Interior

Even though the state legislature did not give additional funding to the Susitna-Watana Hydroelectric Project this year, the Alaska Energy Authority has some funds left from previous years. AEA is attempting to continue the megaproject’s licensing process.

In response to a directive by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Alaska Energy Authority has filed a document that it says is a “roadmap” to the studies performed on the Susitna-Watana Hydroelectric Project from June 2014 onward.

The filing is the latest in an attempt by AEA to resume the integrated licensing process for the proposed hydroelectric megaproject.

The integrated licensing process is meant to provide a timeline and schedule for studies, reviews and stakeholder meetings.

That schedule was disrupted nearly a year ago after Gov. Bill Walker took office.

Walker ordered a halt to spending on six megaprojects in the state, including Susitna-Watana. This summer, the administration lifted that spending freeze.

While AEA is once again allowed to spend funds that were appropriated to Susitna-Watana in previous years, the legislature did not designate any additional funds to the project in its session early this year. The result is that the project has around $30 million available. Of that, AEA says that about $6 million was not already committed.

The current filing by AEA is a new section to the initial study report originally filed last year. In the filing, Susitna-Watana Project Manager Wayne Dyok states that the document will act as a “roadmap” to where progress currently stands on each of the 58 studies included in the licensing process. Some stakeholders have asked that AEA be required to file a new initial study report, as thousands of pages of technical memoranda and addendums have been filed over the last year and a half.

Now, FERC will decide whether the roadmap gives adequate information to government agencies, NGOs and individuals to review the data before the public meeting review process resumes.

The Fairbanks Four exoneration case is in the hands of Superior Court Judge Paul Lyle.

Closing arguments were heard Tuesday in a five-week hearing to consider innocence declaration requests by George Frese, Kevin Pease, Marvin Roberts, and Eugene Vent, the four men convicted of the 1997 murder of John Hartman.

The Fairbanks Four petitions focus on alternative Hartman murder suspects William Holmes and Jason Wallace, two men already imprisoned for unrelated 2002 drug killings, who peg the Hartman attack on one another.

In closing, Fairbanks Four attorney Bob Bundy maintained that the Hartman murder secret held by Holmes and Wallace helped fuel their later cocaine ring killing spree.

“Holmes trusted Wallace, trusted Wallace to carry out his murderous plot to kill their competition in the cocaine business,” Bundy said. “I don’t suppose there’s a reason for that other than he knew that Wallace would keep his mouth shut and that Wallace was capable, capable of brutality on that scale.”

State attorney Adrienne Bachman painted a much different picture in her closing comments, arguing that Holmes and Wallace had no role in the Hartman attack, and are using it to leverage leniency in their own imprisonment, a blame game Bachman maintains has become one of the tools the Fairbanks Four are wielding to challenge their own murder convictions.

“We all understand what the agenda is here,” Bachman said. “The agenda is to somehow undermine the court’s confidence that due process was served in the four trials, the three trials in which 36 jurors deliberated and came to unanimous verdicts based on the highest standard of proof in the land.”

The standard of justice Judge Lyle must apply in considering the Fairbanks Four post-conviction relief requests is less than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” requirement the men were convicted under.

Post conviction relief requires clear and convincing evidence. Lyle cautioned that he has thousands of pages to read before a six-month clock for him to rule begins ticking.

A recent study indicates fires in the Yukon Flat region of Alaska are releasing more carbon into the atmosphere than previously thought.

The study by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists overturns old assumptions and paints a troubling portrait of future climate change.

When you set out to model an ecosystem, it’s important to have data, a lot of data. That’s why UAF researchers Dave McGuire and Helene Genet were excited about a study in the Yukon Flats looking at charcoal deposits in lakebed sediments. It gave them 1,200 years’ worth of data.

Genet, McGuire and their colleagues wanted to model fire regimes in the region and how they affected the carbon cycle. The sediment data, McGuire says, were revealing.

“Fire frequency has been greater in the last few decades than it’s been over the last 1,200 years. That suggest things are changing quite dramatically now.”

Carbon is a key ingredient in global climate change. In nature, plants take up carbon dioxide and store it. Some of it is respired back to the atmosphere, but much of finds its way into soils.

In the Arctic and subarctic, that carbon is often locked up for longer periods because of permafrost.

Fires moving across the landscape can release a lot of carbon. And researchers assumed released carbon spurred more plant growth, balancing the books. That assumption might be revised now.

By modeling the effect of long-term fire history on the ecosystem, Genet says it looks like more carbon is being released than captured.

“The way we have spun up the model before leads to an underestimation of the carbon loss in Interior Alaska or at least in regions that are exposed to fire regimes.”

Genet and McGuire’s study just looks at the Yukon Flats. But if the same conditions occur in similar Arctic and sub-Arctic boreal forests, where roughly a third of the Earth’s terrestrial carbon is stored, the implications to climate change could be dire.

 

Last weekend, some 40 Alaskans journeyed down to Louisiana for the Blackpot music and food festival. The two-day festival is in its tenth year and takes place in and around the city of Lafayette in the south central part of the state. The weekend included a cook off, 25 bands, camping, jamming and lots of dancing.

Many of the Alaskans are musicians, music appreciators and friends who know each other through the Alaska music scene, and their trip has become a tradition.

Hear their voices and music from the Pine Leaf Boys here:

“I love how the Cajun culture marries love of food, love of dancing, love of community, and it reminds me of home.” –Kate Consenstein, Anchorage

“The energy is just so positive. I feel like if you come here it’s like getting a cultural hug.” –WeeBee Aschenbrenner, Cantwell, Alaska

“We got Cajun music. We got blues. We got rock and roll. We got zydeco.” -Paul “Bird” Edwards, Eunice, Louisiana

“One of the things we have a lot of at our festival is food—from everything and anything deep fried, to some of the great Cajun dishes like gumbo and jambalaya and étouffées.” –Derek Landry, Lafayette, Louisiana

A police detective who investigated the John Hartman murder case took the stand Monday at the Fairbanks Four exoneration hearing.

Retired officer Aaron Ring defended how police identified and gathered evidence that lead to the charging and conviction of George Frese, Kevin Pease, Marvin Roberts and Eugene Vent for the deadly beating of Hartman on a downtown street in the early morning hours of Oct. 11, 1997.

Detective Aaron Ring was a central player in identifying the Fairbanks Four as suspects within a day of the Hartman attack. Ring pointed to questioning of Eugene Vent and an early admission by the teen.

“I was talking about the assault at Ninth and Barnett and that this person had been in a fight and was injured. And I wanted to know what the person had been hit with and he said all they had was their feet, and I hadn’t mentioned kicking or anything,” Ring said.

Ring defended his interview and interrogation techniques, including providing the suspects information and fake evidence.

“Sometimes you have to give them information to get information back. I think Eugene Vent called it a negotiation in our first interview,” Ring said.

That’s drawn criticism for possibly coaxing false confessions from Vent and Geoge Frese, who had been drinking heavily and complained of blackouts. Under cross-examination Fairbanks Four attorney Jahna Lindemuth pressed him on the issue.

Lindemuth: “Isn’t it your experience that you get less reliable information from somebody who is drunk?”
Ring: “That depends. Sometimes, someone who’s lying to you and they’re sober is a better liar.”

State attorney Ali Rahoi asked Ring how he leveraged Frese to confess.

Ring: “I told him I had information. I was gonna go find Marvin Roberts, that maybe he’d been driving them around that night, and I was gonna go talk to Marvin – he had a car that matched the description.”
Rahoi: “OK. And did that prompt Mr. Frese to volunteer anything?”
Ring: “The very next words out of his mouth.”
Rahoi: “And what were those? Do you recall?”
Ring: “I just kicked him a couple of times.”

Rahoi also asked Ring about how officers drew incriminating information from Kevin Pease, by picking up a pair of shoes at his house.

Ring: “Lt. Ray Miller said that, ‘You should check those.’”
Rahoi: “And what was Mr. Pease’s reaction?”
Ring: “Those shoes don’t have blood on them.”
Rahoi: “So, what was your reaction to that statement?”
Ring: “Why would he make that statement?”

Aaron Ring returned to the stand Tuesday.

The Alaska State Troopers have identified a body found in Willow Creek as that of 22-year-old Macklin Stevenson of Anchorage.

Troopers say the report of a body came in around 10:30 Sunday morning. Stevenson’s body was recovered near mile 39 of Willow-Fishhook Road and taken to the State Medical Examiner’s office.

Trooper spokeswoman Megan Peters says that Stevenson appears to have succumbed to the elements.

Next of kin has been notified, and the troopers say foul play is not suspected.