Environment

Alaska saw its eighth hottest year on record in 2025 according to a new report, with temperatures coming in at 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the last three decades on average.

“This last year was a confirmation that, unfortunately, we are warming our planet faster than we hope,” said State Climatologist Martin Stuefer, who authored the 2025 annual report by the Alaska Climate Research Center.

“That has implications,” Stuefer added. “Ice melting, permafrost thawing, wildfires, changing of our environment.”

The report highlights dwindling sea ice as a top line issue. Alaska’s sea ice peaked in March at more than 5.5 million square miles – an area more than 1.5 times the entire United States — but that’s the lowest sea ice peak recorded in the last 47 years.

“It’s a big area. But still, it was smaller than in any year observed before,” Stuefer said. “We are heading towards an ice-free Arctic later this century.”

The northern parts of the state are warming most rapidly, with the Interior and North Slope showing the largest increases from normal temperatures. Utqiaġvik recorded the highest relative temperatures – about 2.7 degrees above average.

Southeast Alaska, meanwhile, had a near average annual temperature last year, but the region had far less snow than is typical. Juneau specifically saw a warmer year and received near-normal levels of precipitation. But the area also saw just half its average snowfall due to frequent mid-winter rain, the report said.

Steufer emphasized that, while Alaska in general saw warmer temperatures, it also endured extreme weather events like wildfire activity, ex-typhoon Halong and an intense, widespread December cold snap.

“I had one person asking me, Are we heading into an ice age now?” he said. “Of course not. We are heading into a warmer phase on the global scale.”

That extreme variability across the state, he added, is becoming more common as temperatures rise with climate change.

After multiple weeks of closure, Juneau’s recycling center is back up and running at limited capacity. 

The partial reopening comes after the center has been closed on and off since late December, after Juneau was hit with back-to-back record-breaking snowstorms, which inundated it with a backlog of materials to process. 

Denise Koch, the city’s director of Engineering and Public Works, says the center will begin by accepting only cardboard and mixed paper, and only for this Friday and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3:30 pm. Other recyclables like plastic and glass are still on hold.

“We know that recycling is an important service for people, and we know it’s been really inconvenient for people to hang on to their recycling,” she said. 

The city contracts with Waste Management to operate its recycling program in Lemon Creek. Waste Management is the private company that runs Juneau’s only landfill, which is estimated to run out of space in the next decade.

Since late January, the city has been asking residents to hold onto their recyclable material while it fixed multiple issues with the recycling baler, which is the most critical piece of equipment for the center to operate. The baler is the machine that compresses the recyclables into blocks, which are then shipped by barge to recycling facilities in Seattle that repurpose the materials.

Koch said while the baler has since been fixed, the city is opening the center up at a limited capacity so that the machine does not get overloaded. She said the center’s staff will then decide further openings depending on how the baler performs this weekend. 

“We are, of course, hoping to be able to do that as soon as possible,” she said. “We are planning to make another announcement on Monday, after we see how things go on Friday and Saturday, and how quickly we’re able to move through material.”

More information and updates can be found on the city’s RecycleWorks webpage.

The U.S. Forest Service officially kicked off its public process for the Tongass National Forest Plan Revision on Wednesday, with an initial 30-day public comment period intended to guide a draft plan and environmental review. 

The Tongass National Forest is the largest national forest in the U.S., with more than 16 million acres covering 80% of Southeast Alaska, including more than a thousand islands.

Forest-wide decisions made at the federal level shape the environment and the lives of Southeast residents — from industrial uses like mining and timber, to tourism and recreation, to the health of ecosystems and quality of subsistence harvests.

The last forest management plan was completed in 2016. That plan phased down the amount of old-growth available for logging over several years. The revised plan will set the stage for how the agency intends to manage the forest over the next 10 to 15 years. 

In its public notice released Tuesday, the agency outlined six proposed goals for the updated plan that address land use designations; economic uses of the forest; the rise in cruise ship visitors, collaboration between different groups; subsistence hunting, fishing and gathering needs; and Indigenous knowledge.

The public notice said the agency will ensure the plan is consistent with two of President Trump’s executive orders aimed at maximizing mineral extraction and logging in the Tongass. 

The agency also noted that a long-term timber demand analysis underway at the Pacific Northwest Research Station will inform projected timber sale quantities. The last analysis, published in 2016, estimated demand for Tongass forest products would range from roughly 41 to 76 million board feet per year between 2015 and 2030.

The public comment period for the scoping phase ends March 19 at 11:59 p.m. The agency expects to publish a draft revised plan and draft environmental impact statement this fall, followed by a 90-day public comment period. The final plan is expected next May.

A Canadian company with plans to mine for gold near the face of Herbert Glacier applied to punch an access road through state land in December. The state opened a public comment period for the road last week. 

Grande Portage Resources wants to build a 15 foot-wide and 1.3 mile-long unpaved road with helicopter pads connected to Glacier Highway around mile 27. The road between Herbert River and Eagle River would allow the company to stage drilling supplies for transportation to the proposed New Amalga mine site. 

This would be the first segment of road that will eventually reach the mine site if the U.S. Forest Service approves the operation, according to the company’s application to the state. 

The Forest Service approved exploratory drilling at New Amalga last spring. Grande Portage has been flying in prospecting supplies from Mendenhall Valley and wrote in its application that building a new staging site and access road will shorten the helicopter flights.

The road would cut through forest and wetlands in a popular recreation area near the Eagle Glacier Cabin trail, Herbert Glacier Trail and Windfall Lake Cabin Trail. 

If approved, the company anticipates road construction will begin this spring. 

The deadline to submit public comments is March 13 at 5 p.m. and comments can be emailed to john.driscoll@alaska.gov. 

In July, a state inspector boarded a cruise ship in Juneau for a routine review. The inspector’s report includes a photo that shows a metal drum full of chunky, black sludge — a mixture laden with sulfur and heavy metals.

That particular drum was slated to be offloaded on land, in British Columbia. But on many ships, systems known as scrubbers ensure the toxic sludge never materializes on board. That’s because it’s diluted with sea water and released back into the ocean.

Now, state Sen. Jesse Kiehl is looking to address the issue. The Juneau Democrat is drafting legislation in hopes of cracking down on the technology, which produces a largely invisible – and little regulated – source of water pollution.

“There’s still dirty fuel belching sulfur into Alaska. And that’s a problem,” Kiehl said in an interview last month.

The issue is not isolated to Alaska. And neither are efforts to address it. A growing list of ports, states and countries are zeroing in on the problem, which stems from rules adopted by the International Maritime Organization in 2020.

Cutting air pollution led to new water pollution

The IMO wanted to cut air pollution, namely sulfur pollution, from ships that burn heavy marine oil. While some cruise and shipping companies complied by using cleaner fuels, known as distillate fuels, others invested in scrubbers.

The technology allows them to continue burning dirty fuels by using seawater to remove pollutants from ship exhaust. So-called “open loop” systems send that contaminated water right back into the sea.

Experts say each individual open loop scrubber can produce up to 3,600 metric tons of water per hour. And some ships run multiple scrubbers at once.

When exhaust with high levels of sulfur and other pollutants is released into the air, they can increase the risk of cancer, respiratory complications and cardiovascular diseases. 

Scientists have been studying what happens when those pollutants are released into the ocean. But a growing body of research indicates it can harm marine life, including mussels and crustaceans, like crab, said Eelco Leemans, an advisor to the Clean Arctic Alliance, a global coalition focused on the shipping industry.

“The evidence is so clear that we have no reason to doubt that,” Leemans said.

Regulatory challenges

A tangled web of rules and regulations surrounds the issue. The IMO sets the global standard. And for now, the international body allows ships to use scrubbers to comply with its air pollution rules.

But there’s a growing push for that to change. Just this week, the agenda for an IMO subcommittee meeting in London featured more than a dozen proposals from member states and other organizations related to scrubber regulation.

“We believe that scrubbers do not provide the solutions that they were designed for, because basically they transfer air pollution to water pollution,” Leemans said during a recent webinar hosted by the Clean Arctic Alliance ahead of the meeting. “In the end, IMO should really do something about this.”

In the meantime, governments are taking matters into their own hands. In July, for example, 15 nations and the European Union moved to prohibit scrubber discharge in internal waters and port areas – and will consider extending the ban to about 12 miles offshore.

The U.S. has taken a less aggressive approach. The Environmental Protection Agency regulates scrubbers by way of a permit that sets limits for the concentration of pollutants in discharge. But at least in Alaska, the agency has rarely enforced those limits – despite hundreds of violations in some years.

The EPA did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

State regulators in Alaska, for their part, conduct routine environmental inspections on ships, which often entails observing scrubber operations and reviewing washwater data. In some cases, they flag problems for the EPA.

But in the end, the state Department of Environmental Conservation says it can’t enforce the EPA’s scrubber regulations themselves.

“Scrubber washwater is not addressed in State statutes, regulations, or the State’s general permit for vessels, and the State currently has no authority to enforce a federal permit,” Ben Eisenstein, DEC’s cruise ship program manager, wrote in an email.

Kiehl says that puts Alaska and other states in a bind.

“It’s really difficult with the federal government stepping in and telling the state: ‘You have nothing to say about scrubber discharge,'” he said.

Clean fuel regulations

So localities and states can’t punish ships for violating federal standards. But some are pursuing – or have already implemented – other ways to get at the problem.

Kiehl, the state lawmaker, didn’t provide more details about what his legislation might entail, or when he might introduce it. But he said he’s exploring a range of options, and nodded to other governments that have largely taken one common path: addressing the type of fuel that vessels use in the first place.

Most experts point to California. The state adopted a rule in 2008 that required ships to use cleaner, lower-sulfur fuels within 24 miles of shore. The goal was to reduce air pollution – plus cancer and other public health risks – from dirty fuels.

The California rule predated the proliferation of scrubbers. But it means the state dodged the problem before it even existed. Ships are already using low-sulfur fuels in California waters and don’t need to scrub them clean.

“We don’t have the issues with wastewater discharge because (scrubbers are) not a compliance option,” Bonnie Soriano, of the California Air Resources Board, told KHNS.

Soriano was among experts who said that cleaner fuels don’t require new technology or systems; ships can simply swap them in. She also said most vessels already carry them.

“There are some differences in prices, but likely they have the fuel on board if they’re doing a string that involves California,” Soriano said.

Meanwhile, in Washington state, the legislature is mulling a similar approach. A bill there would require cleaner fuels within 3 miles of shore.

State Rep. Debra Lekanoff is the bill’s sponsor. She’s originally from Yakutat but now represents communities in northern Washington, including the San Juan Islands. During a January hearing, she drew a connection between her two homes.

“What’s happening in my own backyard, where my Tlingit name Xixch’I See comes from, is the very impact that happens upon the Salish Sea,” Lekanoff said.

A growing list of tribes and organizations support Alaska taking a similar approach. Just one example: The Skagway Traditional Council in October adopted a resolution that called on the state to require the use of cleaner fuel – and on the shipping industry and the IMO to do their part, too.

Industry opposition

The cruise and shipping industries have opposed efforts to require clean fuels or eliminate scrubbers – a dynamic that is already playing out in Washington.

During the same hearing, industry representatives said a clean fuel requirement would be burdensome and unnecessary, and that it would amount to a roundabout attempt to address a water pollution problem by way of an air pollution regulation.

“This unnecessarily restricts authorized environmental technologies,” said Donald Brown, a vice president of Cruise Lines International Association.

The trade group did not respond to a request for comment. But pushback in Washington state and beyond suggests that any potential legislation in Alaska could have a long road ahead.

Aaron Brakel, of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, said he doesn’t expect any potential legislation would be signed into law this year.

“What’s really important, though, is getting a chance for the Legislature to start considering the issue,” Brakel said.

“To be having a conversation about the state of Alaska taking action on dirty fuel and exhaust scrubbers is a huge step in the right direction,” he added.

The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is less than a month away and set to run on its normal northern route this year.

Race officials said that’s a relief, after low snow conditions last year forced the race to start in Fairbanks, over 200 miles north, for the fourth time in history.

Snow conditions are generally much better than they were last year, said race director Mark Nordman, although there were concerns about the trail until just recently.

“It wasn’t that long ago that I was still concerned about going over the Alaska Range, because there wasn’t a lot of snow up by Rainy Pass Lodge, one of our checkpoints,” Nordman said. “But we’ve got plenty of snow now, and so I think we’ll be good.”

In 2025, race officials said a portion of the trail outside of Nikolai was impassable because of the lack of snow. Nordman said that section, called the Farewell Burn, is notoriously challenging for its ice and windblown ground. But it currently has some snow coverage and “looks doable,” he said.

The 1,000-mile race typically alternates routes each year, running the northern route on even years and the southern route on odd years. The trail is the same for the first 350 miles before splitting at the ghost town of Ophir, then rejoining at the Yukon River village of Kaltag before heading to Unalakleet and continuing up the Bering Sea Coast.

Clearing brush off the trail takes more work now than it used to, Nordman said.

“Where we might have only brushed the trail every four or five years in certain areas, it seems like it’s every other year now,” he said.

One section in particular required extra effort.

The remnants of Typhoon Halong last fall decimated the trail between Kaltag and Unalakleet, Nordman said. The Iditarod hired a crew to clean up blown-down trees along that 85-mile stretch, and it’s now ready for mushers, he said.

“They spent a full month out there, cutting, opening it up, grooming,” Nordman said. “Otherwise nobody would be going over that trail this year.”

This year’s Iditarod starts March 7, with its parade-like ceremonial start through Anchorage. The race will officially start March 8 in Willow.