North Slope

The Democratic primary results for the District 40 House seat grew closer Tuesday.

Dean Westlake remains ahead of incumbent state Rep. Benjamin Nageak, but Westlake’s lead was cut to four votes, from 21. The district includes North Slope and Northwest Arctic boroughs, as well as nearby precincts in the the Unorganized Borough.

The state election review board certified the results in Juneau, adding absentee ballots and adjusting other returns. Nageak picked up 17 votes, while Westlake’s total didn’t change. Westlake leads, 819 votes to 815.

Nageak or 10 qualified voters have five days to ask for a recount. The state pays for any recounts in elections where the margin is 20 or fewer votes.

Nageak has caucused with House Republicans. Alaska Republican Party Chairman Tuckerman Babcock criticized the Division of Elections for certifying the results. He cited irregularities in how the election was conducted in some precincts.

“It’s an absurdity that the review board or the Division of Elections director can claim that they can certify who actually won that election,” Babcock said.

But Division of Elections Director Josie Bahnke said she wanted to certify District 40 to resolve a potential recount sooner.

Nageak has hired Seattle-based lawyer Timothy McKeever to advise him. McKeever said a recount request is likely. Westlake couldn’t be reached for a comment.

Much of the concern has focused on the results in Shungnak, where voters were allowed to vote in both the Republican primary and in the primary for all other parties.

Westlake received 47 votes in Shungnak, compared with three for Nageak. Westlake lost one vote while Nageak gained one in Shungnak as a result of the election review.

Originally thought to total 206,000, the Western Arctic caribou herd is smaller than first estimated.

The herd is Alaska’s largest that many use for subsistence and sport hunting.

Photo surveys of the herd are done every two to three years.

Officials on the Baldwin Peninsula have been carefully monitoring the herd, wary of the population nearing numbers appropriate for reduced harvest recommendations.

“One of the concerns brought up was that they weren’t able to do a survey in 2015,” Wildlife Division chief Chris McKee said. “The conditions for taking pictures, the light conditions, were not good so it didn’t allow them to really get good pictures in order to count the herd.”

Without an accurate count, and a history of user conflict in the area, the Federal Subsistence Board passed a special action to keep non-resident hunters out starting July 1 of this year in hunting Unit 23.

Now, the survey will be used in the latest information to repeal the special action.

“Our office is all of a sudden responsible for providing the analysis and then it goes through several levels of review before finish analysis is given to the board,” McKee said. “The board sees that analysis, deliberates, and has a vote to determine how they’re gonna come down on the issue”

The information to repeal the action is currently in the last stage of review. After review, the analysis will go to one more committee. That committee will make a policy recommendation to the Federal Subsistence Board. And after everything is said and done, the board will vote to overturn the special action, or continue to keep non-resident hunters out of Unit 23.

The clock is ticking on a dispute between Gov. Bill Walker’s administration and the state’s largest oil producers.

The Department of Natural Resources has rejected the annual plan for Prudhoe Bay, demanding detailed new information on how North Slope companies plan to market the field’s natural gas reserves.

But companies have resisted, arguing the information the state wants either does not exist or would be illegal to hand over.

Thursday, Sept. 1, was the deadline for the field’s main operator, BP, to submit a new plan. The state now has 60 days to respond.

This fight started back in January, with a letter from former Natural Resources Commissioner Mark Myers. The letter asked BP to include detailed information on its efforts to market the field’s oil and — more to the point — natural gas reserves.

That request was new because right now there isn’t a clear path for major gas sales from Prudhoe Bay. The state and North Slope producers have been trying to build a pipeline to bring that gas to market for decades. At the time of the letter, the state was in a four-way partnership with the main Prudhoe Bay leaseholders — BP, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips — though that partnership is now dissolving, as the state takes control of the project.

When BP submitted its plan in March, the Division of Oil and Gas responded with a bullet-point list of details it still required — including potential customers, volumes and pricing terms for natural gas sales.

BP refused, calling the state’s request “extraordinary,” “unprecedented,” and “unlawful.” The company argued, in part, that sharing marketing information with competitors — including the state — would violate antitrust laws.

BP also said much of the information the state wants simply doesn’t exist, because nobody is currently selling gas from the North Slope. And it pointed out the state was well aware of its major efforts to monetize its gas, through the Alaska LNG project.

ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips both sent letters supporting BP’s position.

The state wasn’t satisfied. On June 30, Division of Oil and Gas Director Corri Feige sent a letter declaring the Prudhoe Bay 2016 Plan of Development incomplete. The division extended the previous year’s plan and gave BP two months to try again.

With the new plan submitted, the state has until Nov. 1 to respond. (BP’s most recent letter and updated plan have not been released publicly; the division said it will release the plan once it has been reviewed for confidential information.)

It’s unclear what will happen if the state rejects the plan again. A company can’t operate a field without an accepted plan of development  — so in theory, at least, the dispute could disrupt production at Alaska’s largest oil field.

But a Division of Oil and Gas spokesperson insisted that’s not in the cards, saying the state is confident it will get the information it wants, and the division can issue another extension — or more — if needed.

Depending on how the wind blows,  Nome’s wind farm on Banner Peak can generate up to 30 percent of the city’s power.

This productive, six-year-old wind farm and its about 20 vanes generate a significant amount of energy to offset diesel fuel power for the city, said John Handeland, utility manager for Nome Joint Utility System.

“Wind will continue to be a valuable portion of the power production in the community, and we save about 150 thousand gallons of diesel fuel each year by utilizing the wind.”

Recently, not all of the vanes have been functional.

One of the smaller units was out of commission for a few months because of a hole in the middle of vane, but repairs have been made, and the wind vane is operational again.

On a windy day, the wind farm can generate up to 30 percent of the city’s power, Handeland said.

The utilities manager admits he was skeptical about the wind project at first, but he’s changed his mind, especially after NJUS took over operational control of the entire farm from Bering Straits Native Corporation and Sitnasuak Native Corporation a couple of years ago and installed two Dutch brand EWT 900 turbines.

Currently, those two EWT turbines are the largest wind vanes sitting on top of the hill surrounded by numerous 50 kilowatt units, or smaller vanes.

Though the smaller 50 kilowatt units are still of value to NJUS, Handeland said these vanes are slowly will be phased out of use.

“As time goes on, we weigh the maintenance costs versus the contributions they are able to give to us, and systematically, those units will be shut down,” he said.

The next challenge for the utility is finding a way to store excess wind energy generated by the farm that Handeland said is being thrown overboard.

And in terms of finding alternative sources of energy to decrease Nome’s reliance on diesel, well, that’s just a matter of seeing where the wind blows.

The Alaska Division of Elections is still working to certify the results of the House race for the district that includes North Slope and Northwest Arctic boroughs.

Division director Josie Bahnke said on Tuesday afternoon that the division’s office in Juneau was waiting for the ballots to be mailed in from four precincts in District 40: Selawik, Browerville, Anaktuvuk Pass and Ambler.

Bahnke had said the election review board was aiming to certify the results on Monday, but that action is delayed until the division receives all of the ballots.

Bahnke still expects to certify the results by Friday.

“Right now, it’s just a matter of the mail service,” Bahnke said.

Dean Westlake leads incumbent Representative Benjamin Nageak by 21 votes, according to the last vote count.

The trailing candidate or 10 qualified voters will have five days after the review is completed to ask for a recount.

Russian officials say warming permafrost could be linked to a deadly anthrax outbreak in Siberia this month.

Permafrost can be found almost everywhere in Alaska — from the Arctic coast to Anchorage.

But at least one expert isn’t alarmed about the potential for thawing ground to bring old diseases back to life.

After a Siberian heat wave, anthrax hit the Yamal Peninsula in early August.

The bacterial disease has claimed the life of a child and thousands of reindeer.

Permafrost expert Vladimir Romanovsky of the University of Alaska Fairbanks said melting permafrost and erosion may have worked together to spread anthrax into the water supply.

“Thawing of permafrost can release microorganisms first into the active layer, then into water and air,” Romanovsky said. “They were sequestered there for many, many years — tens of years, even thousands and tens of thousands of years.”

Scientists have talked about the possibility of epidemics caused by thawing permafrost, but until now, it’s only been a theory, Romanovsky said.

If the Siberian anthrax outbreak is traced back to spores in the permafrost, then it would be a troubling development.

“This release of these dangerous microorganisms could actually be spread very easily from the north, because we have lots of birds who are migrating all kind of places in the world,” he said. “So this problem could be not just local problem. It could be global problem.”

More research is needed to tie this anthrax outbreak to warming permafrost, Romanovsky said.

Infectious disease specialist Dr. David Morens, with the National Institutes of Health, isn’t worried about anthrax — or any other disease — surfacing from the ground.

Anthrax is hardy and virtually everywhere, he said.

“Anthrax is sitting in the grass in farms in Texas,” Morens said. “It’s in Asia. It’s in Africa. It’s everywhere. And so the fact that some might be in the permafrost doesn’t really add to whatever the risk is.”

Although anthrax is widespread, the chance of getting sick from it is really small.

The likelihood of contracting anthrax from spores exhumed from the permafrost, is even tinier.

Morens has studied the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic that decimated rural villages in Alaska. Brevig Mission was hit especially hard.

Spanish flu killed 90 percent of the village over the course of six days.

The remains of victims were buried together.

Researchers have used samples from that mass grave to reconstruct the genetic code of the virus.

But Alaskans shouldn’t be afraid of getting sick as the ground in Brevig Mission thaws, Morens said. Unlike anthrax, Spanish flu is very fragile.

“What came out of the so-called permafrost was just broken pieces of RNA,” Morens said. “Nucleic acid. There was nothing infectious. A ton of it swallowed would have been harmless.”

Freezing and thawing breaks up viruses like Spanish flu, killing them.

“So if we are talking about viruses and deadly things, I would say whatever might be there in the permafrost is not going to be contagious,” he said.

Morens doesn’t fear viruses or bacteria emerging from their cryogenic slumber, but he is concerned about the threat of new diseases.

“All these emerging viruses that are coming on — Zika, chikungunya, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and all that,” Morens said. “It’s not that they’re being created. It’s not that they’re being dug up from the permafrost. They’re already there. And we human beings do things that invite them to come in, infect us, and cause epidemics.”

Officials in Russia are trying to stop the anthrax outbreak from spreading further. They are incinerating all infected reindeer carcasses and have banned hunting in the region.