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The Regulatory Commission of Alaska approved Juneau Hydropower’s application to become an electric utility on June 11. The decision requires Alaska Electric Light and Power, previously Juneau’s sole electricity provider, to help connect the new utility to the grid. But Juneau Hydropower must finance and build its proposed hydroelectric project before its federal license expires, or the commission will revoke its approval.

The decision comes after more than a decade of equipment and ownership disputes between the new utility and AEL&P over what’s called ‘interconnection’ — the point where electricity from separately owned facilities joins to supply power through the same transmission line. The two companies will now have to work together to bring a new hydroelectric project online. The proposed project at Sweetheart Lake would grow Juneau’s renewable energy capacity by 19.8 megawatts. That’s enough to increase the borough’s hydroelectric capacity by nearly 20%.

AEL&P’s total hydroelectric capacity is 102 megawatts. The Snettisham Hydroelectric Plant operated by AEL&P currently supplies two-thirds of Juneau’s electricity and has a capacity of 78.2 megawatts.

Duff Mitchell, the managing director at Juneau Hydropower, says his project will increase energy security in Juneau in the event of a natural disaster. There was a two-month outage in 2008 when an avalanche hit multiple electric towers and took out about a mile of the Snettisham transmission line. Mitchell says the project will also help the city flourish.

“There’s going to be energy security for the future needs of Juneau, whether it be air-source heat pumps, electric cars, dock electrification or just growth and prosperity for Juneau,” Mitchell said.

The commission approved a service territory where Juneau Hydropower can deliver electricity that includes the stretch from Lena Point through Berners Bay. 

To shuttle power there, the company must build several pieces of infrastructure including a hydroelectric plant at Sweetheart Lake, a switchyard near Mist Island to connect Sweetheart with Juneau’s existing transmission line, and an additional transmission line from AEL&P’s Lena substation to the Kensington Mine more than 30 miles away. The company also plans to build a substation at Echo Ranch Bible Camp near Berners Bay to serve potential future customers and a battery energy storage system.  

But to complete the work, Juneau Hydropower needs money and has limited time. The commission made its approval conditional on both.

Juneau Hydropower has to file proof that it has secured enough funding for the project, which is estimated at about $265 million dollars, before it builds. Construction must begin by September 8, 2026, and finish three years later — deadlines that match the new utility’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission license restrictions.

Mitchell says he’s moving as quickly as possible to make this happen. 

Financing Energy

The commission exempted the company from a requirement that a utility must serve 10 or more customers. So far, Juneau Hydropower’s only contracted customer is the Kensington Mine, which is projected to use 8.5 megawatts of electricity. The gold mine currently powers its operations with diesel.

Mitchell says that other potential customers have indicated a desire to receive electricity from Juneau Hydropower, including the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, Goldbelt Corporation, Grande Portage Resources, GreenSparc, Alaska Energy Metals Development Corporation, Alaska Communications and Rainforest Telecom.

But Mayor Beth Weldon says she is skeptical that Juneau Hydropower can build a reliable customer base. 

“I’ve said all along that they have to come up with year-round customers, and right now, we don’t have, other than Kensington, there’s no year-round customers,” Weldon said. 

Alec Mesdag is the CEO at AEL&P. He says that he doesn’t think Juneau Hydropower’s proposed project is financially viable.

“They have one customer versus our 18,000 customers,” he said. “So it’s an incredible burden to try to recover all of the revenue you need from one customer.” 

Juneau Hydropower proposes to pay for most of the hydropower project through federal and state loans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service and the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA), the public agency that owns Snettisham. The loans have not yet been approved. Mitchell says he will also rely on federal investment tax credits, which the company hasn’t earned yet. 

Those uncertainties prompted a comment from the commission. “We are concerned about JHI’s lack of loan approval,” the commission wrote in the decision. “However, it would not be just or reasonable for us to require JHI to have approved Sweetheart financing in order to be granted a certificate when JHI has been told it must have a certificate in order to get financing approval.”

Mitchell says he is confident that he will be able to secure funding by the September deadline. 

The Interconnection Point 

The point where new development at Sweetheart Lake will connect to the Snettisham transmission line, called the Mist Island switchyard, is where the largest disputes have erupted between AEL&P and Juneau Hydropower.

Last month, Mayor Weldon brought a resolution to the Juneau Assembly supporting AIDEA’s ownership of the switchyard. But the commission decided Juneau Hydropower is to own it, writing that AIDEA will instead own a motor-operated bypass switch so that power would still flow from Snettisham to AEL&P’s customers in the event of a catastrophic failure at the Mist Island switchyard. 

Still, Mesdag insists that the switchyard would be capable of interrupting power from Snettisham to Juneau in the event of a failure. 

Mesdag wrote in an email to KTOO that AEL&P is “deeply disappointed in the commission’s decision regarding interconnection, which sacrifices the security of Juneau’s most important generation resource to instead accommodate a small group of private investors that has never built, owned, operated or maintained electric generation or transmission infrastructure.” 

Juneau Hydropower is contracting with Ameresco, a company that builds energy infrastructure, and David Burlingame, an electrical engineer with companies based in Anchorage, to design, build and maintain the project. The commission wrote that relying on contractors doesn’t indicate a lack of technical expertise on Juneau Hydropower’s part. 

Juneau Hydropower must file interconnection and joint-use use agreements with the commission by June 25. AEL&P has until July 11 to appeal the decision.

One of Eaglecrest Ski Area’s four chairlifts is permanently closed. That’s according to a decision announced on Thursday by Eaglecrest leadership. 

Eaglecrest’s general manager Craig Cimmons said it would cost too much to fix the ailing Black Bear chairlift. 

“It’s just become more clear that the investment in time and money would be far more than we have right now,” he said. 

The announcement comes as the ski area projects it will run a deficit for the foreseeable future. That’s in order to repair some broken and aging infrastructure, boost pay to employees and prepare to operate year-round with a new gondola. 

The Black Bear chairlift is more than 50 years old. It serviced the east side of the mountain, including the East Bowl Chutes and the Drifter, Marmot and Vertigo runs. It was out of service this past season after a maintenance team discovered a broken bearing that impacts its entire system. 

Cimmons said further inspection showed additional problems with the lift, which would require more investment than the ski area felt the lift was worth.

Eaglecrest’s three other lifts are Ptarmigan, Hooter and Porcupine. Cimmons said the ski area wants to focus on investing more in those lifts as they also continue to age. That could include expanding those lift’s capacities to carry more people. 

“We have to devote our energy to Ptarmigan, Hooter and Porky to make sure that they are 100% so we don’t have the same issues with them coming up,” he said.

Cimmons said the Black Bear lift will remain at Eaglecrest until leadership comes up with a plan to break down its infrastructure.

A shipping container full of empty industrial-sized fish food bags fell off a barge heading from Baranof Island to the landfill in Petersburg. Dozens of the plastic bags have washed up near Juneau over the past week.

They came from the Hidden Falls Hatchery, owned by the Northern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association. 

Adam Olson, the operations manager at the aquaculture association, says high winds likely caused a container to go overboard near the southern tip of Admiralty Island in May. In a press release, the aquaculture association said that the barge company it contracted to transport the trash, Lituya Freight Runners, did not contact them or make any efforts to recover the bags.

Instead, another vessel traveling through Chatham Strait notified hatchery staff about the incident on May 20. Olson says he did not report it to any authorities. A representative at the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation couldn’t specify an official process for reporting such an incident in Alaska. 

Hatchery staff attempted to clean up the spill.

“We flew the area to see what was there, and we sent staff from the facility out in skiffs to collect refuse out of the water,” Olson said. 

Olson says hatchery staff retrieved more than a thousand bags over six days, but there could be thousands left in the water. 

The bags are white and the size of large dog food bags. Most of them are from an aquaculture brand called Bio-Oregon and others are from a brand called EWOS. 

Juneau resident Wayne Carnes discovered the litter about 90 miles north of the spill site while he was on a boat trip from Gustavus to Juneau last week. He retrieved 54 bags that had washed up at Funter Bay and were floating in the water nearby. 

“We don’t want our fish eating these things, because that’s what happens to it eventually it ends up as microplastics, and we’ve got enough of that in the water already,” Carnes said.

The aquaculture association encourages those who have seen the litter to tell the Southeast Alaska Commercial Fishermen Marine Debris Clean Up program at seakmarinedebris@gmail.com.

On a small island near Gustavus, a wolf pack has decimated the local deer population – and started feeding on sea otters instead.

The shift underscored coastal wolves’ adaptability. But then one died.

“We found her in a hole, under a tree,” Gretchen Roffler, a wildlife research biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. “She had lost about a third of her body weight. She was emaciated.”

The researchers sent the carcass to a wildlife veterinarian, who did a series of tests on the animal’s liver, muscle, brain and kidneys. The results ruled out diseases and factors ranging from canine distemper to algal toxins. What they did find were elevated levels of mercury.

“They were many orders of magnitude higher than other wolf liver tissues that had been analyzed in other parts of the world,” Roffler said during an interview this week in Haines.

The finding kicked off a sweeping research project that examined different wolf packs’ reliance on marine prey for food, and how that diet might affect their mercury levels – and long-term health.

In a study published late last month in the journal Science of the Total Environment, researchers concluded that two wolf populations near Gustavus are increasingly relying on marine prey – specifically sea otters – for food. And that in some cases, like the wolf who died, the shift is resulting in potentially toxic mercury exposure.

“The ability of wolves to switch their diets from terrestrial prey to marine prey, just shows how resilient they can be. But we now know that their reliance on marine prey can also lead to the risk of toxicity,” Roffler said.

The researchers looked at a handful of areas including Pleasant Island — the island where wolves are now largely eating sea otters instead of deer. They also looked at an area of the Gustavus mainland, where wolves mostly eat terrestrial animals – namely, moose – but have started adding more marine animals to their diet.

Using hair and muscle tissue samples archived over the last 20 years, they concluded that marine-heavy diets can have dangerous consequences. That was especially the case when compared to samples taken from wolves in two other areas – Douglas Island near Juneau, and the Interior – where wolf diets are predominantly terrestrial.

Roffler said some mercury is not uncommon in predators with marine diets, like fox and polar bears.

“The thing that was unusual in our study was the severe mercury concentrations in these wolf tissues,” she said.

The study has implications for wolves and other predators beyond the Gustavus area – particularly as sea otters proliferate along Alaska’s coasts.

See otters were hunted to local extinction during the fur trade in the 1800s. But then, in the 1960s, the state reintroduced them to the region. In the time since, the marine mammal has recolonized some areas, including around Glacier Bay National Park.

“We can assume that as sea otters continue to recolonize parts of their former range and grow in numbers, that wolves and other terrestrial predators will start using them as prey,” Roffler said.

But why is mercury present in marine environments – and animals – in the first place?

Report co-author Ben Barst, an assistant professor at the University of Calgary who studies ecotoxicology, said mercury ends up in the ocean after humans release it through activities like coal combustion and gold mining.

“It can be a vapor in the atmosphere, can travel for long distances, and then eventually it’s deposited even very far away from its original emission sources. It’s deposited in rain and snow and other types of precipitation,” Barst said.

In Southeast, there’s another potential source: Glacier runoff. It holds mercury, and is increasing with climate change.

No matter the source, once mercury enters an aquatic environment, microbes convert it into a new form that easily makes its way into living organisms. Think: mussels, clams and sea urchins.

“You get all this mix of minerals in there. And of course, it’s going to go in the ocean and of course, the sediment. The clams and everything else, crabs, bury themselves in it,” said Chilkat Valley local and marine mammal hunter Tim Ackerman. “The sea otter are going to dig those up and consume them.”

By the time an otter becomes wolf prey, it can deliver a big dose to the apex predator.

“We see this in other instances with fish. You know, small fish are getting eaten by larger fish, which are getting eaten by the biggest fish, and they tend to have the highest mercury concentrations,” Barst said.

The researchers initially assumed that high concentrations of mercury in wolves could be unique to the Gustavus and Pleasant Island area, Barst said. More research is needed to determine whether that’s the case; there’s uncertainty about the contribution of glaciers and how wolf diets might fluctuate over time.

But Barst said it’s possible the trend could play out elsewhere as sea otters proliferate – and predators increasingly tap into marine food webs.

“We’re trying to get a handle on, are the concentrations of mercury that we’re seeing in Pleasant Island wolves, are those the highest that we’re going to see?” Barst said.

The village that people know as Newtok is basically a ghost town today. What’s left of the public school has been packed into more than two dozen shipping containers. It will get shipped south later this year.

No one lives in any of the houses that remain in Newtok. The only thing still operating there is the diesel generator that keeps the local cell phone tower powered.

Newtok had to move because the permafrost under the community was deteriorating. As a result, the ground was sinking and the banks of the Ninglick River were eroding rapidly – about 70 feet of land washed away each year. It’s all the result of a changing climate. And in August 2024, the Newtok Village Council voted to evacuate the last of Newtok’s residents. The community had become too dangerous.

In the fall of 2024, the final residents of Newtok moved from the low lying tundra near the Bering Sea coast to higher, safer ground on a bluff 9 miles away. It’s an effort that’s been ongoing for decades, involving several federal and state agencies, private partners, and the local tribal government.

Another move

This wasn’t the first time people who called Newtok home were forced to move. Andy Patrick, 77, is one of the oldest living residents who still remembers the old village, Kayalivik.

“One day I was probably in the sled, I don’t know, probably two years old,” Patrick remembered. “I see dogs in front of me and I feel the wind. I looked back and asked my granny, and she told me, ‘We are moving.'”

When Patrick was a toddler, the United States government sent a barge loaded with construction materials up the Ninglick River. The goal was to build a school that would be operated by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). It got stuck near present-day Newtok, so the BIA decided to stay put and build the school there.

Even 70 years ago, Patrick said that Elders knew it wasn’t a spot that would be good for permanent settlement because the low-lying ground wasn’t stable.

“That’s what my grandma used to tell me,” Patrick said. “It’s going to start wobbling.”

Over the next three decades, it became clear that the Elders were right. In 1984, a consulting firm assessed erosion along the river bank on behalf of the Newtok tribe. The cover letter to the report stated: “Relocating Newtok would likely be less expensive than trying to hold back the Ninglick River.”

Just like the land, homes in Newtok were also deteriorating for many years. None of them were ever designed or built to withstand the harsh climate along the Bering Sea coast, which is known for driving wind and rain, unpredictable blizzards, and dramatic storms, particularly in the fall.

Xavier Paniyak felt the impact firsthand.

“When bad weather hits, I used to deal with it all the time. My floor always used to flood,” Paniyak said. “When I walked you could hear the water, like a squishy sound, and toward spring, when the weather started getting warm, you could smell that black mold and white mold aroma.”

A new house

Planning for this most recent move, away from Newtok, got underway in the 1990s.

One of the biggest barriers to a complete relocation has been building enough housing at the new village site, Mertarvik.

Newtok residents started moving to Mertarvik back in 2019 and continued to do so, slowly, as houses became available.

In 2024, Paniyak and his daughters finally got their turn to head across the Ninglick River. “I’m very, very, very much at home now. And this is for my kids. I’m not doing it for me,” he said.

Now, his family lives in a big blue house with a red metal roof at the end of Mertarvik’s new main road. The move has been revolutionary. His new house isn’t moldy. He’s had asthma for years, but he said that a lot of his symptoms are going away.

“Even my girls noticed I’m not grabbing for my rescue inhaler,” Paniyak said. He used Albuterol inhalers regularly back in Newtok because the mold in the walls of his old house affected his breathing. “[Now] I feel way better,” he said.

Three designs

Three different organizations have designed and built housing in Mertarvik. There are significant differences between Paniyak’s new house, built by the Association of Village Council Presidents, Regional Housing Authority, and his next door neighbor’s.

“I’m only gonna start paying when they fix this thing up,” said Philip Carl, who lives next door. His house was designed and built by an Anchorage-based company that the Newtok Village Council hired. Carl said that he stopped making payments to the tribe a few months ago because of the house’s poor condition.

Carl and his wife, Frieda, have noticed lots of problems, including water damage and gaps developing between the tops of the walls and the ceilings. There’s mold coming through the wood paneling on the ceiling, around window casings, and in the corner along the floor in one of the bedrooms. Frieda said that she does what she can to clean with bleach regularly to keep it from spreading.

Fifteen people live in her four-bedroom house. It’s less than three years old. While she said that she’s relieved her family is safe from the erosion over in Newtok, Frieda doesn’t think that her family is healthy in their new house in Mertarvik. She’s set up three air purifiers in her house to keep the air clean, but it’s not a permanent fix.

It’s not only the new houses that have problems. As the population in the new community has increased, the critical infrastructure, including water, sewage treatment, and electricity, has all been challenged in the last two years. These are all problems a move from Newtok was supposed to solve.

This reporting was supported by the Alaska Center for Excellence in Journalism.

On the first Saturday in June — National Trails Day — Juneau’s trail maintenance nonprofit gives volunteers a chance to pick up a shovel and help with trails.

Trail Mix Inc Director Meghan Tabacek stood in the back of a pickup truck, holding up tools for volunteers to see. 

“We have the shovel, the tried and true,” she said. “Not a lot of concerns with the shovel.”

She gave volunteers advice on how avoid the shovel’s few dangers.

“My one concern is, I highly recommend holding the shovel both hands on it like this,” she said, demonstrating proper form to avoid injury.

Volunteers file up the trail with rakes, hoes, and mattocks in hand to pack muddy spots with gravel.

The volunteers came out because they care about Juneau’s trails – and lately their work has felt more vital than ever. This spring, federal funding uncertainty meant that trail work on some of those beloved trails could have been deferred. Now, the situation is more hopeful: trail workers have their jobs back, and funding may still come. 

It was Rachel Disney’s first time volunteering with Trail Mix. Instead of a hand tool, she pushed a motorized wheelbarrow full of gravel.

“Being able to get out and hike and be in the woods was my main reason for staying in Alaska when I got here,” she said. “So I want to be able to make sure that people can continue being out in the woods here.”

Disney said the future of Juneau’s trails means a lot to her. 

But that future has been uncertain. After the Trump administration canceled federal grants and fired federal workers— including dozens of U.S. Forest Services employees based in Juneau—Trail Mix leadership decided to reduce its scope in case its federal funding was canceled.

With that in mind, the organization pivoted to fundraising, and planned to work only on city-owned projects — not Juneau’s heavily-used Forest Service trails.

At the time, job cuts halved Juneau’s Forest Service trail work crew.

Donors stepped in, and Trail Mix raised just over $54,000 to put towards previously scheduled work on two heavily trafficked Forest Service trails and other projects. Tabacek said people often submit complaints about the condition of Peterson Lake and the Amalga Trail that reaches the Eagle Glacier cabin, so the group had planned the work before federal cuts came down.

“The work was already planned,” Tabacek said. “We were already hoping to do it. And so it was really great the community stepped up so we could do it.”

Tabacek planned to use the money to hire fired off Forest Service trail crew, but when she went to extend the offers, she found they had been rehired by the federal government.

“They have one full trail crew of all returning staff,” she said. “Which was really great for them, just because returning people have a lot of experience.”

And Tabacek says it looks like the majority of their expected federal funding will be honored after all. The Forest Service has not confirmed the staffing levels in Juneau. 

But she said, RIFs—or Reduction in Force efforts—still loom for the Forest Service employees. Now, federal rulings are blocking them, but Trail Mix is reserving some of the fundraised money to be able to hire two Juneau trail workers who may lose their jobs in future cuts.

“There is still kind of the omnipresent threat looming over the heads of federal workers that they might lose their job,” Tabacek said.

If there are no more cuts to trail jobs in Juneau, then the money set aside will go towards trails people want to see improve, she said. 

Trail Mix crews are currently working on a reroute trail to Mt. Jumbo, also called Sayéik, and the Thunder Mountain Bike Park.