Western

The newest processing plant in Bristol Bay is about to go online this month. Trident Seafood’s multi-million dollar fishmeal plant should get a test run with Togiak herring. Trident agreed to build the plant as part of a 2011 settlement over alleged EPA Clean Water Act violations, and now the company, and residents, should get to see (and smell) it if works as intended.

Construction workers hammer and weld to the twang of country music as they wrap up construction on fishmeal plant in Naknek. The walls are still unfinished drywall and wooden stairs stand in for a future elevator.

Project Manager Bob Bates stood in front of the largest piece of machinery in the plant, a 50 foot long and 60,000 pound dryer.

“We actually set this unit here when this was still all mud and dirt. We build this building around this dryer,” said Bates.

The dryer looked like a giant rolling pin as it spun in the center of the warehouse.

“The inside of this thing looks like something out of a sci-fi movie with all the teeth and the blades and everything in it to mix it, and turn it, and churn it through,” added Bates.

About a quarter mile of tubing move all the leftover parts after a fish is filleted or canned – that’s the head, guts, fins, and bones – they’ll come from Trident’s processing plant to the new 15 million dollar plus fishmeal plant.

After being ground up and dried, the byproduct of salmon can become animal feed and even those fish oil pills you can buy at Costco. Trident also owns separate business that produces fishmeal products. Along with helping their business model, Trident agreed to build this plant as part of a 2011 settlement with the EPA, which had tallied a number alleged Clean Water Act violations against the company’s Alaska operations.

Officials at Trident said they weren’t required to build a fishmeal plant in Naknek, but they think this is where the Bristol Bay fishing industry is probably heading anyway. The EPA and Alaska’s DEC are tightening down on how processors handle the millions of pounds of fish waste that is traditionally ground up and put back in the water, hopefully washed out with the tides.

But some Naknek residents were, and still are, leery about having a fishmeal plant in town. They have a reputation of being …smelly.

Jay King runs an aviation service in Naknek and is among those still not convinced that plant won’t stink up the town. King’s not opposed to the plant so much as he’s opposed to its location.

“Being next to the Post Office, the school, the clinic, my brother’s apartment building. “I just didn’t think it was such a good idea to have a potential odor issue with all of these entities,” said King.

Others say with or without the new fishmeal plant, summertime odor is a common issue and comes with the territory. Russell Phelps is a commercial fisherman and said Naknek is a fishing town. He thinks taking waste out of the water might actually help the smell.

“So the beaches in late July and August stink considerable already, so if we could avoid that I’d be very happy,” said Phelps, who is also a member of the Borough Assembly.

Before the Borough gave its consent to Trident to build, a few members traveled to Newport, Oregon to tour a 20-year-old fishmeal plant that has been upgraded with modern technology similar to what’s being used in Naknek. They came back less skeptical. The Assembly heard from plenty of concerned residents, but in the end voted to approve the fishmeal plant. Some supporters think fishmeal may be the future of the fishery, and others appreciate what will be added tax revenue to the Borough. Phelps was among the yes votes.

“We shouldn’t stop a project just because we think it’s going to stink,” argued Phelps.

Trident has a favorable reputation in the town, and the seafood giant says it puts near a million dollars in taxes annually to the Borough, and tens of thousands more in charitable donations. Project Manager Bob Bates says Trident will do it what it takes to stay good neighbors with the community.

“From day one, the goal was to keep the odor down, clean up the river, and basically produce some meal,” said Bates.

And at the heart of its effort to keep the odor down is a new air filtration system.

Standing at the base of a three story metal tube with ducting that snakes around the entire warehouse, Bates describes how it will keep the smell of drying fish waste out of the breezy bayside town of Naknek.

“So basically what we are doing is we’re drawing fresh air down below and we are sucking everything up to insure that we capture all the odors and everything that comes through this facility and gets pushed through these scrubbers,” explained Bates.

Inside are thousands of scrubbing balls that look like whiffle balls, water is sprayed down as the air raises. The odor molecules stick to the water.

“By the time the air come back out of here, we’ve pulled the majority of all the odor out with this system,” added Bates.

Some residents like Jay King say they’ll just have to wait and see, or rather smell, what happens.

“Well, it’s here. I am just honestly hoping it is as advertised by Trident,” said King.

They’re going to get their chance soon. Trident plans to run final tests of the system with water in a few days, but as far as a true test with fish heads and guts. Bob Bates said he can build factories but he can’t control fish. They’ll test it for real when the Togiak herring arrive, probably before the month is out.

Citizens in Bethel are weighing a decision on a proposal for the for the first liquor store in decades. In the shadow of the debate is a powerful and elaborate bootlegging economy across the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. In the first of a three-part series on efforts to curb the flow of alcohol KYUK’s Ben Matheson reports on law enforcement’s battle with black markets spread across the rivers and tundra of the vast region.

In the break room of the Bethel trooper post, an evidence custodian rips open carefully labeled bags of what was evidence: seized plastic bottles of R&R whiskey and Sailor Jerry’s rum. Down the kitchen sink goes booze that never made it to customers in local option communities. It’s a small success for the Bethel based Western Alaska Alcohol and Narcotics Team. But one day’s success will be followed by another challenging day.

Angela Womack is one of three WAANT investigators in Bethel who spend their waking hours chasing down leads, tracking the movement of alcohol, and building long term cases.
“Constant. It’s constant,” said Womack.

No one know for sure how much alcohol moves illegally from hubs like Bethel to the dozens of villages banning either the importation or possession of alcohol.

Investigator Todd Moehring says it can be a high stakes business.

“Last year there were reports of snow machines, as the ice was basically breaking, making their last runs across there river,” said Moehring. “Risks are definitely taken to run these things.”

There’s big money in bootleg alcohol. A bottle that costs around 10 bucks in Anchorage can fetch hundreds in dry villages. Transportation and logistics dictate the price. The closer to Bethel and the Kuskokwim ice road, the cheaper the bottle. In Toksook Bay, primarily reachable by air, they say a 750 milliliter bottle sells for 300 dollars, and had heard that one had been auctioned off for 700 dollars.

The three officers are tasked with enforcement for 56 villages in the YK region. The work takes them on the river, to the airport, and to postal facilities to investigate mail. When in Bethel, they dress in plainclothes to blend in.

Bethel’s unique alcohol laws allow unlimited importation but there are currently no local sales. People bring in alcohol in their luggage from Anchorage or make orders by mail from liquor stores, which come in by air carriers. The stores do big business with the Delta. The state’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Board receives notice when a customer buys more than 4 cases of liquor in a week, and they pass that information on to the troopers.

One day in March nearly 200 liters were ordered between four customers. One week in February, a single customer ordered 81 liters. The first quarter of 2015 saw the equivalent of nearly 1100 bottles in large orders.

Moehring says that information can become part of a case.

“Some folks are selling just so they can have their own alcohol. Some are selling strictly for financial gain, and these organization go all the way back into Anchorage and they’re shipping it out here to the villages because there is such financial gain,” said Moehring.

Investigator Jerry Evan calls it a never ending battle.

“When we investigate and successfully complete a case and arrest people, there’s other people who pop up and take their place. It’s like a revolving door for us,” said Evan.

Evan says there isn’t single profile of who sells.

“One lady told us she was going to sell booze because she needed to buy diapers for her kid. Everybody has their own reason as to why they want to sell. That’s why some people say we have subsistence bootleggers, they sell to makes ends meet. And then there are those who sell to make profit,” said Moehring.

The second half of the team’s mission is combating drugs in the region. Investigator Moehring says the recent rise of heroin has added a troubling new ingredient to the illegal alcohol economy.

“We know of people who weren’t bootlegging before that are now because they’re hooked on heroin. So we know alcohol and marijuana sales are used to fund heroin sales as well. You can’t separate them out, it’s a big spider web, and it’s all interconnected,” said Moehring.

Tips from the public are their bread and butter. Moehring says the office gets no shortage of anonymous tips, but it’s not always directly actionable information. Having someone speak on the record goes a lot farther for prosecution. In the end, Evan says every bottle counts.

“We want to think we’ve maybe saved a homicide or an assault from occurring in the village. It makes me happier if I seen 10 bottles or 12 bottles,” said Evan. “That mentality helps me a lot when I get up in the morning and think, hey what am I going to do today?”

Odds are, the phone will be ringing, bringing new bottles and new cases to chase.

A Bethel teen has started her own business, a women’s clothing consignment store. The 17-year-old senior at Bethel Regional High School opened ‘Arctic Belle Boutique’ in November, making her one of the community’s youngest entrepreneurs.

Kate McWilliams describes a new item that just arrived in her store as she displays it on a mannequin.

“She was sitting on a gold mine. This is a David Green Furriers Mouton fur jacket. There’s like patterns in cow fur, I’m not even sure – they must have dyed it. The lady bought it for $900 on clearance and I’m selling it for $500,” said McWilliams.

The 17-year-old also has more practical items to like sweaters, jeans and accessories. But she says it’s not just about business, in a town where there are few social venues, the boutique fills a void for women.

“What I like about when there are a bunch of customers at the same time, everyone acts like they know each other. Everyone’s like chatting like, ‘oh that’s cute! If you don’t like that, let me try it on. It’s like a social gathering. I like that this could be the place to escape and do something good for themselves,” said McWilliams.

Here’s how the shop works: people bring McWilliams their old clothes to sell. She gives them 40% and the store keeps 60%. McWilliams keeps track of the sales and clients can then use revenue from sales of their old clothes to buy new ones.

Her shop is in an unlikely location. A pink sandwich board at the turnoff to her store reads, ‘Arctic Belle Boutique,’ and little pink arrows guide customers down a dirt road to her shop. But the rustic retail locale, at the end of a dead-end road on the edge of town in an unfinished addition to her family’s home, “is really Bethel,” she says.

“I knew it would have to be rustic because the building isn’t finished and I have to work with drywall and plywood floors. It was hard cause I didn’t want it to look gross, I didn’t want it to look trashy. But I think with the peg board displays and the recycled furniture, I think it really comes off as, organic,” said McWilliams.

The boutique is sandwiched between a bed and breakfast, a dog yard and a mini-farm complete with a garden, high tunnel greenhouse and a chicken coop. Her family sells produce and eggs. Surrounded by entrepreneurship, McWilliams says it must have rubbed off on her. The idea for Arctic Belle Boutique started with a yard sale, this past summer, she says, where she was in charge of selling her family’s old clothes.

“I set up like a mini store in our porch and I put up displays and had everything organized. It was so much fun helping our customers find what they wanted,” said McWilliams.

She carefully merchandized sweaters and tops, accessorizing with scarves and jewelry and, to her surprise, they flew off the tables and shelves. The 17-year-old says she knew she was onto something.

McWilliams grew up in Bethel and is a 17-year-old senior at Bethel Regional High School. She balances schoolwork and sports with running her shop, so it’s mostly open on weekends. McWilliams’ success at the yard sale planted the seed for her business. It wasn’t long before she got a business plan together and got some training. She also got a boost from the ‘Best in the West’ small business competition, where she received more training and start-up funds.

“I won $3,000 in grant money, and that’s helped so much with starting the place up. I mean, before I got the money, I thought, I don’t need this money. I’m going to start it up no matter what. I’m so determined, but, wow, I don’t think I could have done this without ‘Best in the West’,” said McWilliams.

Officials say McWilliams is the youngest person ever to win a ‘Best in the West’ grant. Earnings from her shop are going into a college fund. McWilliams says she plans to start university in the fall. But until then, she’s open for business and socializing.

A privately-owned Cessna 185 airplane made an emergency landing at Nome’s City Field airport on Thursday afternoon.

Update Thursday, 3:45 pm: The Nome Police Department received a distress call regarding a small aircraft “that possibly would not make the city landing strip” just before 1 o’clock on Thursday. The Nome Volunteer Ambulance and Fire Departments were dispatched along with law enforcement officers.

Nome Fire Chief Jim West, Jr. says the single-engine Cessna 185 departed Nome earlier on Thursday, and was on its way to White Mountain when the pilot noticed the plane’s landing gear was out of alignment on one side.

The pilot returned to Nome, and performed an emergency landing at City Field that further damaged the plane’s landing gear — but resulted in no injuries, according to emergency personnel.

Nome Police confirm that the pilot was the only individual on board, and was not injured.

Right now, a lethal strain of bird flu is wreaking havoc in the Lower 48. It’s clear that migrating flocks have something to do with spreading the illness between farms and across continents — but exactly what is still fuzzy.

A remote spot in Southwest Alaska may hold some clues.

The Izembek National Wildlife Refuge is pretty far off the road system — unless you count the avian highways that run overhead.

“Izembek provides wonderful staging habitat for large numbers of migratory birds both from Eurasia and North America,” says Andy Ramey, a geneticist with the U.S. Geological Survey. “So there’s potential for viruses to mix and be spread among birds at that location.”

Ramey and his colleagues recently published a new study on bird flu. To figure out how migration might be helping the virus get around, they visited the Izembek Refuge every fall when Emperor Geese and Northern Pintail ducks were passing through.

Over four years, the researchers collected almost 3,000 swabs and fecal samples. None of them contained deadly flu, like the kind that’s killing off poultry at farms in the Midwest.

But Izembek did show an exact match for a harmless strain of bird flu that’s only been found in China and South Korea.

After some genetic tests, Ramey says, “what we found was these viruses were sort of hybrids. That is, they’re essentially half-Eurasian and half-North American.”

These mixed-up viruses aren’t uncommon at the edge of the continent. Moving further inland, Ramey says you’re more likely to find pure ones. And those are what researchers have been looking for to prove that migration’s spreading bird flu.

There’s been a lot of effort “to find an apple in the basket of oranges, or an orange in the basket of apples,” Ramey says.

Finding a half-apple, half-orange virus in birds on both sides of the Pacific Ocean has never happened before, according to Hon Ip. He’s with the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin.

“One possible mechanism of how this happened is that a Eurasian virus was brought by wild birds into Alaska and a reassortant virus emerged from a co-infection there that now generated this combination virus — which has a little bit of Eurasian genes and a little of North American genes,” Ip says.

From there, it might’ve hitched a flight back to Asia with a migrating duck or goose. Or the hybrid virus could have spread out from Russia.

Either way, it’s a long journey. But Ip and Ramey say there might be more versions of the bird flu out there taking a similar path.

Going forward, Ramey wants to continue testing birds in the Izembek Refuge — to find out what kind of viral baggage they’re bringing with them and what happens when it gets unpacked across borders.

The study on avian flu at the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge will appear in the August edition of the journal Virology.

A new regional tribal government, new taxes, and a constitutional convention will be considered when the Calista-facilitated Regional Committee meets Monday in Anchorage.

The delegates will look at major changes to how the YK Delta is governed through four main resolutions under discussion. The first option being considered would strengthen the role of the Association of Village Council Presidents. Amendments include changing the name to the “Association of Sovereign Yupiit Villages,” providing for direct election of the President, and modifying the charter to allow the President to take executive action to carry out directives from the board.

The next option is to create a new borough government under Alaska state law, with the goal of strengthening the region’s political voice.

The third option is a constitutional convention to establish a regional tribal government with the intention of assessing taxes currently being paid by regional and village corporations to the United States and State Governments.

Willie Kasayulie is Chairman of the Calista board of Directors, as well as the Regional Committee and its steering committee.

“I think the strongest of the three options would be a regional tribal government format. In that concept we basically create a two-house system, similar to the state and federal legislative structure. One side of the house would include tribal representation and tribal governments, the other house would be the house of organizations,” said Kasayulie.
A draft 12-page constitution lays out a regional tribal government, complete with three branches of government, power for law enforcement, and fish and game management. The resolution looks at capturing income taxes from native corporations and assessing taxes on regional lands and businesses.

The Regional Committee formed this February after the Calista board of directors voted to create the group to study problems with current legislation affecting Alaska Native people, tribal government, and corporations, and come up with a strategic plan. A 16-person steering committee has met several times since the spring. Calista’s website says more than 50 tribes have registered for the second full meeting in Anchorage.

Several regional organizations have passed resolutions opposing the Regional Committee and regional tribal governments, including the Bethel Native Corporation and Bethel’s tribe, ONC among others.
The Association of Village Council Presidents provided a list of 16 groups opposing an earlier AVCP resolution in support of a regional tribal government, or the Calista Regional Committee process. Myron Naneng is AVCP President.

“That has come up before but it has been rejected by tribal governments in the villages because they want to ensure they have their local tribal power. This happened 1986 and 2000. We’re kind of perplexed by the fact that Calista wants to move in this direction,” said Naneng.

A final option calls for no changes in governance and would terminate the regional committee. The meeting agenda includes a vote on whether to pursue any of the governance options.
The Regional Committee meets at the Egan Center in Anchorage Monday. Calista’s board approved 200-thousand dollars to run the committee process. Several corporate sponsors made it possible to fly in delegates to Anchorage for the meeting.

KYUK requested to broadcast the proceedings for both of this year’s full meetings, but Calista declined. When KYUK requested that a reporter attend the meeting, a spokesperson said the meeting was closed to the public and to the media. It’s open to shareholders and descendants, space permitting.
Resolutions and draft constitution are posted on Calista’s webpage.