Southcentral

A lawsuit filed Friday in federal court accuses the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District of violating six students’ constitutional rights by removing books from school library shelves last spring.

The district removed the 56 books in April at the direction of the Mat-Su School Board, which had received some complaints. Then, this fall, the board appointed a Library Citizens Advisory Committee to review the books. The committee has reviewed 12 books so far, eight of which they recommended should only be kept in high school libraries but removed from middle and elementary schools.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed Friday are represented by the ACLU of Alaska and the Northern Justice Project.

Scott Adams and his wife Dawn joined the lawsuit on behalf of their daughter, who is in middle school.

It’s understandable that some parents might think certain books are inappropriate for their child, Adams said.

“But that’s their right,” he said. “You know, if your kid comes home with that book, and you don’t think it’s appropriate, take it back to the library. Don’t make that decision for me. Let me make that decision.”

In a written statement announcing the lawsuit, the plaintiffs’ lawyers noted many of the protagonists in the challenged books are people of color or LGBTQ+ characters.

The freedom to explore different ideas in publicly available books is a fundamental constitutional right, said Savannah Fletcher, a lawyer for the Northern Justice Project.

“And it’s a dangerous precedent we set when just one person complaining about a book has the power to remove access to it to every single family, every single student,” Fletcher said. “That’s the big motivating push behind this lawsuit, is to protect our constitutional rights.”

Mat-Su School District spokesperson Jillian Morrissey said Monday the district has not been served with the lawsuit. She declined to comment.

Fletcher said the plaintiffs will ask the court for a preliminary injunction to get the books back on shelves as soon as possible.

The district has until the start of 2024 to respond.

Northern pike, an invasive species of fish, have been eradicated from the Kenai Peninsula, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The species, which are native to Interior and Western Alaska, were illegally introduced to the Kenai Peninsula by fishermen in the 1970s.

Northern pike pose threats to native species in the region, including salmon. They thrive in slow-moving waters and can grow their populations quickly, dominating other species and causing permanent changes to ecosystems. Invasive Species Biologist Kristine Dunker is involved in eradication efforts on the peninsula, which began in 2008.

“In terms of eradication, getting rid of all the pike in a population, the priority really has been eradicating them for the Kenai Peninsula, which as far as we know, is now the case,” Dunker said. “All known populations have been removed.”

In 2019, pike were discovered in Vogel Lake at the northern tip of the Kenai Peninsula. Before then, they had only been identified in lakes accessible by car. Research following the discovery indicates that pike can use Cook Inlet to travel between freshwater ecosystems.

After the discovery was made, Fish and Game added a weir near Vogel Lake to prevent northern pike in Cook Inlet from entering the body. Scientists say pike are most likely entering the Inlet by way of the Susitna River.

Invasive Species Biologist Parker Bradley says northern pike were eradicated from Vogel Lake, and the Kenai Peninsula, in 2021.

“We’ve eradicated pike from a total of 28 water bodies in Southcentral, and of those, 21 have been on the Kenai Peninsula,” he said.

Now that northern pike are utilizing the Inlet, the focus has shifted to prevention, which includes education and enforcement efforts. Eradication efforts of northern pike are still underway in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, which scientists say is more difficult.

Fish and Game asks anyone who catches an invasive pike to report it and retain the fish, when possible. You can report your findings on Fish and Game’s website or by dialing 1-877-INVASIV.

Sean Den Adel and his fiancee Skye Steritz live in Cordova and are among a handful of small-scale seaweed farmers in Prince William Sound.

They’ve been harvesting mostly sugar kelp on about five acres of water since 2022. Den Adel said he’s excited about the future of the industry, which he sees as more sustainable – ecologically and economically – than the fisheries that have supported Prince William Sound for generations.

“I really do think it’s going to create a lot more jobs in coastal communities, and it already is doing that,” he said.

But in order to grow the industry, Cordova’s kelp farmers need a way to process seaweed locally.

Prince William Sound has experienced five fisheries disasters since 2016, in part because of climate change. These disasters put a major economic strain on coastal communities. Growers like Den Adel are hoping seaweed can help bolster and diversify the region’s economy.

Cale Herschleb, another Cordova-based kelp farmer with Royal Ocean Kelp Company, has commercially fished for salmon in Prince William Sound for the last 15 years. The fisheries disasters have been challenging and the future of salmon fishing feels uncertain, he said, and growing kelp makes sense as an off-season occupation.

“I’ve been looking for a way to diversify and still use the [fishing] equipment that is pretty expensive, try to keep the boat working through the winter,” he said. “I just view it as a way to diversify and do something positive for the environment.”

Den Adel’s and Steritz’s kelp farm is called Noble Ocean Farms. Den Adel said eventually they would like to hire employees, but for now the two of them run the entire operation. They produce kelp to be made into seaweed snacks.

Den Adel said they’re facing one big problem with growing their business: there’s no reliable way to process seaweed in Cordova.

“We don’t really have anywhere to process right now, which is a huge, huge conundrum for us,” he said.

Specifically, there’s nowhere to dry large quantities of seaweed, which means Noble Ocean Farms is shipping out their kelp wet.

Kelp is about 90% water, which means it’s a lot heavier to ship when it’s fresh than when it’s dry.

“When we’re just selling wet kelp frozen, the energy costs are high. The shipping costs are high,” Den Adel said.

Alysha Cypher, a marine biologist at the Prince William Sound Science Center in Cordova, is trying to solve this processing problem for local kelp farmers.

“There’s fish processors here and they are interested [in seaweed], but until there’s a larger market, it’s not worth it for them to buy any equipment or get involved,” Cypher said.

Right now the kelp-farming market is tiny. According to Den Adel, there are only seven permitted growers in Prince William Sound, and only five of them are actively farming. They’re limited by the lack of processing capacity.

But Cypher recently obtained a $380,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to pilot a seaweed-drying project in Cordova over the next three years. Electricity to power dehydrators is expensive off the road system, so Cypher’s idea is to use waste heat from the Cordova Electric Co-op’s diesel generators to dry the seaweed.

“It’s like 115 degrees on the pad,” Cypher said. “The building — you can see the heat billowing off of it.”

The co-op offered to let Cypher and her team build an insulated structure on their property and pipe in waste heat from the diesel generators.

“Then most likely what we’ll do is we’ll tumble seaweed in big tumblers to see if we can get seaweed dry enough that it’s a shelf-stable product,” Cypher said.

She and her team have a grant period of three years to figure out if they can make this seaweed drying project work. Noble Ocean Farms and Herschleb’s Royal Ocean Kelp Company each agreed to donate a thousand pounds of this year’s harvest to test the process.

If the project is successful, Cypher envisions that seaweed farmers could form a cooperative to process their harvests together with the waste heat method.

Herschleb is hopeful that this project will encourage fish processors in Prince William Sound to start investing in mariculture.

“We have reached out to the local processors and tried to get them interested,” he said. “Maybe something like this would help them see that it’s viable.”

Cypher and her team will spend the winter designing the waste heat drying system. She hopes they’ll be able to test-dry their first batch of Cordova seaweed this spring.

Southcentral Alaska continued to dig out Friday from a snowstorm that peaked with more than a foot of snow, as linemen and road crews across the region restored power and cleared streets.

Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson declared a snow emergency Thursday evening, freeing additional resources to clear local roads. In a statement, he said that street maintenance crews had responded to 40 downed trees during a 15-hour time span.

“The safety of Anchorage residents is my highest priority,” Bronson said. “We have to make sure school buses can operate and parents can get to work, and we’re working really hard to make that happen.”

The city’s plan for removing snow and ice prioritizes clearing major roads and feeder streets, but Bronson said crews would likely move to clearing residential streets starting Friday night.

People Mover bus service was again suspended Friday due to the heavy snow, with AnchorRIDES service only operating essential trips.

Schools in Anchorage, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and Kenai Peninsula Borough were under planned closures Friday, along with many local and state offices shuttered in observation of Veterans Day on Saturday.

Power outages remained rampant across the region, with Chugach Electric reporting significant outages in Girdwood and Hope. About half of Girdwood service was restored Thursday night, but crews were working to determine the extent of remaining outages Friday morning.

“The Hope situation is challenging with the line going up a mountain,” company officials wrote. “(We) will address as crews can get there and access.”

Beyond Anchorage, Matanuska Electric Association reported small, 100-member outages in Big Lake and the Pinnacle Peak area late Thursday and early Friday, with crews working on both. Homer Electric Association said Friday morning that it had restored power to 1,300 members overnight, with 2,400 more still without power.

Poor road conditions had closed the Seward Highway near Portage and a large stretch of the Richardson Highway near Thompson Pass on Thursday. But by 10:30 p.m. that night, the state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities said on social media that all highways in the region were open.

“All available operators are responding to this storm,” state officials said.

All Anchorage weather advisories related to the storm had cleared by Friday, with forecasts calling for light weekend snow and sunny skies by Sunday. The National Weather Service’s Anchorage office said Thursday night that local snowfall during the storm ranged from about 17 inches to 30 inches on the Anchorage Hillside, with some Kenai Peninsula and Chugach Mountains locations receiving several feet of snow.

A snowstorm that intensified overnight Wednesday has closed most Southcentral Alaska schools Thursday, with electric crews restoring power from several outages.

School districts in Anchorage and the Mat-Su Borough, as well as the Kenai Peninsula Borough, have declared a remote learning day for Thursday due to the storm. The University of Alaska Anchorage is also closed for the day.

State of Alaska offices in Anchorage and the Mat-Su Borough have also closed for the day. In Anchorage, People Mover and AnchorRIDES bus service has been canceled for the day.

Alaska State Troopers said in an online dispatch early Thursday that the Seward Highway between Portage and Crown Point was “impassable” due to snow and stranded vehicles, despite state road crews’ efforts to clear the highway.

“Winter driving conditions exist on the entire Kenai Peninsula and extreme caution should be taken preferably for essential travel only,” troopers wrote.

The National Weather Service said online that nine inches of snow fell in Anchorage on Wednesday, more than an inch beyond the previous record set in 1982. Early-season snowfall this winter has shattered local records, including both Wednesday’s dump and Sunday’s first persistent snowfall in Anchorage.

The storm brought several power outages across the region, with Chugach Electric reporting power losses in Hope and Girdwood early Thursday. The Matanuska Electric Association reported about 550 members without power Thursday morning after a 1,600-member outage in the Chugiak, Mirror Lake and Eklutna areas. The Homer Electric Association initially reported about 3,700 members without power primarily in Sterling, with about half of those members’ service restored by 7:30 a.m. Thursday.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Hundreds of students in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District walked out of class Tuesday morning to protest recent actions by the local school board — including the removal of the student representative from the board and the removal of books from libraries for review.

Organizers of the protest say students at seven Mat-Su high schools walked out.

At Career Tech High School in Wasilla, about 150 students left class at 10 a.m. They gathered around the flagpole, holding signs demanding the school board listen and chanting “give us back our voice, we should have a choice.”

Juniors Riley Flinn and Lily Shea organized the protest at Career Tech, and other schools quickly organized their own walkouts. Protests at Colony, Palmer and Wasilla high schools each exceeded 100 students, and organizers say that some students as far north as Fairbanks also joined the protest in solidarity. Students said they oppose school board actions that limit the voice and rights of students in Mat-Su schools.

“I’m proud of every student who showed up today and feels that this is important enough to skip a class,” said Shea, who missed her AP Chemistry class to lead the protest. “Skipping a class is a big deal. I don’t ever do it because I’m scared of what I might miss, but I’m proud that so many kids are so invested in what’s happening and they understand that this is a big deal.”

The specific school board decisions that students protested include the removal of the student representative from the board despite public opposition, and the subsequent investigations directed by the board into students and staff who objected to the measure. The board is also requiring additional credits to graduate beyond the state standard, and it has hand-picked an advisory committee to review 56 challenged books — some that are used in curriculum across the district.

Students stood outside of their schools for 56 minutes as a nod to the number of books that are under review by the Library Citizens Advisory Committee. The 56 books were removed from school libraries last spring, before the committee had begun to debate which should be removed from which schools.

Flinn, one of the student organizers of the protest at Career Tech, noted that while the previous process to challenge books included student input, the current committee does not.

Shea, the other organizer, said it’s important for voters and school board members to know how the students feel. The students staged the protest just a week before the local Mat-Su election. Two school board seats are on the ballot next Tuesday.

“We’re not backing down even after this election happens,” Shea said. “We will still hold our next school board or the current school board to the same standard, and we feel like our voices deserve to be heard. We are the largest stakeholders in their decisions so we deserve a say and we and that’s the message that we’re hoping to spread today.”

Ben Kolendo is the Student Advisory Board Representative whose role on the school board was diminished in September. Kolendo is 18 and — unlike many of the students who protested with him — will be able to vote next week.

“Local elections are the most important ones and right now, this is students saying that we think this election is more important than usual,” Kolendo said.

Students passed out hand warmers and donut holes during the walkout. A few cars drove through the parking lot and honked at the students, evoking raucous cheers.

The principal at Career Tech declined to comment on the walkout.