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The Environmental Protection Agency announced a settlement this week with the operators of the Red Dog Mine for nearly two dozen hazardous waste violations. Records show that Red Dog Mine failed to identify hazardous waste in its laboratory for over four years.

Teck Alaska, Inc. operates the mine, one of the world’s largest producers of lead and zinc located about 80 miles north of Kotzebue.

In June, Teck agreed to pay the EPA over $429,794 for hazardous waste violations spanning from October 2019 until January 2024. EPA representatives said those last four years amount to the largest hazardous waste violation in the mine’s more than 30 years of operating.

An inspection in 1995 revealed violations of a lesser nature. In that case, the two parties reached an informal resolution without any penalties for Teck. According to the EPA, it is the fourth recent violation involving Alaska mines; the others involved gold mines.

A representative from the EPA said that those 20 counts outlined in a consent agreement between the EPA and Teck include Teck’s failure to identify, store, and treat hazardous waste, as well as a failure to properly notify and report hazardous material to the EPA. The agency said that these are “serious violations.”

Kevin Schanilec, a hazardous waste compliance officer for the EPA, said while there have been no identified effects on humans or the environment from the violations, there could have been.

“Acids were stored in containers and a tank; they weren’t labeled,” Schanilec said. “If someone didn’t know what was in that container, they might have done something with it, or if it got spilled, people wouldn’t have known what was in the container.”

The EPA has what’s informally referred to as a “cradle to grave” policy for handling hazardous waste through the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. According to Schanilec, a mine’s laboratory – which was where the violations occurred – represents the cradle side of a mine’s waste stream. These areas are used primarily to assess core samples to determine their concentrations of particular metals.

A representative from the mining company wrote in an emailed statement that the violations were due to a “different interpretation of EPA requirements for identifying, storing and disposing” of the lab’s sample residuals. “These residuals went through a treatment process in accordance with our permit and regulations and had no negative environmental impact. Teck is updating its operational procedures to align with EPA’s guidance. For context, less than 200 grams of solid residuals per month are generated which is about the weight of 80 pennies,” the representative wrote.

But Schanilec said that isn’t entirely accurate.

“The amount of waste in question was such that, had Teck notified us as is required under the regulations, they would have been a category in a higher category of waste generation that exceeds 1,000 kilograms (2,204 pounds) per month,” Schanilec said. “So the amount of wastes in question were much greater in weight than a stack of pennies.”

The EPA verified that Teck had paid the nearly $430,000 penalty for the violations. The agency said the company has until June 2025 to ensure that their laboratory’s tank and associated piping where hazardous waste is stored is clean and does not have the potential to contaminate the environment.

The U.S. Coast Guard encountered four People’s Republic of China military warships in the Bering Sea earlier this month.

The foreign vessels spotted July 6 and 7 were following international law, and told Coast Guard personnel they were practicing “freedom of navigation operations.”

Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Michael Salerno said encounters with groups of Chinese vessels have been an annual occurrence in the Bering Sea since 2021, and Chinese naval ships have been spotted in the area since 2017. He said he didn’t have information about encounters with Chinese vessels prior to that.

In 2021, the Coast Guard spotted four warships in the region. About a year later, the Coast Guard cutter Kimball stumbled upon Chinese and Russian military vessels traveling together near Kiska Island. Then in 2023, U.S. Navy warships were dispatched to the Aleutians, after 11 Chinese and Russian military vessels were found operating in the region.

The latest four ships were in international waters inside the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, an area up to about 200 nautical miles offshore, where the U.S. has jurisdiction over natural resources.

The crew of the Kimball detected three of the latest ships 124 miles north of Amchitka Pass in the Aleutian Islands. Crew on an HC-130J airplane found another ship northeast of Atka Island.

None of the ships broke any international rules or norms. Still, the 418-foot Kimball contacted the Chinese vessels to ensure there were no disruptions to Alaska’s coastline or national interests. The Kimball continued monitoring the ships until they entered the North Pacific Ocean, south of the Aleutians.

The iconic Burled Arch that marks the finish line of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race collapsed on Saturday near Old St. Joe’s Church in Nome. Residents looked on in awe as they took part in a Ties and Tiaras event taking place just 100 feet away at the church.

The wooden arch fell as the City of Nome experienced its first 40-degree temperatures since Oct. 31. The high temperature observed at Nome Airport on Saturday was a balmy 44 degrees.

The Burled Arch most recently underwent renovations in July 2013.

KNOM has reached out to the Iditarod Trail Committee for more details on what happens next.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has upheld its denial of a permit for the proposed Pebble Mine, upstream from Bristol Bay.

The decision issued Monday is the latest in a long string of legal and administrative rulings against the project.

But opponents of the gold mine say their fight isn’t over.

“Pebble will not be over until we have federal legislation, basically saying Bristol Bay is protected forever, and it’s permanent,” said Lindsey Bloom, a strategist with SalmonState, part of the coalition of tribes, Native corporations, fishermen and lodge owners that has fought the mine for decades.

More than a year ago, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a final determination that a mine in that area of the Bristol Bay watershed would damage or destroy miles of salmon streams and more than 2,000 acres of wetlands. The decision is referred to as a veto.

In its decision Monday, the Corps said as long as the veto is in place, it can’t issue a permit.

Pebble Vice President Mike Heatwole said the company is focused on a lawsuit seeking to overturn the veto. He points out that the Corps’ decision is based on the veto and it didn’t address Pebble’s points on appeal.

The Corps specified that its decision is made “without prejudice,” suggesting that Pebble can request a reconsideration if the EPA veto disappears.

For mine opponents like Bloom, the seemingly endless administrative appeals and lawsuits point to the need for Congress to pass a law putting a stop to the project.

“History shows us that the mining industry doesn’t take no for an answer,” she said. “And so they will continue to litigate, most likely, and keep this going for generations to come until we have those permanent protections for Bristol Bay that are so needed.”

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the Biden administration is about to deal a blow to a different mining proposal in northwest Alaska, the Ambler Mine. The Times says that the Interior Department is going to recommend against a 200-mile road to the copper deposit, finding it would “significantly and irrevocably” hurt the environment and more than 30 tribal communities that fish and hunt in the area. The report is based on anonymous sources. The Interior Department didn’t confirm or deny the story.

Ambler Metals, issued a statement urging the federal agency to reconsider. Kaleb Froehlich the company’s managing director said if the Times report is true, the agency would be making a political decision that ignores local support for the mine and denies jobs to Alaskans.

The federal government has won a permanent injunction against the state of Alaska in a case important to subsistence fishing rights.

U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason ruled Friday that state fisheries managers can’t allow salmon fishing on a long stretch of the Kuskokwim River if their orders conflict with federal management decisions aimed at protecting fish for subsistence use.

The dispute arose in 2021, a drastically low chinook salmon year. The Federal Subsistence Board and other federal officials sharply curtailed salmon fishing on 180 miles of the Kuskokwim, where it winds through the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta National Wildlife Refuge. They closed that section of river to non-subsistence harvests. They also limited subsistence fishing to local rural residents and imposed restrictions on when they could fish and what gear they could use.

The state Department of Fish and Game issued an order allowing all Alaskans — not just federally qualified subsistence users — to engage in the limited harvest.

Nearly the same conflict arose again in 2022. The federal government, the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission and the Alaska Federation of Natives, among others sued, asserting the subsistence fishing rights Congress established in a 1980 law. The case is called United States of America v. State of Alaska.

Judge Gleason issued a temporary injunction in 2022 blocking the state from issuing conflicting orders. Friday she made it permanent. The state’s conflicting fishing orders would hamper the U.S. government from enforcing the federal law protecting subsistence rights, she ruled, and federal law trumps state regulations.

The state maintains it has authority over fishing on Alaska rivers, even where they flow through federal refuges. It says the Alaska Constitution requires it to manage fish for the benefit of all Alaskans.

If past subsistence cases are any guide, the state will appeal. Subsistence advocates have won a series of cases against the state that went as high as the U.S. Supreme Court.

Rosemary “Rosie” Porter, remembered as a fierce advocate for the people of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta as owner and editor of The Tundra Drums newspaper, died in Anchorage on March 1, 2024 at 85 years old.

Porter moved to Bethel in 1974, where she quickly found work at KYUK developing educational and news programming, as well as editing a weekly KYUK newspaper and program guide called The Tundra Drums.

When KYUK came under fire for violating federal public media guidelines with The Tundra Drums, Porter saw an opportunity. She bought the paper and set up shop in a small space at Leen’s Lodge, a two-story, flood-prone roadhouse on the Bethel riverfront that has since been demolished.

One of Porter’s friends from the time, Robin Barker, recalls the importance of the newspaper in its early days.

“She really started that newspaper from nothing, you know, from a little mimeographed sheet,” Barker said. “And it was a really critical time for news for people in Bethel and in the villages because things were happening fast.”

With Porter at the helm, The Tundra Drums thrived. Porter told the Alaska Dispatch in 2011 that at one point, the paper had as many as 20 employees and put out the largest weekly newspaper in the state: 48 pages or more.

Friends say that Porter had an eye for cultivating talented reporters. Richie Goldstein, who wrote for The Tundra Drums from 1979 to 1984, originally came to Bethel to work as a teacher but was soon working for Porter.

“Rosie said, ‘Well just come to work for me.’ So Friday was my last day at school, and Monday I was the editor of The Tundra Drums,” Goldstein said.

Goldstein said that Porter was generous to a fault.

“In 1980, she took the entire staff and a bunch of other people, maybe 10 or 11 of us, on a two-week trip to England,” Goldstein said.

Porter also spent the money she made flying reporters to villages to cover critical issues across the region. In 1984, she even sent Goldstein to file stories and photos for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

“I covered Greco-Roman, and Judo, and fencing, and weightlifting,” Goldstein said.

Another reporter who Porter sought out was Bethel resident Beverly Hoffman, who worked part-time for both KYUK and The Tundra Drums in the mid 1970s. Hoffman credits Rosie with showing her the ropes and inspiring her.

“She just covered so much and she wasn’t afraid. My gosh, she would print the salaries of every state employee person and write in those honest stories about what was going on,” Hoffman said. “I thought, ‘Wow, this is one powerful woman dealing with, you know, powerful men and issues way back then.’”

Mary Lenz, who came to Bethel to cover the first running of the Kuskokwim 300 Sled Dog Race in 1980 for the Associated Press, ended up working for Porter on and off for a decade.

“Rosie combined the best of concern for community, a dedicated journalistic experience, and a lot of fun. She made things fun,” Lenz said.

According to her friends, Porter’s editorial style was also fun, if not outright edgy at times. One memorable headline using the Yup’ik word for defecation: “Governor Anaqs on Bethel,” is said to have gotten the attention of then-Gov. Jay Hammond and reversed a decision to veto funding for the Yukon-Kuskokwim (Y-K) region.

Porter did not have a conventional childhood, according to her son, Gregory Porter. She was born Rosemary Brugman in Union City, New Jersey in 1939, the second-oldest of four children. Due to difficult family circumstances, in 1957 she and her three siblings set off across the country by train to San Francisco to find work. Porter was able to land a job at the San Francisco Chronicle, laying a foundation in print media and sparking a long and storied career in journalism.

In San Francisco, Porter and her siblings raised the funds to purchase ship passage to Alaska, arriving in Fairbanks in the summer of 1958. There, alongside opening a modeling and finishing school, Porter worked in a variety of media roles, including as a weather anchor for television stations in both Fairbanks and Anchorage. She married Don Porter in Anchorage in 1962.

In 1990, Porter sold The Tundra Drums to the Calista Corporation, calling it quits after 15 years at the helm to pursue other ventures, including indulging her lifelong love of travel.

Porter is survived by her children, Kendall Larson and Gregory Porter.