s just simply excavation and removal and letting gravity move the rock for part of it, and then picking it up and putting it somewhere else. This seems to be like our lowest risk option right now.”

The municipality was awarded a nearly $20 million grant for the project from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But a majority of that money dissipated with President Donald Trump’s administration, leaving only the funds for the design portion of the project.

However, the municipality chooses to move forward, and however they manage to pay for the multi-million-dollar project, Brennan said it’s not going to be easy.

“It’s a tender site,” he said. “It’s going to take a lot of TLC to get that rock down. And so we want to make sure we’re doing it in a purposeful manner that’s safe, that’ll achieve the goal without catastrophe. The last thing I want to do is stand up here in front of you guys in a couple years and try to explain why everything went sideways…”

Skagway resident Lynne Davison was one of many intently listening to the presentation.

“And so I hear you talking about these alternatives and when the decision is made,” she said. “But how and who? How is that decision going to be made?”

“The decision, the ultimate decision is not one that Shannon & Wilson and our design team will make independently of anybody else,” Brennan answered. “The city will be involved with that decision. And ultimately will likely be the ones to make that decision based on our input and based on all of your input.”

Brennan said there will be at least two more public meetings before the construction phase. If funding is procured, that could start in 2026 and would take place between tourist seasons.

Project options can be found at Skagway.org.

This is the second story in a four-part series from the Alaska Desk called Shelf Life, which looks at food security in Alaska.

In the very back corner of Skagway’s only grocery store, a laminated sign boasts: “LOCAL GROWN.” Above it sits a container with bundles of radishes. Next to them, a few boxes of greens.

But that’s all there is. Everything else in the store is shipped in from very far away – and it shows. While walking the aisles of the AC Fairway Market earlier this month, resident Katie Auer picked up a bag of partially wilted and bruised mini peppers.

“You’re telling me I’m going to pay 9 dollars and 29 cents for a bag of peppers, that I’d have to throw away over half of them?” she said, shrugging.

Grocery chain Alaska Commercial Company bought the store in 2021 from long-time local owners. And Auer is among those who contend that the store is expensive, the shelves aren’t well stocked and the produce rots quickly.

Locals say that’s particularly true during summer – and that things are better in Haines, Skagway’s closest neighbor.

“Why is our produce so much more expensive?” Auer asked. “Why is our food in general so much more expensive than Haines, when it’s 13 extra nautical miles to get here? Why is it so much more rotten?”

A few factors drive those challenges, including shipping costs and the drastic seasonal population swings that come with hosting cruise ships in the summer.

Both make it harder to keep the store well stocked and profitable.

In response, some residents seem to be doing what they can to avoid the store entirely – including getting same-day grocery deliveries by small planes.

A catch-22 

Skagway’s supermarket woes are not unique in Alaska, where communities across the state struggle to access affordable, fresh food.

But Skagway has some advantages other remote communities don’t. For starters, it’s connected to an international highway. And like much of Southeast, it’s on the barge route, which is perhaps the most efficient way to transport food.

“Certainly, within the data I see, as Southeast compares to the rest of the state and off-road Alaska, it’s a significantly lower quantity of food that actually spoils in transit to a store,” said Mike Jones, a food systems economist at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

But different communities face different challenges. In Skagway, they largely revolve around one main issue. The town’s wintertime population hovers around 900 people. Then, in the warmer months, it booms amid an influx of tourism workers and, on some days, more than 10,000 cruise ship passengers.

That sets the store up for a complicated guessing game: ordering, storing and stocking enough food to last through the week without shipping in so much that products rot in storage or on the shelves.

“In the summer, I don’t have enough space to maintain all the produce I could sell,” Lee McKinney, the Fairway manager, said. “But the other side of the coin is, if I do, a larger portion of that produce is going to go bad and have to be thrown out before I do sell it. It’s a catch-22.”

During the off-season, meanwhile, people complain that store shelves appear empty and that there are plenty of products the store doesn’t offer at all. Auer noted she prefers to drink skim milk, but that the store doesn’t carry it.

Brooke Jasky-Zuber, another local, said the store has limited organic products and few meat substitutes for her partner, who is vegetarian.

McKinney said he does what he can to meet folks’ needs, including ordering entire cases of certain products if a customer says they’ll buy all of it. But he added that he has to order specialty and more popular products based on what will actually sell.

“If I bring in that full shelf load, 90% of it’s going to date out before it sells and means I’ve got to write it off and throw it away,” he said.

“We got to make sure to make money with that space,” he added.

Quality and cost concerns

It’s less clear why the quality of food in Skagway would be worse than in Haines or Juneau. Jones, the food systems economist, said there could be a few factors at play.

He said stores could use different quality distributors. But they don’t. The Fairway in Skagway and the two Haines stores all use Rhode Island-based United Natural Foods Inc. for general grocery items. For produce, both the Fairway in Skagway and Olerud’s Market Center in Haines use a Seattle-based distributor called Charlie’s Produce.

Another factor could be the length of time food sits on the barge. But it doesn’t take that much longer for food to get to Skagway than it does to Haines or Juneau.

Product turnover could also help explain the problem. Consider a minimum shipment of lemons. It would likely take longer to sell those lemons in Skagway than in larger communities like Juneau or Haines.

“The big challenge is maintaining your product and not seeing everything date out on you because you don’t turn it fast enough,” McKinney said.

Then there’s the issue of prices, which fluctuate frequently and are determined by factors including freight costs, corporate pricing structures and more.

KHNS compared eight products at one store in Skagway to the same products at Howsers IGA Supermarket in Haines, including milk, various greens, and shelf-stable groceries. Everything was cheaper in Haines except spinach.

Jones, the economist, said that checks out.

“Skagway is on the high end within Southeast in terms of the prices that I can see for a couple products that happen to be right in front of me,” he said. “That’s not necessarily unreasonable, because they are farther up the barge away from Seattle.”

Grocery shopping by small plane

The challenges in Skagway underscore that even in communities with better access and infrastructure, struggles abound. And for some, the situation has reached a tipping point.

Auer, the Skagway local, said she hasn’t shopped at the Fairway in more than a year. Instead, she hits stores in Canada, Juneau and Haines when she can.

And she ships a lot of her food from out of town, including via Instacart — from Juneau.

Instacart is a service that allows people to order their groceries online and have someone pick them up at the store and deliver them to their doorstep.

In rural Alaska, it looks a little different. Customers can place their weekly orders from Skagway. Then, a driver in Juneau heads to Costco or Fred Meyer, shops, and delivers the food to the airport. From there, it’s loaded onto a flight and flown in – typically the same day.

“You can get two dozen free range organic eggs for $8 from Costco,” Auer said. “And they are $10.50 including shipping, including paying Instacart, tipping my driver and $1 per pound shipped here from Juneau.”

That day at the Fairway, there were two options for eggs: one cost $12 a dozen, the other about $9.

Flying food around southeast Alaska is far from new. But reliance on Instacart seems to be. Data provided by the company indicates that annual Instacart deliveries to the Juneau airport have more than doubled since 2019.

Jasky-Zuber is among those who said that relying on the local store to fill her fridge and pantry just doesn’t make sense any more. For the last four years, she’s managed the local tribe’s farm, which is where the locally grown radishes and greens in the store came from.

Jasky-Zuber said she sources most of her produce from the farm in the summertime. But otherwise, she stocks up on bulk items in Whitehorse, Canada – and ships plenty in from Juneau.

“Not because I don’t want to support our grocery store. I do,” Jasky-Zuber said. But ultimately, she added, “I find mostly other ways to get the bulk of what I need.”

Escalating tensions between the U.S. and Canada last winter fueled fears that Canadians would respond by canceling cross-border visits to Alaska this summer, potentially hitting local economies.

New data shows fewer people did cross the Canadian border near Haines and Skagway this year compared to last year. Still, a full-scale boycott never seemed to materialize – at least in the upper Lynn Canal.

Skagway tourism director Jaime Bricker said she was concerned that Skagway would see fewer Yukoners specifically this season. In some cases, she did hear about people canceling trips to southeast Alaska’s northernmost town. But overall, her worries didn’t come to fruition.

“The majority of people that I’ve talked to have made a special exception to visit Skagway,” she said. “The south Klondike Highway feels like family — it doesn’t feel like one country versus another.”

That comes in sharp contrast to what happened across the country amid intensifying frustration in Canada over President Donald Trump’s trade war and his claims that the country should become the 51st state.

Nationwide border crossings from Canada into the U.S. between May and August of this year dropped by about 24% when compared to last year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Control data published last month by the federal Department of Transportation.

But in Skagway, not much changed at all, the data shows. The nearby port of entry sits just north of town. Between May and August this year, more than 68,000 passengers entered the U.S. there in personal vehicles. That marks about a 4% decrease from the same time period last year.

Bricker noted that she receives border data directly from customs agents stationed in Skagway. According to those figures, border crossings are actually up this year compared to last, not slightly down, as the data published by DOT showed. The reason behind the discrepancy is unclear.

Haines

The situation played out differently in Haines. The Dalton Cache Port of entry is about 40 miles outside town. And CBP data suggests 3,700 fewer people entered the U.S. there between May and August of this year. That represents a nearly 16% decrease.

Haines Borough Tourism Director Reba Hylton said she observed the dip, including at the local visitor center.

“We were definitely negatively impacted,” she said. “And we saw a lot less, not only Canadian travelers, but international travelers in general.”

The local economic impact is less clear. Alaska Sport Shop employee Gabe Long, for instance, said the fishing and outdoor gear store saw plenty of Canadians who have been coming to Haines for years – if not generations. But typically, they also serve a lot of younger Canadians visiting for the first time. That demographic, he said, didn’t seem to arrive in full force.

“We had about eight Saturdays where we had significantly less people than I’ve had last year,” Long said.

But it’s hard to say if that hurt sales, Long added. That’s due in part to the fact that two of the shop’s main competitors were closed this summer.

Haines Brewing owner Paul Wheeler, meanwhile, did notice a drop in business. One month over the summer, he said, sales were down about 20%. He said he observed fewer Canadians than normal, but also fewer Germans. He thinks that’s because German airline Condor canceled their direct flights to Whitehorse.

Other business owners said they really didn’t notice a shift at all. Ramie Carlson Clayton owns Ampersand, a local art gallery and said the season was business as usual. Rhonda Hinson, owner of local store Alaska Rods, echoed that point.

“The Canadian traffic this summer, I’d say, was pretty steady,” Hinson said. “I had folks in pretty much every weekend, and a lot of times throughout the week.”

A company under contract for a major timber sale in Haines is trying again to secure a permit to store harvested logs in Lutak Inlet, a key piece of its proposed operation.

As part of that process, the company conducted a required survey this spring that says the storage site is appropriate and would not affect sensitive marine habitat.

But some community members remain unconvinced. The area Fish and Game Advisory Committee submitted a comment letter on Friday that says the intertidal area of the inlet is a “sensitive habitat” for species including salmon, eulachon, or hooligan, and crab.

The committee argues the permit should not be granted absent more information about potential repercussions.

“These species provide an essential source of food security as well as cultural continuity for local residents who rely on the Inlet for subsistence harvests,” the committee wrote. “Any degradation of these habitats would directly impact the community’s ability to access traditional and sustainable food resources.”

Oregon-based Northwest Forest Products Inc. won a contract years ago to carry out the Chilkat Valley’s largest timber sale in decades, known as Baby Brown.

The timber harvest hasn’t begun. But last spring, the company’s local operator, NSEA Inc., applied for a five-year permit for log storage with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources.

Then, the agency pulled the application after realizing it skipped a crucial step: requiring a survey of the sea floor.

“We don’t have a ton of log transfer facilities anymore. So I believe that kind of just slipped through the cracks,” said natural resource manager Tony Keith. “And that was our bad, so that’s why we did pull it.”

NSEA conducted the survey in April. That entailed using a device with underwater GPS, video and mapping software to examine current ocean floor conditions.

The survey report, which was submitted with the new permit application, concludes that the site is “suitable” for the facility. And it says no sensitive or critical habitat was documented.

Then NSEA re-applied for the permit in late September. The application proposes a log transfer facility and storage area on a 12-acre site about four miles out of town, off Lutak Road. The facility would be used to transfer logs into the inlet, near the shore, where they would be stored until they’re loaded onto ships.

The survey report explains that those ships will head overseas to the export log market “because there are no in-state purchasers for logs in the northern part of southeast Alaska.”

The company has indicated it plans to begin logging the timber sale in the spring of 2026 and wrap it up before the end of 2028.

Area management biologist Nicole Zeiser said the proposed facility would directly interfere with local fishing.

“Especially with the mooring buoys that may be installed. I’m not sure how many or exact location, but that would significantly reduce access for both subsistence and commercial gillnet fishermen, but crab fishermen as well,” she said.

State Forester Greg Palmieri previously told KHNS the storage site would be about 1,700 feet long. The new permit application says it would take up about 2,500 feet parallel to the shore. In an email on Friday, he said log rafts have been used in the Lutak Inlet historically – and that facility use can easily be managed to avoid fishing impacts.

NSEA President Polly Johannsen did not respond to a request for comment.

The public has until Oct. 13 to comment on the permit application. Comments can be submitted to muriel.walatka@alaska.go.

On a dreary evening late last week, dozens of people packed into the back of the Haines Public Library. Before long, two attendees broke into a chant.

“No road! No road! No road!” they shouted.

Their words captured the tenor of the gathering, which centered around a controversial effort by the state of Alaska to study what it would take to build a road that would – at least in theory – better connect Juneau, Haines and Skagway.

The Department of Transportation and Public Facilities announced the study last spring, indicating that the plan was to assess options for the route along the west side of the Lynn Canal.

The agency organized last week’s open house-style event to provide information to the community and get feedback.

“We’re trying to show people what this project looks like, what potential benefits there are. We also want to understand everybody’s concerns,” said Greg Lockwood, DOT’s Southcoast region project manager.

Some locals have expressed support for the idea, noting that the state ferry system is unreliable and that a road could open up access for recreation and other purposes. But others are opposed, for a long list of reasons.

Attendee Shannon Donahue, who initiated the “no road” chant, is among them. In an interview, she said that as she sees it, it’s clear the state’s central goal is to “create roads to resources.”

“It’s unlikely that this whole thing is going to come to fruition,” Donahue said. “Pieces may come to fruition. Roads to logging, roads to mines, and you know, that can do a lot of damage.”

Others at the open house raised the same concern, particularly given that state officials recently unveiled plans to remove longstanding logging restrictions in the Haines State Forest and open up the entire area to logging. The potential west-side road would run through that forest and could provide better access for timber sales.

In a phone interview following the open house, DOT’s Lockwood said finding ways to partner with and benefit industry is an important part of the process. He added that the potential project “is just not purely a ferry terminal, and road to a ferry terminal.”

“If we can find added value, a freight dock, if we can find a way for mining trucks coming from the Yukon to use [a west side road] and stay out of town, or if there’s timber to be harvested, that would all be value added that would help support this roadway,” Lockwood said.

Critics of the idea have also raised concerns including the rugged terrain along the canal, which would complicate building a road and maintaining it, particularly during winter.

Other worries include implications for people traveling by ferry without a vehicle – and potential environmental impacts of the road itself.

“The Marine Highway is an excellent alternative,” said Sky Skiles, another attendee. “I think putting money into that to keep it in good shape is a better alternative than to cause so much damage to our environment.”

A new ferry terminal, route options

The idea of building a road between Juneau and Haines has been around for decades. But it’s never come to fruition, despite a smattering of earlier feasibility studies. This time around, the study will cost at least $1 million and is being carried out by DOWL LLC, a Washington-based consulting firm.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration says a road would create more cost-effective and efficient transportation for the region. That idea is that the road in Haines would reduce the length of ferry service between the two locations.

The contractor is studying two main route possibilities, which were illustrated in detail on maps set up during the event last week. Both rely on a yet-to-be-built ferry terminal at Cascade Point, about 30 miles north of Juneau.

The state signed an initial contract for that project this summer, a move that sparked criticism in the upper Lynn Canal but was welcomed by a mining company planning an ore shipping facility in the same location.

Under the first route option, travelers starting in Juneau would need first to travel from town to Cascade Point. From there, they would take a ferry across the canal to William Henry Bay, at which point they would drive north until they hit a bridge back into Haines.

In the second option, travelers would still need to get to Cascade Point and board a ferry. But the ferry would take them further north to Pyramid Harbor, near Haines. From there, they’d drive a much shorter distance to a bridge and then cross back into Haines.

Notably, neither option, as illustrated on maps, indicates how people would get to Skagway.

Lockwood, of DOT, emphasized that it’s still early days, and the agency is still purely gathering information.

“People need to understand this, this isn’t a done deal.” he said. “We haven’t made any decisions.”

The agency plans to have a draft report in December and a final version in January, which will be used to inform next steps. The public can ask for more information and provide feedback by emailing ChilkatConnector@dowl.com.

Haines might soon join communities across Southeast Alaska that have tweaked their tax policies to shift the local tax burden off year-round residents and onto tourists.

Voters this week will consider a ballot measure that would increase sales tax during the summer, when visitors flock to town, and reduce the rate in winter. Sweetening the deal is a provision that would exempt groceries from sales tax entirely during the winter months.

“Over the course of a year the visitors and seasonal residents will pay more and year-round residents (depending on who they are and what they buy when) should pay less or the same as they do now,” Haines Borough Finance Director Jila Stuart said in an email on Thursday.

Local sales tax in Haines is currently set at 5.5%. If the measure passes, it would boost the rate to 7% between April and the end of September. The rate would fall to 4.5% for the rest of the year – excluding groceries, which would not be subject to sales tax at all in winter.

The goal is to raise funds for two key purposes: school funding and road improvements.

“I think it’s an agreeable enough deal, in so much as folks will get 5.5% off groceries all winter long, and they’ll get 1% off everything else,” Haines Mayor Tom Morphet said in an interview this week.

Morphet has been a major proponent of the provision, which is modeled after versions adopted in communities across Southeast. Among them are Craig, Pelican, Seldovia, Ketchikan, Sitka and Skagway – Haines’ closest neighbor.

Each seasonal sales tax looks slightly different. But the goal generally speaking is to take advantage of the busy summer season to generate local tax revenue.

Consumers in Skagway for instance, currently pay a 5% sales tax in the summer and 3% in the winter. But that could soon change. On the Skagway ballot this year is a measure that would boost summer sales tax by another 2%. In exchange, the borough would waive local utility fees.

Juneau voters, for their part, will soon weigh in on their own seasonal sales tax proposal, which would bump sales tax from 5% to 7.5% in the summer and drop it to 3% during winter.

Morphet has done a handful of public presentations about the tax. He said he has heard some concerns, including extra administrative costs for businesses, and that the tax could discourage people from shopping in Haines.

All told, the tax is expected to generate about $280 thousand dollars – which amounts to a 6% boost to local sales tax revenue, according to the borough.

Morphet acknowledged that 6% is an “incremental” figure. But he emphasized it’s still a crucial sum given that the borough is grappling with a $1 million budget deficit that he says has to be made up somewhere.

The deficit is due in part to federal funding cuts and a senior tax exemption passed by voters last year. But it also resulted from the borough needing to kick in more than half a million dollars more for the school this year compared to last, to make up for insufficient state funding.

That’s a challenge facing communities across Alaska.

“Communities are responding by adopting a seasonal sales tax,” Morphet said. “In Craig, the seasonal sales tax goes entirely to the school. And you know, until we have a new governor, our hands are going to be tied.”

If passed, the Haines borough expects that year-round residents would spend roughly the same amount in sales tax that they currently do.

Someone who spends $30,000 per year on taxable goods and services – $7,000 of which is groceries – would spend about $80 less on tax under the new structure, according to a borough fact sheet.

That could look different depending on the person. The math might not pencil out as well for someone who spends a lot on gasoline in the summer, for instance, as opposed to groceries.