KUAC - Fairbanks

Nunapitchuk recently received a grant for $7,390 from the Rasmuson Foundation.

Mayor Noah Wise says the village has spent the money on a brand new 500cc Honda ATV for their police and emergency responders to use.

“We don’t have any roads here in our village, but we have miles and miles of boardwalks here. We need to get around the village, especially the police,” Wise said.

The vehicle will meet a range of needs from transporting intoxicated people to the public safety center to sober up, to medevacing injured people to the airport for transport.

Nunapitchuk has already received the new vehicle and it’s ready to begin work immediately.

Fairbanks state Representative David Guttenberg has a plan for improving internet service in rural areas of the state.

A bill Guttenberg is sponsoring would create a state corporation to contract with service providers to build infrastructure that’s too costly for individual companies to invest in.

“Put out a job that we need this many towers in these locations to fill the gap. We need this much fiber optics,” Guttenburg said. “The state owns that, and it just sells that at-cost so it’s not expensive. Right now one of the companies wants to bring up broadband. It’s very expensive to run the line or download broadband from some place. This would lower those costs.”

The plan targets so called “middle mile infrastructure” that connects internet service providers with local networks Guttenberg said. The plan calls for tapping existing federal universal service fee revenue to pay for the work.

“Take money that’s already there,” Guttenburg said. “I’m not raising taxes. I’m not collecting new taxes. But use some of this universal service fund that’s already on everybody’s bill, and target it to the problems instead of continuing paying the subsidy to the industry.”

Guttenberg will travel to Washington, D.C., this week to meet with Federal Communications Commission officials to discuss the legislation, and determine if it can dovetail into an FCC plan to address broadband issues in Alaska.

The plan released Aug. 31 said it builds on an Alaska Telephone Association proposal to provide carriers with the option of receiving fixed amounts of support over the next ten years to deploy and maintain networks.

Delta Wind Farm President and CEO Mike Craft is taking the Regulatory Commission of Alaska to court.

Craft is asking a judge to overturn the commission’s approval of a Golden Valley Electric Association tariff filed last summer, claiming the tariff violates new state regulations intended to help renewable-energy projects like his access the grid.

In a brief filed earlier this month in Anchorage Superior Court, Mike Craft says the Regulatory Commission of Alaska’s approval of a tariff filed last summer by GVEA should be overturned. Because, he says, the tariff does not comply with regulations adopted by the state in February that were supposed to help small, independent power producers like his Delta Wind Farm get access to the grid and sell electricity.

“They accepted the filing that Golden Valley made,” Craft said. “It was an illegal filing. It violates all the new regulations.”

Attorney Teresa Clemmer is representing Alaska Environmental Power, the company that owns the Delta Wind Farm. Craft is the company’s managing partner.

“The RCA, Regulatory Commission of Alaska, approved its tariff and certain tariff sheets that were expected to implement the new rules,” Clemmer said. “But what we found was they really didn’t apply the new rules at all. They just kind of did something completely different.”

Craft said  GVEA’s tariff among other things discriminates against independent power producers like him, and it includes unfair and excessive fees for integrating into the grid the power that his 2-megawatt wind farm near Delta Junction generates.

The tariff would enable GVEA to continue paying him an unfairly low price for his electricity, he said.

“I was asking for 12-and-a-half cents (per kilowatt hour),” Craft said.

That’s about a third more than what GVEA is paying the company now – “a little over 8 and-a-half cents per kilowatt hour,” says Golden Valley President and CEO Cory Borgeson.

Borgeson stands by the tariff, which he said is fair and helps keep costs down for GVEA ratepayers. The utility supports renewable sources of power such as wind, he says, and that’s why GVEA built its Eva Creek wind farm near Healy.

Alaska Environmental Power’s price just don’t pencil out in a way that benefits ratepayers, he added.

“It has to be at a good cost, and one that is reasonable,” Borgeson said. “And we have not found Alaska Environmental Power willing to come to us with a proposal that makes economic sense.”

Craft said the brief his attorneys filed with the court Nov. 2 lays out the case that 12-and-a-half cents per kilowatt hour is fair. He said GVEA has underpaid his company since the Delta Wind Farm went online in 2010 and that since then, the co-op’s management and board of directors have shown a “stubborn unwillingness” to deal with him fairly. That’s handicapped his plan to invest another $54 million to boost the Delta Wind Farm’s capacity to 24 megawatts.

“I can’t give my electricity away,” Craft said, “because I’ve got to finance $54 million over 20 years, and I’ve got to maintain those turbines over 20 years and I’ve got to pay people to do it.”

Craft says taking his appeal to the Superior Court will add to the $100,000 he’s paid over the past four years to argue the company’s case before the Regulatory Commission for fair treatment. The commission finally agreed with him a year ago, and issued a ruling that led to the new regulations that went into effect in February.

The ruling was hailed by a state renewable-energy industry group, and Clemmer says the Independent Power Producers of Alaska have filed a friend of the court brief backing Craft’s argument.

“Essentially,” she said, “they’re explaining why this is really a significant case before the court. Because it’s the first implementation of these new rules, and it has the potential to be the precedent for how the RCA is going to implement the new rules.”

A Regulatory Commission spokesperson was not available last week to comment on the case. Clemmer says courtroom arguments before Judge Erin Marston may begin in a couple months.

The University of Alaska has decided not to cut six sports teams.

University President Jim Johnsen rescinded an earlier cost saving recommendation that men’s and women’s ski teams at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and ski and indoor track programs at the University of Alaska Anchorage be eliminated.

Cutting the teams would have saved a projected $1.1 million, but would have dropped both Fairbanks and Anchorage campuses below the NCAA 10-team minimum.

Both schools had requested waivers from the 10-team requirement.

University President Jim Johnsen told the Board of Regents meeting Nov. 11 that the NCAA had informed the schools it declined to rule on their waiver requests.

”They said basically, ‘If you wanna go below 10 teams, go for it. Then ask for permission after the fact,’” Johnsen said. “In my view however, this approach contains way too much risk — financial risk, but more importantly, potential sanctions to both of our entire athletic programs.”

The university also will not pursue an alternative waiver-dependent proposal to merge Fairbanks and Anchorage campus athletic programs as a way to drop below the NCAA team minimum for each school.

Johnsen is no longer recommending cutting sports at all, he told regents.

“And I think that change of mind is supported by the impressive outpouring of support by the athletics community in general and by the Nordic ski community in particular,” Johnsen said.

Johnsen is instead recommending regents work with communities to increase private funding for sports programs.

Ten high-level U.S. and Canadian commissioned and noncommissioned officers toured the Army’s Black Rapids Training Site in Delta Junction on  Tuesday.

The event was part of an ongoing series of meetings intended to enable commanders of the two militaries to operate jointly in the far north.

Despite growing tensions between U.S. and Russia around the world, Air Force Lt. Gen. Ken Wilsbach said the Arctic for the most part is a conflict-free zone.

“We want to maintain the Arctic as a peaceful place, as it’s been for a while,” Wilsbach said. “And if anyone was to challenge us in the Arctic, we’ve got to be ready to meet that challenge.”

To help keep the peace, senior commanders of the U.S. and Canadian military and Coast Guard units that operate in the far north this week held another in a series of semi-annual meetings in Alaska to get to know their counterparts and capabilities of the units they command.

The sessions enable commanders to exchange ideas on training and operating in the vast, empty and frigid expanses on land and at sea around North America’s Arctic, Wilsbach said.

“So it’s a defensive mission that is very difficult to accomplish,” he said, “because of the size of the region, as well as the environment.”

Wilsbach heads up the Alaskan Command, headquartered at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson.

He says the meetings like those held Monday through Wednesday around Anchorage, Fairbanks and Fort Greely now include sessions that place greater emphasis on responding to disasters – operations Wilsbach expects will become more frequent as the warming climate melts sea ice and opens up shipping lanes around the Arctic.

“That is the most likely thing that we’ll be asked to do in the near future,” he said.

Canadian Forces Brig. Gen. Pat LaRoche, who serves as liaison and deputy for Wilbach in his capacity as head of North American Air Defense Command’s Alaska Region, said an event last summer focus greater attention on that mission.

“Perfect example – the Crystal Serenity, a cruise ship that sailed all the way across from Alaska through the Northwest Passage, and in to New York,” LaRoche said. “So, what if something happens with that ship along the way? Who’s going to be called to rescue these folks, right?”

That was the scenario behind an exercise held in September that challenged military and civilian emergency responders to evacuate passengers from a cruise ship that’d run into trouble in the Bering Strait.

The exercise was held just as a real cruise ship, the Crystal Serenity, was sailing through the area and on to the Northwest Passage en route to New York City – with 1,700 people aboard.

“There’s a lot of tourism in the Arctic,” LaRoche said. “So, that’s an issue.”

He said both Canadian and U.S. militaries also are called to respond to natural disasters, such as wildfires, earthquakes and volcanoes.

“We have to be ready across the whole spectrum,” LaRoche said.

Wilsbach, who also serves as 11th Air Force Commander, hosted this round of meetings and tours, part of the so-called General Officer/Flag Officer Summit.

This week’s get-together included a tour of the Black Rapids Training Site, about 30 miles south of Fort Greely, where the generals spoke with media.

An Alaskan Command spokesman says the next summit meeting, scheduled for March, will be held for the first time in Canada – at Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories.

I’m here in #standingrock no cell service but here’s a picture of a small part of the camp! pic.twitter.com/BsOi0dPbgu

— Amanda Frank (@kuacamanda) November 8, 2016

A delegation, made up of indigenous women from across Alaska, is at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota to support opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Faith Gemmill, originally of Arctic Village, said that she couldn’t watch what was happening in Standing Rock from Alaska and felt she needed to support the water protectors.

“Every nation from Alaska is represented with our women,” Gemmill said.

Gemmill and other organizers said they decided to take a delegation of women to Standing Rock because women often take the front line of environmental issues and are the backbone of the communities and their struggles.

“Mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunties, daughters; we have a very critical role as caretakers,” Gemmill said.

Members of the group were chosen because of the skills each brings to the camp. Some are spiritual leaders and healers. Gemmill said some will work in the medical tents or in the kitchen. Some might even be in strategy sessions and on the front lines of the conflict.

“We’re going to be doing whatever is needed to relieve the people who have been here,” Gemmill said.

Some of the protectors have been at Standing Rock for several months and Gemmill said they are hoping to help relieve those who have been camped out.

“Any kind of fights like this, you need reinforcements behind you to come in and take the line when you’re tired,” Gemmill said.

Gemmill also said this movement is important to Alaskans.

“The ground is literally melting beneath us; the permafrost is melting,” she said. “We have communities that are looking at being relocated – they need to be relocated like right now and no one is helping these communities.”

Gemmill works with the non-profit Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Land, based in Anchorage.

REDOIL is a sister organization of Indigenous Environmental Network and it also works with Indigenous Peoples Power Project. Gemmill said the group is working with many ally organizations who help with training and direct actions on the front line.

“So that’s the capacity I’m here, but mainly as mom, grandmother,” Gemmill said.