KSTK - Wrangell

Wrangell canceled its annual king salmon derby for the first time because of record low chinook forecasts and state restrictions.

Wrangell has held the longest king derby in Southeast Alaska, lasting a whole month.

The local Chamber of Commerce will hold a silver salmon derby instead.

Other towns had limited or canceled their derbies in the past.

This marks the first change for Wrangell since the event’s beginning 65 years ago.

The cancellation is due to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s area closures.

The agency announced in January that District 8, at the mouth of the Stikine River, would be closed for sport retention from April to mid-July.

The local chamber had anticipated further closures, and got the official notice last week.

Districts 6 and 7 are closed until mid-June. They encompass waters surrounding the entirety of Wrangell Island west to Coffman Cove.

“It’s really unfortunate that our king salmon derby is being canceled, but there’s nothing we can do about it considering the closures,” said Cyni Crary, executive director of the Wrangell Chamber of Commerce. “We feel like this is an excellent opportunity to bring back the coho salmon derby.”

Wrangell’s derby for silver or coho salmon is a throwback for the town, last held in the late 1970s.

This marks the first time it will be held not in conjunction with a king derby.

“This time people aren’t going to be able to fish for quite a while and retain the fish,” Crary said. “It will get people really excited to get on the water and compete.”

The silver derby is meant to supplement the excitement and the economic boost usually seen with the king derby.

Out of town folks come to Wrangell to fish the derby, and local retailers could always count on getting a boost from the event.

“Just everything that people get when they go out fishing, from their fishing licenses, to their beer, to their bait,”Crary says.

The Silver Salmon Derby will be during the weekends from Aug. 11 through Sept. 3.

This year’s derby tickets will be reduced from $35 to $20. The chamber will award weekly $250 cash prizes, with a $500 prize for Labor Day weekend.

The top awards will be based on a cumulative three-fish catch. Those prizes are $2,000 for first place, $1,500 for second and $1,000 for third.

A new, life-saving service has just been added to some medevac aircraft in Southeast Alaska.

Airlift Northwest now is offering blood transfusions on two planes stationed in Juneau.

Airlift Northwest has performed more than 200 mid-air blood transfusions in the Pacific Northwest.

Just last week, the nonprofit service did its first in Alaska. The patient was at Bartlett Regional Hospital in Juneau.

“We’ve had patients we really don’t think would have survived had we not had blood on our aircrafts,” said Chris Martin, the executive director of Airlift Northwest. “For us and a lot of patients it’s been life-changing.”

Their aircraft only carried regular IV fluid before.

Now, each aircraft carries two units of O negative blood, the universal blood type, and two units of plasma.

“If you give someone just regular fluid, it doesn’t have the oxygen-carrying capacity like blood and plasma do. Plus, it doesn’t have anything in it to help the body clot, which blood and plasma have,” Martin says. “It’s all about clotting and all about oxygenation.”

She said military trauma medicine has encouraged this change in practice.

Other medevac operators in Alaska, such as LifeMed, also perform transfusions.

But they don’t carry their own blood on the planes at all times. Instead they pick the blood up from the hospital every time a patient would require it.

Airlift’s blood and plasma are transported from Seattle to Juneau, and exchanged twice a week.

Airlift partnered with Alaska Airlines for this.

If the blood is not used in a few days, it is sent back to Seattle to Harborview Hospital’s Trauma Center, where someone is likely to need it.

“What that does is not allow the blood to go to waste so it gets put back into the system to be used,” said Brenda Nelson, Airlift’s chief flight nurse.

Martin said Airlift will spend $35,000 a year to transport those fluids.

Airlift is affiliated with the University of Washington’s medical program, which also operates Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center.

The Wrangell Assembly approved a new $9 million water treatment plant last week. The current plant hasn’t met the town’s needs for several years.

After a lot of talking about installing a new plant, the Assembly unanimously agreed now is the time to go forward.

“We’ve been doing this for two and a half years. I’m sorry, I don’t want to wait,” Assembly Member David Powell said. “We owe it to the people of town and the canneries and other people working in this community to know what we are going to do here.”

The city approved a dissolved air floatation system.

Wayne McHolland, the lead technician at the current plant, said the new plant will be an upgrade in a number of ways.

It’s almost two times faster and would have more storage.

“As far as water quality goes, it’s way better,” McHolland said. “As far as waste goes, it’s way better.”

The city has struggled with meeting water demands for years.

In 2016, the city declared a water emergency, which forced a seafood processor to leave town and halted water sales to cruise ships.

Just last week, the city declared an emergency water watch, because of a lack of rainfall.

Assembly members and city staff weighed their options during a three-hour meeting.

Assembly members were concerned about the $9 million price tag.

Federal monies would pay most of the cost, about half in grants and half in loans, which would cost the city $175,000 a year for 40 years.

But Wrangell’s water issues are so much bigger than biting the bullet and replacing an old plant.

“I think there’s no doubt that better a production alternative is the best thing we could do. But, we have issues from reservoirs to distribution system,” city manager Lisa Von Bargen said. “Can the water fund and our rate payers afford what we are going to have to charge just to bring our water system up to where it needs to be?”

City officials say that a third of the town’s water is lost before it even reaches people’s taps, most likely from plumbing leaks.

“Do we really have a production problem or are we wasting more water than we need to and that’s not really how much water Wrangell needs to use?” Von Bargen said.

Von Bargen presented conservation efforts. Those include fixing leaks, metering and upgrading the dam and reservoirs.

Assembly member Steve Prysunka pushed to focus on those measures.

“We can put in this new plant that has cost savings and be running water through like demons,” Prysunka said. “But, if we don’t have water to put through our new shiny plant, we are really in trouble,”

McHolland gave his final word to the Assembly.

“Even if there are no leaks and everything was accounted for, this water plant will never, ever supply water fast enough to supply any amount of infrastructure,” McHolland said.

The Assembly ultimately agreed that a new plant is necessary.

It will take three years for the plant to be fully installed.

In the meantime, the city is replacing the current plant’s filters, which will cost $500,000.

The cleanup at the old Byford junkyard is on hold, pending further environmental testing from the state.

The state still plans on hauling 20,000 cubic yards of lead contaminated soil from the junkyard to a rock-pit, a quarter of a mile from Pat’s Creek.

The local tribe and city have spoken out against this proposed site, as it is near a fishing stream and recreation spot.

Wrangell Cooperative Association provided a report to the state outlining potential environmental hazards of the project at the site.

Biochemist Kendra Zamzow prepared the report, which suggests there could be phosphate leeching and other issues.

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation says it will address those concerns through additional testing in the next few weeks.

Contaminated Sites Program environmental program manager Sally Schlichting said the rock-pit still is the best option.

It is easy to access, does not require excessive permitting and already has been used as an industrial site in the past.

The state originally planned to start hauling the soil by April 1, but that’s been pushed back indefinitely.

Assembly members asked Schlichting whether there was a go/ no-go date, when the soil would be stuck at the junkyard.

Schlichting said there is no cut-off date, but delays will make the project more time consuming and costly for the state.

The local tribe has not budged from its position to oppose the site.

Wrangell has declared a water emergency. City officials say the Southeast community has about one month of supply left. So, they’re asking residents to cut way back on use. Those conservation measures, and more rainfall, could solve the problem.

The city said it will “aggressively monitor and strictly enforce” water restrictions for residents. These mandates include no outside water usage, fixing plumbing leaks and reducing everyday consumption.

“Obviously nobody’s watering anything outside yet, because it’s still too cold. But there’s going to be an urge to want to wash your cars,” says Lisa Von Bargen, the city manager. “Please refrain from doing that, any washing of decks or driveways or paved surfaces or things like that.”

Residents who don’t comply will get a verbal and written warning. Further violations could bring a $500 fine. Wrangell does not have a water metering system. The city said it will survey and fix its own system leaks.

“We’re not going out there with a hammer and handing out a citation immediately. We’re going to make sure the community understands why we’re doing this, and what needs to be done,” Von Bargen said. “But, please, we need to make sure there isn’t abuse and isn’t egregious use of water in the community.”

The city issued a red alert. This comes less than three weeks after it announced a lesser yellow alert.

The water shortage is two-fold. There isn’t enough raw water, because the island hasn’t gotten much rainfall. And, the water treatment plant isn’t cutting it. Through its filtration process, it’s losing hundreds of thousands of gallons a week.

“Every time we do filter cleanings we’re dumping approximately 150,000 gallons of water which is a ridiculous loss, because there’s no way to recoup that,” Von Bargen said. “That can be anywhere between two and four times a week.”

The city said it has plans to retain half of that lost water through more maintenance.

The plant was installed in the 1999. Since then it has required way more cleaning than anticipated. And in the past few years it has struggled to meet the town’s needs.

“(A water catching system) should have been designed into this plant, had we known that we would be performing filter maintenance as often as we do. But with the idea that we would only be maintaining those sand filters about once a quarter of the year, it wasn’t a big concern,” said Amber Al-Haddad, the public works director. “So, that feature wasn’t built into the design”

It is also working with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conversation to address the issue.

The city is working towards replacing its plant.

A Wrangell pizza shop owner just got a $25,000 grant to jump-start a new, slightly different business. Dixie Booker will start an aeroponic greenhouse to provide local, year-round produce in the community.

Booker received the grant from Path to Prosperity, which is part of Sealaska Corp.’s regional development efforts. For the past four years, the program has awarded grants to Southeast business startups based on their proposed economic, social and environmental benefits.

“Our local produce, and it’s not any of the stores’ fault, it’s what they’re shipped. But we get subpar produce most of the time or produce that doesn’t last very long,” Booker said. “And you can only in good conscience feed your organic produce to your chickens so many times without getting frustrated.”

She’s been experimenting with aeroponic farming. It’s a process that suspends plants’ roots in air, rather than soil, for high density growing.

“I like using dirt and getting my hands dirty, but I knew I had to do something different around here to grow year-round,” she said.

While gardening is popular in Southeast, that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

“Sometimes we get a really hard rain, and if you don’t get out there and cover it fast enough it turns into mush,” Booker said.

She got an aeroponic tower to test out. It can hold a couple dozen plants and has a timed watering and aerating system. She’s grown strawberries, pumpkins and tomatoes.

“The season was really cruddy, it got fairly cold quickly. So, I pulled the tomatoes off and even though they weren’t ripe, they were absolutely delicious,” Booker said.

Based on those results, she decided this was the right technology to pursue for her startup, Mighty Bear Roots.

Booker will start growing lettuce and herbs on her insulated porch this summer. Once that gets going, she plans to buy a dozen aeroponic towers. Eventually she hopes to build a 2,000-square-foot greenhouse with more than 100 towers.

But the grant is not meant for buying the towers or building the greenhouse. Instead, it funds training and business development opportunities. Booker plans to go to a large-scale greenhouse in Arizona, similar to the one she hopes to build.

“I haven’t really stepped into that situation where I can look around and say, ‘Oh yeah, I never thought about this. How do you manage X, Y, Z?’,” Booker said.

The grant will also pay for packaging and logo designs.

“I’m sure there’s going to be stumbling blocks,” Booker said. “But I really feel like being able to utilize this money for training purposes will give us such a better leg up in the process and hopefully minimize our stumbling blocks.”

And Booker said she’ll incorporate that new fresh produce with her tried-and-true pizza shop, Not So Famous Pizza. She’ll add salads and fresh herbs to the menu.

The other Path to Prosperity winner this year is Hoonah-based Game Creek Family Orchards, which supplies fresh apples and apple trees to Southeast. Last year’s winners were Klawock-based Skya’ana Coffee and Juneau-based Wild Alaska Kelp Company.