Business

A China-based engineering company and its Canadian subsidiary will acquire 30 percent of the Tulsequah Chief Mine in British Columbia at the headwaters of the Taku River.

Mine owner Chieftain Metals says is has a non-binding agreement with China CAMC Engineering Company – or CAMCE — and Procon Holdings of Alberta to build and operate the mine.

CAMCE will arrange long-term financing for 70 percent of mine development costs with a Chinese financial institution. The agreement calls for the CEO of Procon to join Chieftain’s Board of Directors, with the right to appoint a second director when the loaned is closed. Procon will invest nearly $10 million for more than 22.4 million shares of Chieftain Metals at $4 a share.

Mine officials did not return KTOO calls, but in a news release, Chieftain President and CEO Victor Wyprsyski says Procon’s investment will provide 2013 funding to complete a feasibility study and on-site projects. No details as to what the on-site projects would be.

Chieftain purchased the property about two years ago. Wypryski has said Chieftain plans to be operating the old multi-metals mine within the next three years. Tulsequah has been closed for more than 60 years, leaching Acid Rock Drainage into the Tulsequah River, a tributary of the salmon-rich Taku. The company appears to have a cash-flow problem. It recently shut down a water treatment plant due to high operating costs. That has put it in violation of its Environmental Management Act permit from the B.C. government.

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A report that could change the way cruise ships handle wastewater is nearly done. A state science advisory panel met Sept. 19-21 in Juneau and shared some of its work with the public.

Alaska’s Cruise Ship Science Advisory Panel has spent about two years looking at options for cleaning up wastewater. That includes discharges of harmful bacteria, dissolved metals and other pollutants.

Some ships already use systems that can meet elevated standards. Some do not, while  others only discharge outside state enforcement boundaries.

The 11-member group finished its work on a preliminary report during its Juneau meeting. But the document still must undergo review. Division of Water Deputy Director Andrew Sayers-Fay says he hopes it’s available to the public by November 1st.

State Cruise Ship Program Manager Rob Edwardson says it’s an important step in a process started by the Legislature in 2009.

“The science advisory panel is using the preliminary report as a tool to assist and advise the commissioner on his report to the Legislature that’s due Jan. 1st, 2013,” Edwardson says.

A technology open house that was part of the science panel meeting presented the history of cruise ships in Alaska and current water-quality issues.

Edwardson says one is exploration of current cruise-ship systems.

“The second is the availability of additional methods that are economically feasible and technologically effective. And the third is the environmental cost and benefit of implementing any additional methods that they may find,” he says.

The feasibility issue is part of the Legislature’s charge to the panel. That led to examination of water-cleaning systems not yet used on the ships.

Sitka’s Steve Reifenstuhl represents the United Fishermen of Alaska on the science panel.

“We have looked at technology that is used in land-based facilities. There isn’t technology that has been used on cruise ships that can do that at this point. That’s not to say that it’s not feasible in the future – at a very high cost,” Reifenstuhl  says.

Higher standards were called for in a 2006 Cruise Ship Initiative approved by voters, which also created a passenger head tax. (Hear a report on that initiative.) The panel was established as part of a compromise that delayed full enforcement.

Cruise lines argued the standards could be met by allowing discharges to be diluted through mixing zones. Basically, that means sampling water a distance from the ship, rather than from the discharge pipe itself.

Seattle environmental compliance analyst Lincoln Loehr represented the industry on the panel. He says water-cleaning systems in use now are about as good as it gets.

“I don’t see that there is convincing information on the effectiveness of these additional add-ons to consistently meet the water-quality criteria at the end of the pipe,” Loehr says.

Mixing zones, or other forms of dilution, are methods opposed by clean-water activists. (Hear a report on the mixing zone controversy.)

Loehr’s specialty is permitting municipal and industrial wastewater systems. He says cruise ships can make better use of mixing zones than land-based treatment plants.

“The criteria may be met for a municipality within 20 minutes or so. For cruise ships, when underway, they’re going to be met within less than 10 seconds,” Loehr says.

Critics say that would only spread out, not reduce damage to the marine environment.

Representatives of several companies selling water-treatment systems were at the open house.

Erik Neuman of California-based Rochem Membrane Systems says dilution is a key issue that could set an international precedent.

“And that is really the big question that the panel has and that Alaska has is to set that dilution level at a proper level that will really be the basis for other states and other countries to utilize in the future,” Neuman says.

The science panel also includes a marine ecologist, a government inspector, a ship-builder and an environmental engineering professor. Some members declined to comment after state officials instructed them to avoid lengthy interviews with reporters.

Reifenstuhl, who holds the panel’s fishing industry seat, says he’s optimistic about the final results.

“The goal is to protect Alaska’s waters and I think the science panel is going to come out with a report that will do that,” Reifenstuhl says.

The panel’s report to the Legislature is formally a preliminary document. But it’s unclear what might change between its release and the deadline for a final report two years later.

Juneau resident and retailer Stuart Mark Whitehead has died at the age of 72, from cancer.

Whitehead was born and raised in Juneau, the only boy among five children born to Southeast Alaska pioneers Dr. William Whitehead and Dorothy Johnson Whitehead.

He graduated from Juneau-Douglas High School in 1958 – where he was well-known for his basketball prowess. In 1963, he completed a degree in business administration from the University of North Dakota.

After college he served in the U. S. Navy during the Vietnam War, returning to Juneau in 1965.

He was a partner in the downtown and valley Super Rexall stores and owned Juneau’s first dedicated Hallmark shop. Whitehead retired a few years ago and was living on Whidbey Island, Washington when he died.

His son, Will, is a pharmacist and credits all those years hanging around Juneau Rexall stores as a reason.

“I kind of grew up in the pharmacy. In fact after we just closed the old pharmacy down (in the Foodland Shopping Center), I had my height chart in there from the early ’70s,” Will Whitehead said.

Whitehead said his father had the traits of being a good retailer in a small town like Juneau.

“He really loved his interaction with all the customers, and Juneau was a lot smaller. He was a real people person,” he said.

Lifelong friend Andy Pekovich was also a basketball player and 1958 Juneau High School graduate. Pekovich calls Whitehead a gentle, but mischievous soul, who liked a good joke and was always upbeat.

“I never saw him really get mad at anybody, you know as a teammate never spoke harshly about another teammate or anybody on another team. And in fact in 1957 he got the sportsmanship award in the All-Alaska tournament, not only because he was a good sport. It was usually given in those days to the best player on the losing team and we just barely lost the state championship in the third game of the tournament and Stuart was by far our best player,” Pekovich said.

No services are planned for Whitehead. His family suggests friends honor his memory by setting aside a day to spend with their children.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC says it no longer plans to try to drill deep enough to reach oil in exploratory wells off Alaska’s coast this year.

Shell says it is scaling back ambitions until next summer, after one of its containment systems failed during a test. The company says that in the time remaining this season it plans to drill shallow “top holes” for wells that may be further pursued in coming years.

The company was granted two exploratory drilling permits by the U.S. government after a long struggle with environmentalists who say seeking oil in the icy waters is too risky.

A several setbacks, including problems with a drilling safety system Shell Oil volunteered to put into place, are complicating the quest to reach oil-bearing rock during this season’s short open water season. Last week, the company was forced to delay drilling in the Chukchi Sea due to ice floe movements. And Royal Dutch Shell announced Monday that a containment dome being tested off the coast of Bellingham, Wash., was damaged Saturday night in its final test.

Time needed to repair the damage, as well as delays from ice and waiting for the Alaska Native whaling season to end, figured into the decision to cancel plans to complete exploratory wells this year in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

Shell Alaska spokesman Curtis Smith did not immediately have details as to how the dome was damaged.

The acting U.S. Commerce secretary has declared a commercial fishery disaster for king salmon in some Alaska fisheries.

Rebecca Blank on Thursday announced the disaster declaration for the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, which flow into the Bering Sea off Alaska’s west coast, and in Cook Inlet in southcentral Alaska, which includes the Kenai River.

Blank says low chinook salmon returns this year and in previous years are the reason for the declaration.

It’s the second fisheries disaster declared for the Yukon River since 2009.

“It reflects that both the state and federal agencies need to consider other factors of why we’re having such a shortage of King salmon,” said Myron Naneng, President of the Association of Village Council Presidents. His organization represents 56 tribes in the YK Delta. The group passed a resolution in July requesting a disaster declaration for the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers. Naneng hopes the disaster declaration will change the King salmon by-catch numbers in the Bering Sea Pollock fisheries.

“And probably reduce that amount that they had voted into using as their limit back in 2009, that 47,000 Chinook salmon that can go up to 60,000,” said Naneng. “And I think that that definitely needs to be lowered.”*

The disaster declaration makes commercial fishermen eligible for relief if Congress approves funding.

Blank says some Cook Inlet salmon fisheries this year lost up to 90 percent of their historic average revenue.

A state report assessing reasons for the poor returns is due later this year.

A new Ford dealership will open in Juneau next month after a three-year absence.

The Stanley Auto Family – headquartered in the Kenai Peninsula – is setting up shop at the site of the former Ford dealership on Mallard Street, which closed in 2009.

The property is now owned by Alaska Glacier Seafoods. But the company will lease the parking lot to Stanley, and the old Boys and Girls Club building down the street will become a small showroom and six-bay service department.

Kevin Lauver is Director of Dealerships for Stanley Auto. He says the company is already looking for a permanent location in Juneau.

“The location that we’re at is temporary in that in the next 24 to 36 months we’re planning on building a brand new dealership down here and our Mallard Street location will become Driven Auto Body at some point as we transition into that,” Lauver says.

Stanley Auto Family already has a presence in Juneau, as the operator of Budget Car Rentals statewide. Stanley owns the Ford dealership in Kenai; Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep in Soldotna; and a Nissan dealership in Fairbanks. It also owns five Driven Auto Body shops in Anchorage, the Kenai Peninsula and Fairbanks.

Lauver says Stanley Ford already has hired a number of Juneau residents to work for the new dealership.

“We’ve recruited some pretty good people locally, most of them to run it. And we’re going to be running some ads, we’re going to be hiring,” he says. “In our ads that are going to break next week we’re going to be offering people a chance to pre-order a new Ford. The way Ford works you have to order a vehicle two months in advance, and we actually have cars that are built and are headed this direction.”

Juneau’s last Ford dealer, Skinner Sales and Service, abruptly closed its doors in Juneau, Sitka, and Ketchikan three years ago. As many as 50 people were laid off and thousands of customers were initially left without Ford service.

Commercial realtor Carlton Smith was hired then by First Bank of Ketchikan to market the property.

“And we sought all along to explain to Ford franchisees that Juneau has strong economic fundamentals and the previous operator failed for many reasons, but Juneau was not to blame. In other words, our economy was strong and there should be no reason why Ford shouldn’t come back into Juneau,” Smith says.

Stanley Auto’s Lauver says the new Juneau dealership will be selling vehicles by early October.