Economy

Juneau’s Bartlett Regional Hospital has a new management contract.

The board of directors for the city-owned facility has approved a new three-year deal with Quorum Health Resources, the hospital announced last night (Monday) in a press release. Quorum has managed the hospital for more than 20 years. The Tennessee-based firm is the largest provider of hospital management services in the country.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Quorum’s last contract paid between 350- and 400-thousand dollars a year, depending on the Consumer Price Index. Funds to operate Bartlett come primarily from charges for patient services.

In June the board of directors put the management contract out to bid for the first time in 14 years. In August, the board decided to stick with Quorum over two other hospital management companies.

Under the new deal, the board will employ the hospital’s chief executive and chief financial officers. Previously they had been employees of Quorum.

Narcotics officers say they shut down a marijuana grow operation on North Douglas Highway sometime Wednesday night.

Few details were released Thursday morning by Juneau Police Department officials, but they say as many as 181 plants were found after a search warrant was served at a residence at the 5000 block of the highway.

Along with the plants, grow equipment was also confiscated. Total value of everything seized was estimated at $200,000.

A tenant of the residence, 27-year old Scott Eberhardt, was charged with misconduct involving a controlled substance in the fourth degree and taken to Lemon Creek Correctional Center to await arraignment Thursday afternoon.

Sealaska Corporation and the Organized Village of Kasaan have signed an agreement to allow the village to manage its cultural properties.

It’s the first of many agreements to be made with Southeast tribes to preserve and protect cemetery, shamanic, historic, sacred and archaeological sites within their territory, says Sealaska Board President Albert Kookesh.

Only the regional corporation has title to the lands under the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

“The only choice we had as a corporation was to select those sites and to protect them ourselves,” Kookesh says. “We’re the only train left at the station. Nobody else has an entitlement in Southeast Alaska among the Native community where they could get title to these sites and protect them.”

Kookesh says the corporation and its board of directors have made a conscientious effort to identify some Sealaska economic lands as cultural sites for protection.

Under the agreement, Kasaan will work with Sealaska Heritage Institute to develop a preservation program and ensure that uses will not compromise historical and cultural integrity of the sites.

Sealaska Heritage President Rosita Worl says the most sacred thing to Native people is their land. She says the agreement will extend to lands in the Kasaan territory yet to be identified.

“It’s not only these particular historic sites, but it will be the yet undiscovered shamanic sites that we know are out there but our ancestors did not want to put on the map,” Worl says. “They did not want to put that on the map because they were fearful that people would come and desecrate those lands.”

The agreement was signed yesterday (Wednesday) by Kookesh, Worl, and Richard Peterson, president of the Organized Village of Kasaan.

Peterson says the Memorandum of Agreement between Sealaska Corporation, the Heritage Institute and Kasaan is very significant to the small tribe, and a testament that tribes and regional corporation can work together.

He says the tribe will be managing land it still uses.

“It’s important to not only mention that these are our ancestral homes, but that we still utilize these areas. Today we are still our own people,” Peterson says. “We live our lives as traditional people we still gather the foods, medicines, resources we need to survive as Haida, Tlingit, as Tshimian.”

Under ANCSA, the only way to put lands in Native ownership is through Sealaska Corporation’s remaining entitlement, or through the federal historical site program, which Worl calls a difficult process that takes years to complete.

The Sealaska Lands legislation currently before Congress includes a portion of Sealaska’s remaining entitlement to be used for cemetery and historical properties.

Thirty-five percent design drawings are complete for two Juneau docks and harbors projects, with construction on both set to begin next fall.

Upland improvements associated with a 62-million dollar rebuild of the city’s cruise ship docks will begin along the downtown waterfront in late September 2012. In October of next year construction will begin on a redesign of Statter Harbor in Auke Bay.

Port Director Carl Uchytil says construction is being timed to avoid the busy summer tourist season.

“We will start when the last cruise ship leaves, or maybe even a little bit sooner than that,” he says.

Uchytil updated the Juneau Chamber of Commerce on a number of docks and harbors capital projects yesterday (Thursday).

The department plans to hold more focused meetings in the next month with cruise dock and Statter Harbor stakeholders. They’ll meet with waterfront sales vendors next Wednesday, December 15th as well as January 12th at City Hall. On December 20th, port officials will hold a meeting on the Statter Harbor redesign at the University of Alaska Southeast. Times can be found on the city’s website.

The Alaska Department of Transportation is moving forward with a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the Juneau Access project.

In February 2009, Federal District Court Judge John Sedgwick directed the state and Federal Highway Administration to re-do the original EIS with a full analysis of improvements to Lynn Canal ferry service as an alternative to a new highway.

Earlier this year the state exhausted its appeals to the federal 9th Circuit Court, and decided to proceed with the supplemental EIS. Today (Tuesday), DOT announced that it has contracted with HDR, Inc. to prepare the document.

Juneau Access Project Manager Reuben Yost says the update will likely take another year and a half.

“Federal highway regulations state that, when you do a supplemental EIS, you follow the similar process for an initial EIS in that you produce a draft supplemental EIS. That’s released to the public. You have public hearings, where the public has a chance to comment. And then you analyze those comments and then prepare a final EIS, which is also released for review,” says Yost. “And then, it’s not until that process is complete before federal highways can then issue a new Record of Decision.”

The draft supplemental EIS is expected by this time next year, with public hearings in January 2013, and final completion by June 2013.

Juneau Access would extend the highway north of the Capital City by 50 miles, from Echo Cove to the Katzehin River. It would end at a new ferry terminal, where a boat would carry passengers and vehicles the rest of the way up Lynn Canal.

The project was challenged in court by the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council and other groups. Though Judge Sedgwick only ruled on the EIS issue, Yost says DOT will look at other claims made in SEACC’s lawsuit.

SEACC Spokesman Dan Lesh is hopeful that the analysis will seriously consider the pros and cons of the proposed road.

“We identified what we thought were misleading assumptions about traffic forecasts under the different road and ferry alternatives. Ways of analyzing the difference between ferries and roads, we felt like didn’t properly capture the differences between roads and ferries, and was a little biased toward roads,” Lesh says. “We identified issues around sea lions, old growth forest habitat, cultural resources, bald eagle nests – all those things are just part of the public interest and they should be addressed.”

HDR, the firm DOT contracted to do the supplemental EIS, has extensive experience preparing Federal Highway Administration environmental documents in Alaska. Yost says the update will cost about two-million dollars, most of which will be paid for by the Federal Highway Administration.

An agreement between two federal agencies announced Monday leaves just one formal step before the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska – or NPR-A – is open for development.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has refused to allow Conoco Philips to access the area via a bridge across the Colville River. That’s because the Environmental Protection Agency had declared the Colville an Aquatic Resource of National Importance.

The agreement between the EPA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declares a bridge across the river as the preferred alternative for accessing the reserve. Final approval by the Corps of Engineers is expected within a few weeks. That will allow Conoco to begin working on leases it holds in the CD-5 oilfield on the North Slope.

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski says the agreement is great news.

“For years we have been talking about the potential available within the NPR-A. So to finally be on the way where Conoco will be able to advance a bridge over the Colville River – to get to the other side – is very welcome news,” says Murkowski.

Conoco-Philips’ spokeswoman Natalie Lowman says the agreement is a positive step. But without final approval she couldn’t say when work would get underway in the CD-5 field.

“Because we haven’t seen the permit or its conditions, we can’t really say when we would start. But receiving this permit is one of the key steps in order to receive the go-ahead to sanction the project,” Lowman say.

Murkowski says she spoke with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who assured her that the EPA is no longer objecting to the development. Though she says it remains to be seen what conditions the agency puts on its final approval.

“We are very hopeful that there will be no surprises with these conditions once we learn the exact nature of them,” says Murkowski.

Congressman Don Young welcomed the agreement, but added – quote – “It should have happened sooner.” And Senator Mark Begich praised Conoco-Philips and the Interior Department for continuing to work toward a deal. He said “Alaska’s oil and gas industry needs to hear some good news on the development front.”