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State transportation officials will hold a virtual public forum on Wednesday evening on proposed safety improvements at one of Juneau’s most dangerous intersections.

The intersection at Yandukin Drive and Egan Drive is near the Fred Meyer grocery store and has long been one of Juneau’s most accident-prone areas. Dozens of crashes, some deadly, have occurred there over the years. 

Sonny Mauricio, a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Transportation, said the state is hosting the meeting to gather public feedback and share more information about a proposed plan to improve safety at the intersection. 

“This intersection is historically one of Juneau’s most dangerous, ranking as the third highest for injury crashes in Juneau,” he said. “The primary issue is the high-risk left turn going towards Fred Meyer.”

The proposed improvements would partially signalize the intersection with a traffic light and add a pedestrian crossing, which Mauricio said will help improve safety, circulation and connectivity. 

Juneau residents have been vocal about the need for safety changes for at least two decades. In 2023, the Juneau Assembly passed a resolution asking the state to make “immediate and substantial improvements” at the intersection following a fatal crash.

Since then, the state has made small changes like extending the medians there, painting clearer markings and introducing a seasonal speed limit reduction. 

According to Mauricio, the state hopes to secure a contractor and begin construction for the more substantial improvements later this year. 

“We’re making the intersection safer for everyone, including drivers, and there’ll be more features for pedestrians and cyclists as well, with crosswalks and things like that,” he said. “It’s a major improvement for that intersection.”

The virtual open house meeting is on Wednesday evening at 5:30 p.m. More information about the proposed project and the meeting link can be found on the Department of Transportation’s website.

A Canadian company with plans to mine for gold near the face of Herbert Glacier applied to punch an access road through state land in December. The state opened a public comment period for the road last week. 

Grande Portage Resources wants to build a 15 foot-wide and 1.3 mile-long unpaved road with helicopter pads connected to Glacier Highway around mile 27. The road between Herbert River and Eagle River would allow the company to stage drilling supplies for transportation to the proposed New Amalga mine site. 

This would be the first segment of road that will eventually reach the mine site if the U.S. Forest Service approves the operation, according to the company’s application to the state. 

The Forest Service approved exploratory drilling at New Amalga last spring. Grande Portage has been flying in prospecting supplies from Mendenhall Valley and wrote in its application that building a new staging site and access road will shorten the helicopter flights.

The road would cut through forest and wetlands in a popular recreation area near the Eagle Glacier Cabin trail, Herbert Glacier Trail and Windfall Lake Cabin Trail. 

If approved, the company anticipates road construction will begin this spring. 

The deadline to submit public comments is March 13 at 5 p.m. and comments can be emailed to john.driscoll@alaska.gov. 

A 17th candidate has announced she’s running for governor.

Meda DeWitt, 45, is a traditional healer, drawing on her Tlingit heritage. She teaches at the University of Alaska.

She’s running as a nonpartisan.

“I care about our future,” she said. “I care about the way that we steward our lands and want to see a state that has a thriving ecosystem and healthy communities that can live in perpetuity.”

In 2021, DeWitt chaired a campaign to recall Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The petition gathered more than 60,000 signatures but fell short of the number needed for a recall election.

Her campaign website lists a wide array of priorities, from cost of living to health care to the state economy.

DeWitt lives in Anchorage and has family roots in Wrangell and Yakutat, as well as relatives around the state.

The Aug. 18 primary will feature a long list of gubernatorial candidates, most running with the Republican label. In the primary, voters can choose just one. The top four candidates, of any party, will advance to the November ballot. General election voters will have the option of ranking up to four candidates.

In July, a state inspector boarded a cruise ship in Juneau for a routine review. The inspector’s report includes a photo that shows a metal drum full of chunky, black sludge — a mixture laden with sulfur and heavy metals.

That particular drum was slated to be offloaded on land, in British Columbia. But on many ships, systems known as scrubbers ensure the toxic sludge never materializes on board. That’s because it’s diluted with sea water and released back into the ocean.

Now, state Sen. Jesse Kiehl is looking to address the issue. The Juneau Democrat is drafting legislation in hopes of cracking down on the technology, which produces a largely invisible – and little regulated – source of water pollution.

“There’s still dirty fuel belching sulfur into Alaska. And that’s a problem,” Kiehl said in an interview last month.

The issue is not isolated to Alaska. And neither are efforts to address it. A growing list of ports, states and countries are zeroing in on the problem, which stems from rules adopted by the International Maritime Organization in 2020.

Cutting air pollution led to new water pollution

The IMO wanted to cut air pollution, namely sulfur pollution, from ships that burn heavy marine oil. While some cruise and shipping companies complied by using cleaner fuels, known as distillate fuels, others invested in scrubbers.

The technology allows them to continue burning dirty fuels by using seawater to remove pollutants from ship exhaust. So-called “open loop” systems send that contaminated water right back into the sea.

Experts say each individual open loop scrubber can produce up to 3,600 metric tons of water per hour. And some ships run multiple scrubbers at once.

When exhaust with high levels of sulfur and other pollutants is released into the air, they can increase the risk of cancer, respiratory complications and cardiovascular diseases. 

Scientists have been studying what happens when those pollutants are released into the ocean. But a growing body of research indicates it can harm marine life, including mussels and crustaceans, like crab, said Eelco Leemans, an advisor to the Clean Arctic Alliance, a global coalition focused on the shipping industry.

“The evidence is so clear that we have no reason to doubt that,” Leemans said.

Regulatory challenges

A tangled web of rules and regulations surrounds the issue. The IMO sets the global standard. And for now, the international body allows ships to use scrubbers to comply with its air pollution rules.

But there’s a growing push for that to change. Just this week, the agenda for an IMO subcommittee meeting in London featured more than a dozen proposals from member states and other organizations related to scrubber regulation.

“We believe that scrubbers do not provide the solutions that they were designed for, because basically they transfer air pollution to water pollution,” Leemans said during a recent webinar hosted by the Clean Arctic Alliance ahead of the meeting. “In the end, IMO should really do something about this.”

In the meantime, governments are taking matters into their own hands. In July, for example, 15 nations and the European Union moved to prohibit scrubber discharge in internal waters and port areas – and will consider extending the ban to about 12 miles offshore.

The U.S. has taken a less aggressive approach. The Environmental Protection Agency regulates scrubbers by way of a permit that sets limits for the concentration of pollutants in discharge. But at least in Alaska, the agency has rarely enforced those limits – despite hundreds of violations in some years.

The EPA did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

State regulators in Alaska, for their part, conduct routine environmental inspections on ships, which often entails observing scrubber operations and reviewing washwater data. In some cases, they flag problems for the EPA.

But in the end, the state Department of Environmental Conservation says it can’t enforce the EPA’s scrubber regulations themselves.

“Scrubber washwater is not addressed in State statutes, regulations, or the State’s general permit for vessels, and the State currently has no authority to enforce a federal permit,” Ben Eisenstein, DEC’s cruise ship program manager, wrote in an email.

Kiehl says that puts Alaska and other states in a bind.

“It’s really difficult with the federal government stepping in and telling the state: ‘You have nothing to say about scrubber discharge,'” he said.

Clean fuel regulations

So localities and states can’t punish ships for violating federal standards. But some are pursuing – or have already implemented – other ways to get at the problem.

Kiehl, the state lawmaker, didn’t provide more details about what his legislation might entail, or when he might introduce it. But he said he’s exploring a range of options, and nodded to other governments that have largely taken one common path: addressing the type of fuel that vessels use in the first place.

Most experts point to California. The state adopted a rule in 2008 that required ships to use cleaner, lower-sulfur fuels within 24 miles of shore. The goal was to reduce air pollution – plus cancer and other public health risks – from dirty fuels.

The California rule predated the proliferation of scrubbers. But it means the state dodged the problem before it even existed. Ships are already using low-sulfur fuels in California waters and don’t need to scrub them clean.

“We don’t have the issues with wastewater discharge because (scrubbers are) not a compliance option,” Bonnie Soriano, of the California Air Resources Board, told KHNS.

Soriano was among experts who said that cleaner fuels don’t require new technology or systems; ships can simply swap them in. She also said most vessels already carry them.

“There are some differences in prices, but likely they have the fuel on board if they’re doing a string that involves California,” Soriano said.

Meanwhile, in Washington state, the legislature is mulling a similar approach. A bill there would require cleaner fuels within 3 miles of shore.

State Rep. Debra Lekanoff is the bill’s sponsor. She’s originally from Yakutat but now represents communities in northern Washington, including the San Juan Islands. During a January hearing, she drew a connection between her two homes.

“What’s happening in my own backyard, where my Tlingit name Xixch’I See comes from, is the very impact that happens upon the Salish Sea,” Lekanoff said.

A growing list of tribes and organizations support Alaska taking a similar approach. Just one example: The Skagway Traditional Council in October adopted a resolution that called on the state to require the use of cleaner fuel – and on the shipping industry and the IMO to do their part, too.

Industry opposition

The cruise and shipping industries have opposed efforts to require clean fuels or eliminate scrubbers – a dynamic that is already playing out in Washington.

During the same hearing, industry representatives said a clean fuel requirement would be burdensome and unnecessary, and that it would amount to a roundabout attempt to address a water pollution problem by way of an air pollution regulation.

“This unnecessarily restricts authorized environmental technologies,” said Donald Brown, a vice president of Cruise Lines International Association.

The trade group did not respond to a request for comment. But pushback in Washington state and beyond suggests that any potential legislation in Alaska could have a long road ahead.

Aaron Brakel, of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, said he doesn’t expect any potential legislation would be signed into law this year.

“What’s really important, though, is getting a chance for the Legislature to start considering the issue,” Brakel said.

“To be having a conversation about the state of Alaska taking action on dirty fuel and exhaust scrubbers is a huge step in the right direction,” he added.

Federal fishery managers have approved the first-ever mandatory caps on at-sea interception of chum salmon, a fish species critical to Indigenous communities along Alaska’s river systems.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council on Wednesday voted in favor of new limits for the pollock fleet to reduce the amount of chum salmon accidentally caught in trawl nets, a phenomenon known as bycatch.

The compromise, approved at the end of a 10-day council meeting, addresses a yearslong conflict that pitted the in-river salmon fishermen and their Indigenous cultures against the economically important harvesters of Alaska pollock, the top-volume U.S. commercial seafood.

Achieving effective safeguards for Western Alaska chum salmon while balancing needs of all parties amid environmental factors that are out of managers’ control was difficult, Angel Drobnica, the council’s chair, said just before the vote was taken.

“This is the most challenging issue I’ve worked on during my time in this process,” she said, referring to her three years on the full council and six years on the group’s advisory panel. “I believe this motion is durable and enforceable and reflective of input from both sides and has maintained a clear focus on Western Alaska salmon.”

Salmon bycatch is a hot-button issue in Alaska fisheries. Total amounts of chum salmon accidentally caught in the trawl nets used by the pollock fleet can number in the hundreds of thousands — though the vast majority of the chum salmon intercepted in the Bering Sea in this manner is not of Alaska origin, according to council data.

While bycatch limits have been in place for several years for Chinook salmon, this is the first time managers have imposed limits for chum salmon. Both Pacific salmon species are important to the Yukon and Kuskokwim river system communities, and both have collapsed in recent years, at times prompting complete fishing closures all the way into Canada’s Yukon Territory.

The measure imposing chum bycatch limits, years in the making, included several elements:

• It sets an annual bycatch cap of 45,000 Western Alaska chum salmon.
• It apportions the cap among the different pollock-fishing sectors: at-sea processors, catcher ships that deliver to onshore plants, catcher vessels that deliver to “motherships,” which are vessels that collects harvests; and Community Development Quota organizations, which represent rural and Indigenous communities have invested in the fisheries and are assigned shares of annual groundfish harvests.
• It applies the cap to corridors in the Bering Sea that are known to be used by migrating Western Alaska chum salmon and to the summer months when bycatch of Western Alaska chum is concentrated, then when Alaskans are most affected. The use of corridors is intended to address the fact that the vast majority of chum salmon netted as bycatch in the Bering Sea are fish from Asian hatcheries rather than fish that swim though and spawn in Alaska rivers.
• The approved measure contains triggers that would enforce area-specific pollock trawling shutdowns if bycatch levels are reached.
• The approved measure mandates the use of bycatch-reduction technology and practices that are currently voluntary in the industry. Those include employment of salmon-excluding devices that allow salmon to swim free of nets holding pollock and enhanced communication and record-keeping to broaden knowledge among the fleet, tribal organiziation and members and the general public about potential bycatch hotspots and how to avoid them.

The measure is set to go into effect in 2028.

Managers approved it by an 8-3 vote. One of the dissenters, Seattle-based Jamie Goen, executive director of Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, said the cap was too high.

“This motion is a license to kill 45,000 Western Alaska chum when we have information showing that every salmon that comes back to Western Alaska rivers counts,” she said Wednesday just before the vote was taken. “Every female salmon holds the potential to release thousands of eggs that can grow exponentially to feed in-river communities and keep their cultures alive.”

The reduction in pollock harvesting that would result from a lower cap would be “negligible,” compared to the losses suffered by river communities, she said.

Goen’s comments mirrored a slogan imprinted on wristbands, buttons and other items distributed by tribal groups attending the meeting: “Every Salmon Counts.”

Council member Jon Kurland, who is also director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Alaska fisheries service, said that while the salmon crash has had “devastating effects” in Western Alaska with details that are “heartbreaking,” the socioeconomic benefits of the pollock harvests also need to be considered.

Those include “the family businesses that operate catcher boats, the seafood processing capacity in many remote areas that really needs a steady flow of pollock to process other species for smaller-scale fisheries and the ways that the community development quotas improve people’s lives in 65 Bering Sea communities,” he said.

After the vote, tribal representatives attending the meeting had mixed reactions to the council’s action. In some ways, it was a positive movement, they said.

“It’s a start,” said Charlie Wright, secretary and treasurer of the Tanana Chiefs Conference.

“The pressure is on,” said Eva Burk of Nenana, a tribal representative on the council’s advisory panel.

But Wright, from the Yukon River village of Rampart, and Burk said they were disappointed that the numerical cap was not lower and that the geographic area to which it will apply was not broader.

An organization representing the pollock industry said the council’s action was fair, decision was fair, even though it puts some more burden on pollock harvesters.

“The Council’s decision reflects the seriousness of the challenges facing Western Alaska chum salmon and the complexity of managing a dynamic fishery,” said a statement released by the Alaska Pollock Fishery Alliance. “The pollock industry respects the Council process and remains committed to working within this new framework while continuing to invest in science-based, real-time avoidance tools that have already delivered meaningful reductions in Western Alaska chum bycatch.”

Wednesday’s vote came after four days of often impassioned public testimony sessions that started on Saturday and ran through Tuesday afternoon. An estimated 170 people attending the meeting addressed the council during those days. They included subsistence fishers and leaders of tribal originations along the Yukon and Kuskokwim basins, small-scale pollock harvesters, representatives of fishing companies, Indigenous organizations with investments in the pollock fishery and others.

One of the tribal leaders testifying was Brian Ridley, chief executive of the Tanana Chiefs Conference, an organization of Interior Alaska Athabascan tribal government. TCC and other tribal groups have been seeking the strictest limits possible, he told the council.

For Yukon River communities, salmon fishing closures over the past years have resulted in “food insecurity, starvation, diabetes, cancer and cultural loss,” he said in testimony Saturday.

“Let me be clear: We’re not asking to shut down the pollock fishery. We’re asking for the first real step in sharing the burden of conservation, the same step Yukon fishers began taking decades ago. Our communities have carried the burden alone for more than 20 years. Today, we’re asking the pollock fleet to finally share the burden,” Ridley said.

There were more personal accounts, like one delivered Saturday by Julia Dorris of Kalskag, a village on the middle section of the Kuskokwim River.

“My dad had a dog team. Because of less chum and the restrictions, he no longer had his team. And had to get rid of all the dogs. It was heartbreaking to see a strong person quietly fading,” Dorris said.

The pollock trawl fleet had its defenders as well.

Those included Frank Kelty, a former mayor of Unalaska, and Victor Tutiakoff Sr., the Aleutian Island city’s current mayor. Tutiakoff mentioned that he himself is a subsistence fisher, so he understands subsistence needs. Kelty mentioned the Community Development Quota groups that, under a program established in 1992, comprise villages in different Western Alaska regions that have banded together to invest in Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands fisheries.

“The pollock fishery, as we all know, is the economic engine of Unalaska and other fishery-dependent communities in the Bering Sea region, including the six CDQ groups. A closed or reduced pollock season is devastating,” Kelty told the council.

Unalaska is “a one-horse town” completely dependent on commercial fishing, with the local government highly dependent on fishing-related taxes, he said. “If you have reduced or closed seasons, you see impacts throughout the community. The population reduces, employment at the plants goes away, the school population drops, clinic — it’s just a bad situation,” Kelty said.

Defenders of the pollock industry included Native organizations. One was the Qawalangin Tribe of Unalaska, which presented a recently passed resolution warning that hard caps on chum bycatch could cause “significant economic risk for Tribal members and for fishery-dependent communities.”

Although they sometimes disagreed about the role of bycatch, speakers on both sides of the debate agreed that the problems facing Western Alaska chum salmon, as well as the faltering runs of Chinook salmon, are myriad.

Climate change, with effects in both the ocean and in freshwater systems, is a major factor, speakers said. For example, Jacob Ivanoff of Unalakleet, representing the Nome Eskimo Community tribal government, described the masses of fish found dead of heat stroke in rivers in 2019, along with water temperatures that ranged up to 85 degrees during that year’s marine heatwave.

The growing presence of Asian hatchery chum salmon in the Bering Sea is a complicating factor. The flood of new fish, aside from competing with Alaska fish for food and potentially crowding Alaska fish out of the habitat, are dominant in the bycatch numbers.

In past years, genetic testing shows that only about a fifth of the chum salmon netted as bycatch by the Bering Sea pollock fleet has been from Western Alaska, council members said. Most of the rest is from Asian hatcheries, including hatcheries in Russia, though a small portion has also been composed of chum salmon from the state’s more southern Gulf of Alaska waters or from the Pacific Northwest region even farther south.

The total chum salmon bycatch in the pollock fishery in 2025 was about 151,000 fish, according to a report presented to the council early in the meeting. Most of that was hatchery fish. The percentage of bycatch that was fish from Western Alaska rivers was low, but it fluctuates from year to year and even from week to week during harvest seasons, according to genetics information presented by the Bristol Bay Science and Research Institute.

Bycatch concerns go beyond salmon. The term refers to any accidental netting, hooking, entaglement or crushing of an untargeted species. Several types of fish, birds and marine mammals are killed or injured through bycatch in different fisheries. NOAA keeps track of annual bycatch totals.

Alaska lawmakers are going for round two on a bill Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed last year. The bill would change the way corporate income taxes are calculated, bringing in tens of millions of dollars in new revenue.

Lawmakers failed to override Dunleavy’s veto of the bill at the beginning of this year’s session.

Backers of the bill say it’s necessary with a tight state budget, and it’s similar to a proposal Gov. Mike Dunleavy included in his fiscal plan.

Rep. Calvin Schrage, an Anchorage independent who co-chairs the House Finance Committee, said at the bill’s first hearing on Friday that it’s an effort to bring the state’s tax laws into the digital age.

“Currently, there is a loophole in Alaska’s corporate income tax structure, and that loophole is that if you’re a highly digital business that doesn’t have a physical presence here in the state, you are not paying taxes to the state of Alaska. You’re paying those taxes to other states,” Schrage said.

The bill would make two substantial changes to corporate income taxes in an effort to attribute more of Lower 48 companies’ income to Alaska.

The first implements what’s known as “market-based sourcing.” That essentially means that large businesses would pay taxes based on where their customers are, rather than where the company does its work. It’s a change dozens of other states have made and one the governor included in his fiscal plan.

The second component would change the tax rules for so-called “highly digitized businesses.” That’s an effort to extract more tax revenue from companies like Netflix, eBay and others that do most of their business over the internet but don’t have a presence in the state. That change is not a part of the governor’s plan.

Last year, the state Department of Revenue estimated the bill would raise between $25 and $65 million each year.

Rep. Will Stapp, a Fairbanks Republican in the minority who voted for the bill last year but voted against overriding Dunleavy’s veto, said he’d like to see some technical changes. For one thing, he’d rather not make the bill retroactive to the start of this year. But Stapp said he’s open to supporting it after a few tweaks.

“No change in tax structure is perfect,” he said in an interview. “But there are impacts that we should actually understand, that the public’s going to expect us to kind of understand so we can articulate it.”

Even though the bill is similar to an element of Dunleavy’s fiscal plan, it’s not clear the governor would sign the bill if passed. His office declined to comment on the new bill. But Dunleavy has said repeatedly he opposes new revenue measures without stricter limits on how state money can be spent.