Southeast

A magnitude 7 earthquake shook Juneau and other towns in Alaska’s northern and central panhandle late Saturday morning.   

According to the Alaska Earthquake Center, the quake happened at 11:41 a.m. and was centered roughly 55 miles north of Yakutat, at a depth of about three miles. 

Residents from Juneau, Haines, Whitehorse and other Southeast Alaska towns reported houses shaking briefly. There were no immediate reports of any damage. The National Weather Service Juneau says there is no tsunami danger from the earthquake.

This is a developing story. Check back in for updates.

One of Alaska’s smallest telecommunications companies is about to provide a critical backup for the entire state.

On Wednesday, Cordova Telecom Cooperative and GCI announced a partnership to lay an undersea fiber optic cable from Juneau to Cordova and a second cable from Cordova to Seward.

When open for service in fall 2027, the two cables will provide high-speed internet to small communities in Prince William Sound and northern Southeast Alaska.

The development matters to the rest of the state as well, because when combined, they will provide a route for internet traffic between the Railbelt and Outside. Currently, four undersea cables through the Gulf of Alaska are the principal routes for internet and phone traffic between Alaska and the rest of the world.

Matanuska Telecom Association opened the state’s first overland fiber connection in 2020 as an alternative, and the new route will give the state another redundant option, said Cordova Telecom CEO Jeremiah Beckett.

“With what we’ve built out, scalability wise, we could put all the current Alaska traffic on our network if needed,” Beckett said.

While satellite internet services like Starlink have transformed life in rural Alaska, ground-based fiber internet remains the backbone of worldwide telecommunications, delivering service faster and in volumes that satellites can’t provide.

“It’s kind of like rural communities that don’t have the ferry,” Beckett said. “Places without fiber don’t have the same access that folks with fiber do. So this is really to help connect those rural areas and give them the same access to the digital economy and marketplace as the rest of the world.”

Despite their advantages, fiber-optic cables can be vulnerable.

“Up north, it’s ice scouring … and in our area, it’s typically ship anchors and earthquakes,” Beckett said.

Alaskans have become intimately familiar with the consequences of broken cables in recent years.

Northern and northwest Alaska are particularly familiar: Quintillion’s fiber-optic cable has been severed three times in two years. The latest break wasn’t fixed for more than seven months because sea ice precluded repairs. That caused widespread problems in areas served by the cable.

In March, a break in a subsea cable left the Alaska Legislature to do business on paper for a day and knocked out both cellphone and internet service for much of Juneau. Juneau had alternatives; a temporary fix was in place within days.

When the cable leading to Sitka broke in 2024, it took weeks to repair. People canceled surgeries and businesses went cash-only until internet service was restored.

Adding a backup fiber route reduces the odds of blackouts like those. Currently, Cordova is served by a single undersea fiber line through Prince William Sound to Valdez.

When the project is complete, internet and phone traffic will have three possible routes: north, west, and east.

The two cables will cost roughly $88 million combined, according to figures provided by Beckett, and the project is principally funded through two federal grants. Cordova Telecom is paying for part of the project, as is GCI, which will be what Beckett calls an “anchor tenant and partner.”

“It was a good matchup for both of our long-term goals,” he said.

In a prepared statement, GCI senior vice president Billy Wailand praised the plan, which is formally known as Fiber Internet Serving Homes in Southeast Alaska, or FISH in SEAK.

“Critical state services require network diversity,” he said. “GCI turned up the first subsea cable to Alaska in 1999 and landed a second diverse fiber in 2008. We are thrilled to partner with CTC on its FISH in SEAK project, which includes a next-generation cable that ensures Alaska and its capital city continue to benefit from the newest technologies and adds another crucial layer of redundancy to the network.”

Communities along the cable route will see huge changes, Beckett said. Residents of Pelican on Chichagof Island in Southeast Alaska, who use boardwalks instead of roads and four-wheelers instead of cars, will be able to get fiber internet access directly to their homes.

The island village of Chenega in Prince William Sound, which has about 50 year-round residents, likewise will have new access to fiber internet.

Alaska’s Lost Coast, between Glacier Bay and Yakutat, could be dotted with cellphone towers.

Beckett, who grew up in Cordova, returned to the town with his spouse 12 years ago, “basically when Cordova got its subsea fiber,” he said. “We were both teleworkers, and that created the opportunity for us to move back to Alaska, essentially.”

Since then, he’s seen internet service improve and has become head of his local telecom, which has just 20 employees.

Because it’s a cooperative, it’s run as a nonprofit, he said. That means the telecom’s goal is to deliver faster service and low rates, not necessarily generate a profit.

In Yakutat, “a few years ago, you couldn’t get cell service anywhere,” Beckett said.

“We’ve upgraded the cell service there to 4G and outside of the fishermen complaining because their wives can get hold of them, it was a huge boost for the community,” he said.

“If someone gets hurt, they can call the paramedics and not have to drive 20 miles before they get to service. … It’s giving people reasons to think about moving home, because it’s one less inhibitor to be back in Alaska,” Beckett said.

“Yakutat actually got a new clinic a couple years ago, and then with this, I think they’re going to see some good growth. Everyone likes core services, right?”

Haines’ mayor would like the borough’s Tlingit Park to be owned by the Tlingits.

In November’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee, the Mayor Tom Morphet made the case for granting the land, part of which is a Tlingit cemetery, to a local tribe, the Chilkoot Indian Association. The plan was met with mixed reactions.

The mayor first brought up the concept this spring and says he has had conversations with the Chilkoot Indian Association’s tribal administrator.

“I’ve been having informal discussions with Harriet Brouillette … and I posted back in March on my site,” he said. “And I also posted on Facebook, and I just figured the public wasn’t interested because I never heard anything bad. But there was quite a bit on Facebook this week, or the past few weeks, and a lot of people have questions.”

Morphet stressed that the idea is conceptual, and would need to be approved by the Tribe and the Haines Borough Assembly.

“The idea that we’ve refined, as much as it’s been refined, is to transfer the park property, the grassy part to the Tribe,” he said. “… this would require a new property line to be drawn. But the borough, at this time, would retain ownership of the … senior center and the playground of our dreams next to it. So this would be just the tribal house pavilion, the Native grave sites and the picnic tables restroom that would become owned by the CIA.”

The land would come with a caveat, according to Morphet’s plan. The trail through the park would remain open to public use.

Morphet said there are two reasons to change ownership of the land. The first is that he believes the land should already be Native-owned. He said it was originally granted to the Presbyterian Church to be used as a mission school. Federal law says that property used for indigenous mission schools should revert to Tribes.

On his mayor’s web page, Morphet wrote the following:

“The park, a Tlingit graveyard, should have gone back to the Tlingits 40 years ago when the Presbyterian Church was deeding the last of its vacant mission properties back to the Tribe. But by then the City of Haines had scooped up the parcel for a downtown park.”

Morphet said another reason is cost. The borough has less money and more responsibilities than ever.

“The borough has a million-dollar deficit,” he said. “Also, we’ve just accepted a new park, park land from Margaret Piggott, that will cost money to maintain over time, or develop or do whatever we’re going to do.”

Former Mayor Jan Hill listened to the presentation and expressed concern. She worried that changing owners could cause unintentional harm.

“I understand the warm and fuzzy feeling that some people get from this,” she said. “But it just feels like this is a way to slough off borough responsibility and liability onto an organization that’s totally grant driven — and that doesn’t feel warm and fuzzy to me. It could put this organization in a really tough financial spot.”

Georgiana Hotch is a Chilkoot Indian Association council member. She spoke at the meeting in favor of more discussion.

“… this is a really great gesture,” she said. “Because we do have, we do have a cemetery. You can look at that as sacred, like sacred sites to our people. It’s community-oriented, which is good for the entire city. And we appreciate being able to put it on the table and talk about it.”

Members of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee agreed that more information is needed. Their next meeting is Jan. 14.

You can contact this reporter at melinda@khns.org.

Ten years ago, the state of Alaska signed an agreement with British Columbia that sought to give Alaskans a say in the development of mines upstream of Southeast Alaska. Environmental advocates say Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration has walked away from key pillars of that agreement — but state officials say they remain committed to keeping cross-border rivers clean.

It’s a boom time for mines in British Columbia. There are a few reasons for that — the rise of renewable energy and the growing importance of microchips, and, of course, President Trump’s trade war. Provincial leaders have fast-tracked a variety of resource development projects — including some proposed mines upstream of communities in Southeast Alaska.

“The majority of this region is staked with mining claims,” said Breanna Walker with the group Salmon Beyond Borders, which has campaigned for stricter limits on mines near rivers that cross into Southeast Alaska.

Ten years ago, Gov. Bill Walker signed an agreement with the premier of British Columbia that he said would give Alaskans a greater voice in the future of B.C. mines. It led to the creation of a working group where senior officials from Alaska and B.C. would meet twice a year to discuss mining and the environment.

Breanna Walker says that was a reason for optimism — but she says in the years since, the Dunleavy administration has failed to live up to its commitments.

She pointed to a variety of issues, including the Dunleavy administration’s decision to discontinue water quality monitoring on cross-border rivers in 2021. Walker said she’d also like to see the meetings between provincial and state leaders include other stakeholders, like Alaska tribes and fishermen.

Additionally, Walker said the Dunleavy administration has failed to keep up the pressure on B.C. to clean up the Tulsequah Chief Mine upstream of Juneau that’s been polluting the Taku River for decades. And she said the state has failed to keep Alaskans informed about other mining activity and pollution upstream of Southeast — despite a portion of the agreement that says Alaskans should be notified.

Walker points in particular to pollution at a mine near Hyder, at the state’s southeastern tip.

“Alaskans learned about that pollution through the media. They did not learn about that from the state or from the province of British Columbia,” she said. “That’s a clear example, in my opinion, of how the state is abdicating the responsibility that they have to Alaskans.”

The Dunleavy administration disagrees. State officials point to webpages maintained by the state and B.C. detailing the ongoing work between the two governments. And they say the water quality monitoring that ended in 2021 duplicated similar efforts at the federal level.

Sam Dapcevich of the state Department of Environmental Conservation said the state has continued to advocate for Alaskans’ interests at working group meetings.

“DEC is fully engaged and working with our B.C. counterparts on activity awareness and status of projects,” he said.

Just last month, at the most recent cross-border meeting, Dapcevich said the Alaska delegation asked for an update on the cleanup of the Tulsequah Chief Mine. And in response, the company working on cleanup is planning to hold a public webinar on Wednesday.

“I just want people to understand that our agencies are deeply involved between the two governments, advocating for cleanup, and we’re using shared science to protect these rivers,” he said.

Dapcevich said the state remains committed to ensuring Alaskans’ voices aren’t lost in the process.

This article was reported and published in collaboration between the Chilkat Valley News and the Alaska Beacon.

Skagway’s former paramedic is alleging wrongdoing by the Southeast Alaska town, saying in a newly filed lawsuit that she was illegally fired after submitting a grievance against the city’s fire chief and deputy fire chief.

In a lawsuit filed Nov. 20 at Juneau Superior Court, Samantha Philemon — the town’s lone licensed paramedic for much of her employment since 2023 — alleges she was fired due to disputes over recordkeeping and the department’s decision to purchase an all-terrain vehicle known as an Argo.

According to Philemon’s complaint, at the time of her firing, Skagway officials said she was being let go due to violations of HIPAA, the federal medical-privacy law. Philemon’s attorney says in the complaint that the accusation “was a sham.”

Philemon filed a formal complaint against the chief and deputy and was fired by Skagway’s deputy borough administrator the day after the complaint was resolved.

“We’re excited to have our day in court, so to speak, and we think that a jury who hears Sam’s story is going to do the right thing and understand what happened here, and we’re just looking for this to never happen again,” said her attorney, Miye D’Oench of the Anchorage-based Northern Justice Project.

Philemon said her firing has left Skagway, a town of roughly 1,100 year-round residents, without a trained paramedic.

“There are firefighters with EMT 1 and EMT 2 and some (EMT) 3 training, but there are no paramedics, and that harms the community because paramedics are trained and licensed to do things that EMTs are not,” she said.

Neither Fire Chief Emily Rauscher nor Borough Manager Emily Deach responded to requests for an interview that would allow them to respond to Philemon’s complaint.

The borough denied a public records request by the Chilkat Valley News. Robert Blasco, the city’s hired attorney, did not return messages left at his office on Friday and Monday.

Philemon moved from Mississippi to Skagway in 2023, she said, and enjoyed working with the department at first.

“I wanted to be between the mountains and the ocean,” she said.

According to the complaint, she encouraged a friend to work for the department this past summer, but when he arrived, he was told his position had funding for only one week. Philemon believed that was because the department had recently purchased an Argo.

When she raised the issue, according to the complaint, “Rauscher and Mead then turned on Ms. Philemon,” and “began silencing and excluding her from department business.” There were additional disputes about medical procedures performed by the fire department and accounting at the department..

Philemon submitted a formal grievance to the borough manager in July. The manager, Emily Deach, said in an August memo that Skagway “will take action to address the behavior and prevent reoccurrence” as well as take steps toward formalizing fire department training.

“The actions of the department supervisors do not require termination of those supervisors, as

you requested verbally,” Deach wrote to Philemon.

Philemon, who had been placed on administrative leave while the grievance was investigated, was ordered to return to work under a separate plan. She objected, concerned that she would be returning to work under the same supervisors and conditions as before, and appealed to a committee that included the Skagway Mayor.

The committee upheld Deach’s work on Sept. 10. Philemon planned to return to work, but the deputy borough manager fired her the following day.

Philemon said she’s been looking for work since then but hasn’t found success.

“I’m looking for a new job after being fired from a job that I never wanted to leave. I’m devastated because I love my job, and I love Skagway,” Philemon said.

Online court records show the case has been referred to Judge Amy Welch. No additional proceedings have yet been scheduled.

A controversial mineral exploration project north of Haines has changed hands twice in the last year. That included earlier this month, when Vizsla Copper purchased the Palmer Project in exchange for $15 million of its company stock.

Steve Masterman currently serves as deputy director of the Alaska Critical Minerals Collaborative at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Before that, he was the state geologist.

The Alaska Desk’s Avery Ellfeldt caught up with Masterman to discuss what’s been happening with the project, which has been under exploration by Constantine Mining since 2006. He said projects like this can move quickly or take decades to become mines, for a lot of different reasons.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Steve Masterman: Well, it’s all across the spectrum. You know, some of them go pretty quickly, like Fort Knox and Pogo went pretty quickly in a relative sense, and then other ones take many decades. Donlin is another example. And some of them never become mines, even though they look very promising for a long while, for various reasons. Could be economic reasons, could be environmental reasons, could be social reasons. Could be all of the above.

Avery Ellfeldt: The project has changed hands a few times in the last year or so. Could you speak to whether that’s a pretty normal progression in terms of these exploration projects changing hands pretty frequently?

Steve Masterman: I think it is fairly common. I mean, this has happened to this one several times. You see other properties, the Nickel Platinum Group property in the Alaska Range, has changed hands several times. The Johnson property on the Alaska Peninsula — sorry, Cook Inlet — has changed hands several times. So it does happen. And, you know, I think if the project is more compelling, it happens less.

Avery Ellfeldt: My other question would be do these types of transactions necessarily mean anything about a project’s viability or economic feasibility? Anything else you’d add there?

Steve Masterman: There’s reasons that people back out, obviously. And I don’t know what the reasons are that the latest groups backed out of the Palmer Project, but they had a reason. Sometimes those reasons are that they’re not a good fit for the company at its current stage. So it might not speak necessarily to the project itself. It might in some cases have a lot more to do with the corporation and how their overall business is being managed and their portfolio of projects.

Avery Ellfeldt: Could you walk me through why projects like these are attractive from an investor point of view, given that they operate over such long timelines and so many never come to fruition?

Steve Masterman: It’s a risk and reward equation. These are riskier investments, that’s for sure. And so investors have to look at it pretty critically and analytically to see whether they think it’s worth rolling the dice on, essentially.

Avery Ellfeldt: They’ve kind of cited the Trump administration’s orientation toward mining in Alaska as a potential boon for the project. I’m curious if you could speak to that, whether the current administration’s mindset or approach could actually benefit a project that’s at this stage of exploration?

Steve Masterman: The current administration definitely has a pro-development stance. I think that’s pretty obvious. So they’re going to be leaning favorably toward mineral development projects. But whether this thing gets to that point within this administration is an open question. And I would guess, in three years, they’re not going to be ready to apply for permits. So whatever will happen, in a permanent sense, will probably happen in a future administration.

Avery Ellfeldt: One of the local tribes, the Chilkat Indian Village, has made it pretty clear that they’re not in support of this and that the new owner won’t be able to receive social license or community support. Would you say that’s pretty common with exploration projects in Alaska, specifically?

Steve Masterman: I think it’s common with mineral development projects globally. The problem the industry has is its perception. And I think the industry is working hard to change that perception, but it takes a while.