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- [00:07]
Casey Grove
Alaskans learned about that pollution through the media. They did not learn about that from the state or from the Province of British Columbia.
- [00:14]
Environmentalists say the state has failed to inform southeast residents about mining pollution from Canada. From Alaska Public Media, this is statewide news on Alaska News nightly for Friday, November 28th. Good evening. I'm Casey Grove. Also tonight, western Alaska residents evacuated from storm damaged communities learn construction at an Anchorage nonprofit.
- [00:35]
Victoria Lidell
I do think that this is really helping them stay positive and stay hopeful. They've all been so grateful for this training.
- [00:42]
Casey Grove
Those stories and more tonight on Alaska News Nightly. Ten years ago this week, the state of Alaska signed an agreement with British Columbia that sought to give Alaskans a say in the development of mines upstream of southeast Alaska. Environmental advocates say Governor Mike Dunleavy's administration has walked away from key pillars of that agreement, but state officials say they remain committed to keeping cross border rivers clean. Alaska Public Media's Eric Stone reports it.
- [01:11]
Eric Stone
Is a boom time for mines in British Columbia and there are a few reasons for the rise of renewable energy and the growing importance of microchips and, of course, President Trump's trade war. Provincial leaders have fast tracked a variety of resource development projects, including some proposed mines upstream of communities in southeast Alaska.
- [01:29]
Casey Grove
The majority of this region is staked with mining claims.
- [01:32]
Eric Stone
That's Brianna Walker with the group Salmon Beyond Borders, which has campaigned for stricter limits on mines near rivers that cross into southeast Alaska. Ten years ago, Governor Bill Walker signed an agreement with the premier of British Columbia that he said would give Alaskans a greater voice in the future of B.C. mines. It led to the creation of a working group where senior officials in Alaska and B.C. would meet twice a year to discuss mining and the environment. Brianna Walker says that was a reason for optimism. But she says in the years since, the Dunleavy administration has failed to live up to those commitments. She points to a few issues, including the Dunleavy administration's decision to discontinue water quality monitoring on cross border rivers in 2021. She'd also like to see meetings between provincial and state leaders include other stakeholders like Alaska tribes and fishermen. Walker points in particular to pollution at a mine near Hyder at the state's southeastern tip.
- [02:22]
Casey Grove
Alaskans learned about that pollution through the media. They did not learn about that from the state or from the province of British Columbia. And that's a clear example, in my opinion, of how the state is abdicating the responsibility that they have to Alaskans.
- [02:37]
Eric Stone
The Dunleavy administration disagrees. State officials point to web pages maintained by the state and by B.C. detailing the ongoing work between the two governments. And they say the water quality monitoring that ended in 2021 duplicated similar efforts at the federal level. Sam Dapsevich at the state Department of Environmental Conservation says the state has continued to advocate for Alaska's interests at working group meetings. Just last month, at the most recent cross border meeting, Dapsevich says the Alaska delegation asked for an update on the cleanup of the Tulsaqua Chief Mine, which has been polluting the Taku river near Juneau for decades. And in response, the company working on cleanup is planning to hold a public webinar in early December.
- [03:14]
Casey Grove
And I just want people to understand that our agencies are deeply involved between the two the two governments advocating for.
- [03:22]
Sam Dapsevich
Cleanup, and we're using shared science to.
- [03:25]
Casey Grove
Protect these rivers, daptovich says the state.
- [03:27]
Eric Stone
Remains committed to ensuring Alaskans voices aren't lost in the process. Reporting in Juneau, I'm Eric Stone.
- [03:42]
Casey Grove
An Anchorage woman who survived a bear mauling this summer says she's grateful to all of the public safety agencies that scrambled to rescue her. Victoria Lydell recently recounted the attack as she thanked those who saved her. Alaska Public Media's Wesley early has more.
- [03:57]
Wesley Early
Lidell says she was hiking alone on the Dome Trail in east Anchorage on July 22. Then around 2pm she heard a brown bear barking towards her. She shot her bear spray at it, but it ended up knocking her to the ground.
- [04:10]
Casey Grove
I don't remember being dunked down, but.
- [04:11]
Victoria Lidell
I do remember laying there being chewed.
- [04:14]
Casey Grove
On and trying to play dead, she says.
- [04:16]
Wesley Early
The attack lasted less than a couple minutes, but she suffered several injuries, including lingering nerve dam to her arms and cuts to her jugular vein in her neck.
- [04:25]
Victoria Lidell
There were a hundred staples in my head. She chewed on my head or clotted up and those are okay. There's still lots of numbness and same with the stitches and stuff on the jugular.
- [04:42]
Casey Grove
They're healing, but they're kind of a pain.
- [04:43]
Wesley Early
After the bear ran off, Lidell called 911 from her Apple watch and was on the phone with the dispatcher for roughly 90 minutes before a helicopter rescued her. A On Tuesday, more than a dozen public safety workers gathered at an East Anchorage fire station to meet with Rydell after she wrote the city a letter asking to thank them for saving her life.
- [05:01]
Victoria Lidell
It feels great. I mean, they're all, they're wonderful people and they're all, you know, they're all very, very much dedicated and, you know. And I gotta say, when I wrote the letter, I remember just thinking, I'm really proud to be in the town and live in Anchorage.
- [05:15]
Wesley Early
One of the men Lidell was able to thank in person was Ted Fussell, operations battalion chief with the Anchorage Fire Department. Fussell was incident commander for the rescue and says many agencies came together to respond to Liddell's attack, including state troopers, the Bureau of Land Management, Anchorage Police and Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson personnel. Fussell says the outcome couldn't have been better.
- [05:36]
Casey Grove
It's a pretty good feeling to be able to throw a bunch of professionals together into a high stress situation, high risk, low frequency type situation and have it come out as well as it did.
- [05:50]
Wesley Early
As for Lidell, she says she still has a lot of recovering to do from the attack, but she says the incident has left her grateful for being alive.
- [05:57]
Victoria Lidell
I'm not exactly proud of it, but I'm glad I survived. Yeah, I guess time will tell what it really means at the end.
- [06:07]
Wesley Early
She added that she's dedicated to living her life more fully and not procrastinating as much as reporting in Anchorage, I'm Wesley Early.
- [06:15]
Casey Grove
No major damage was reported after a magnitude 6 earthquake rattled Alaskans across south central Thanksgiving morning. According to the Alaska Earthquake center, the quake struck at 8:11am yesterday with an epicenter 37 miles northwest of Anchorage. Michael west is the state seismologist and directs the Alaska Earthquake Center. He says the quake struck about 45 miles beneath the surface. I think it's important to keep in mind how deep it was, so even if you were directly on the ground above it, you were still 45 miles away. This is a type of earthquake that.
- [06:48]
Sam Dapsevich
We expect in that area.
- [06:50]
Casey Grove
Alaskans across Anchorage, the Matanuskas who sit in a burrow and Kenai Peninsula reported feeling strong, prolonged shaking. West says people felt it as far away as Fairbanks. He says the actual ground rupture was over in a matter of seconds, but that people might have felt shaking for anywhere from a few seconds to tens of seconds. West says this level of shaking is expected in the area roughly every several years. We've not heard of any significant damage yet. I would fully anticipate a little bit of cracked drywall here and there, and I won't be surprised if we hear of other incidents, but my expectation would be pretty minor damage. He says to expect small aftershocks over the next weeks or months, and he requests that anyone experiencing damage or major impacts report them to the Alaska Earthquake center and at Earthquake Alaska. Edu. Still to come on Alaska News Nightly, advocates for small business Saturday say shopping locally keeps more dollars in the local.
- [07:53]
Economy it's keeping food on the table for people. It's keeping their kids doing sports. It's allowing them to also give back in meaningful ways.
- [08:01]
That's ahead. Stay with us. The Bering Sea pollock fleet has a lot of fish to catch each year, and generally they don't have a problem meeting their harvest limits. But this year, part of the fleet left an unusually large percentage of their catch in the water. KUCB's Maggie Nelson reports a series of issues slowed things down during the late season of the fishery.
- [08:21]
Frank Kelty is Unalaska's natural resource analyst. He says pollock's summer and fall bee season was slow.
- [08:27]
This year we're leaving a lot of.
- [08:29]
Pollock in the water, over 30,000 metric tons, according to the national oceanic and Atmospheric administration. That's about 10% of the total harvest for the inshore fleet. Those are vessels that deliver to land based processors as opposed to at sea facilities like factory trawlers. Generally, the pollock fleet catches its entire harvest. But Kelty says fishermen ran into issues this season with too much incidental catch of non targeted species like halibut.
- [08:54]
A large chunk of the area got closed where they had good clean pollock fishing, and then they were forced to go into areas where there was salmon bycatch issues, which was another issue. So it really slowed the shoreside sector down.
- [09:10]
Tom Enlow is the CEO and president of Unalaska's largest seafood processor, unisea. He says bycatch was a challenge, but not the only one this season.
- [09:19]
And then there was a series of storm fronts that moved through it.
- [09:23]
He says those storms seem to hit almost on a weekly basis, forcing vessels into port. He says they lost a good chunk of their usual processing time.
- [09:31]
When you throw in the cleanup days that are normally scheduled, we probably lost about a third of the season.
- [09:36]
The other Bering Sea pollock sectors caught all of their harvest. Enloe says they're not as susceptible to issues with weather and relocation. That's likely because they process at sea and don't have to factor in travel days to get to land based plants. The pollock harvest cap for 2025, which includes both A and B seasons, was set at about 1.4 million metric tons, a small increase from last year's capacity. Unisea processed about 150,000 metric tons of that total this year. Fisheries managers will meet at the beginning of December to set harvest limits for the upcoming year. Reporting for kucb, I'm Maggie Nelson.
- [10:11]
An entangled whale was found dead near Kodiak earlier this month. Scientists believe it was caught in Some kind of old fishing gear. As KMXT's Brian Venoit reports, it's at least the 13th dead humpback reported around the archipelago this year.
- [10:25]
Sam Dapsevich
Humpback whales are a common sight around Kodiak's waterways, often reported breaching and splashing near fishing boats. But sometimes, like earlier this month, they're reported entangled or dead. Matt Vandale, the Schoonach tribe of Kodiak's natural resources director, was one of the responders in mid November. He's been training for years to help save entangled whales, but this one likely died about a week before it was reported.
- [10:46]
Casey Grove
She was about 28ft long, had a pretty massive severe entanglement. The entanglement was probably initially a line that she got through her mouth and was not able to free herself and then started spinning and she had three or four wraps around her tail.
- [11:05]
Sam Dapsevich
Stock Van Dalen Officials from the national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Alaska State Parks found the whale stuck to the bottom of the water. She was found with several cuts around her body from the line, some 6 inches deep. Humpbacks can generally hold their breath for up to 45 minutes. Vandale says it likely died from a mix of exhaustion and drowning. The team didn't do a full necropsy, however. He estimated it was just a year old when it died.
- [11:28]
Casey Grove
It's really frustrating and a bummer that she wasn't spotted while she was still alive because she would have been a perfect candidate to attempt a disentanglement.
- [11:36]
Sam Dapsevich
Van Dael and the other biologists removed the gear, but it wasn't immediately clear what type of fishing it was used for.
- [11:42]
Casey Grove
The main thing right now is just trying to figure out what this gear is and where she may have encountered it.
- [11:48]
Sam Dapsevich
The metal is heavily rusted and tangled, so there's a lot of uncertainty. He brought some fishermen in to try to identify it. The leading guesses are longline gear or some sort of derelict pot. Van Dael says there is a silver lining, though.
- [12:01]
Casey Grove
It did give the Kodiak team excellent opportunity to practice with whale disentanglements, albeit on a dead one. But it was very good, safe, controlled situation.
- [12:10]
Sam Dapsevich
He says any entangled marine mammals should be reported to the federal government's hotline or directly to the tribe for them to start working with federal officials in Kodiak. I'm Brian Benoit.
- [12:30]
Casey Grove
For several southwest Alaska communities, it took one night of hurricane force winds and floods to destroy what will take years to replace, if it can be replaced at all. How and where to begin is a question that Seven men tackled at a construction workshop offered by the Alaska Works Partnership, a nonprofit agency that is mostly funded by the state. Most are from Kipnock and had to move to Anchorage when their village was evacuated after the storm. This time, as KNBA's Rhonda McBride found out, instead of disaster, opportunity came knocking at their door.
- [13:04]
Rhonda McBride
The whack of a hammer, the buzz of the saw, those are the sounds of horror.
- [13:13]
Casey Grove
Three and three eighths larger and three and three eighths smaller.
- [13:17]
Victoria Lidell
They just lost their homes. They lost everything.
- [13:20]
Rhonda McBride
Tiffany Caudle is the training coordinator for Alaska Works Partnership, which offered a one week program on how to frame a house. I do think that this is really helping them stay positive and stay hopeful.
- [13:34]
Victoria Lidell
They've all been so grateful for this.
- [13:36]
Rhonda McBride
Training and they're all volunteers like Devin Mann.
- [13:40]
Casey Grove
This is the door and this one's gonna be the window.
- [13:44]
Rhonda McBride
Devin looks sharp in a brand new hoodie given to him after a military cargo plane airlifted him and almost the entire community of Kipnock to Anchorage. He came with only the clothing he had on and feelings of trauma after a five mile ride in a floating house.
- [14:03]
Casey Grove
The way the house was rocking, how.
- [14:05]
Victoria Lidell
Fast we were going, the worst experience ever had.
- [14:10]
Rhonda McBride
The rest of Devin's family made it to the school, but Devin, who is 19, and his 16 year old brother stayed behind to salvage stuff that was floating away. Suddenly, the water came up and trapped them in their house. And as the water carried it away, they took every bit of bedding, towels and clothing that they could find and shoved it against the wall to stop the water from coming in. They kept bailing it out with buckets and, but it was knee deep.
- [14:38]
Casey Grove
I thought something bad was gonna happen.
- [14:40]
Victoria Lidell
To the house, like break apart. I thought that would be it for us, but I almost gave up.
- [14:47]
Casey Grove
But.
- [14:49]
Eric Stone
I had hope. I had hope.
- [14:55]
Rhonda McBride
It is hope that keeps Devin going.
- [14:58]
Victoria Lidell
Everything we're learning in here and doing.
- [15:00]
Casey Grove
It'S gonna be useful in the future for our village.
- [15:05]
I mean, honestly, I can't stress it enough.
- [15:08]
Use your wrists, William.
- [15:09]
Rhonda McBride
Andrew is impressed with his crew of.
- [15:12]
Casey Grove
Trainees for what they went through.
- [15:14]
I'll be honest here, their attitudes are awesome.
- [15:17]
They're wanting to learn. They've been great.
- [15:19]
Rhonda McBride
Andrew says one week of training in basic construction skills is not enough to know how to rebuild a village, but it's a start.
- [15:27]
Casey Grove
The class have been going so great that I think they're going to be telling all of their neighbors, all of their friends. I think there's going to be a.
- [15:34]
Lot more demand for training Tiffany Cottle.
- [15:36]
Rhonda McBride
Is hopeful Alaska Works can line up more agencies and businesses as partners.
- [15:41]
Victoria Lidell
If they can, we would really appreciate them helping us fund more classes to keep helping these Alaska residents that need it more than anybody else.
- [15:51]
Harley Hedlund
So what I want to talk about.
- [15:53]
Casey Grove
Right here is how is this corner actually put together?
- [15:56]
Rhonda McBride
William Andrew has enjoyed working with this crew of trainees. Like them, he's Yuppik, originally from New Stewyhawk in Bristol Bay, and he's worked in this business long enough to know that far too often construction jobs in villages go to outside contractors. But he hopes this time will be different.
- [16:16]
Casey Grove
I'm excited about their future and I'm.
- [16:18]
Hoping that they get to rebuild it.
- [16:22]
Rhonda McBride
For now, the hope is this training will lead to jobs and other opportunities to learn and for Devin Mann, someday, a chance to return home and put things right.
- [16:33]
Casey Grove
What if they need help and I want to step up and I want to know what to do in that moment.
- [16:39]
Rhonda McBride
Because for Devin and so many others, rebuilding a village starts with hope.
- [16:45]
Casey Grove
One nail I've got something to nail right here.
- [16:48]
Rhonda McBride
One lesson.
- [16:50]
Casey Grove
I also have something to nail right here for the panels that go this.
- [16:53]
Rhonda McBride
Way and one brave step at a time. In anchorage, I'm Wanda McBride.
- [17:03]
Casey Grove
The Alaska Small Business Development center is encouraging Alaskans to spend locally. As the nation's busiest shopping weekend kicked off today, a report from the National Retail Federation expects a record 187 million people to shop between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Tomorrow is Small Business Saturday, an annual event that promotes spending at small local businesses. Harley Hedlund is the director of marketing and communications for the Alaska Small Business Development center in Anchorage.
- [17:31]
Small Business Saturday is our Super Bowl. It is our favorite time of year.
- [17:36]
When you spend $100 at a local business, $63 stay in the local economy compared to $22 at national chain stores. That drops to $0 if you buy something online. Almost all of the businesses in the state are classified as small, and they employ almost 140,000 Alaskans, according to the center. Almost 80% of small businesses nationwide say this upcoming holiday season is crucial to their overall profitability, according to the US Chamber of Commerce. As business owners grapple with tariffs and overall economic uncertainty, Hedlund says that spending locally has a ripple effect through the community. Local businesses support local charities at four times the rate of national chains.
- [18:17]
It's keeping food on the table for people. It's keeping their kids doing sports. It's allowing them to also give back in meaningful ways.
- [18:25]
In Anchorage, the Anchorage Downtown Partnership has put together a map of businesses downtown holding events for small business Saturday. You can find it with this story on alaskapublic.org. FLINGIT and Denina Writer and playwright Vera Starbard recently clinched her fourth Emmy nomination for the PBS show Molly of Denali. The Alaska State Writer laureate wrote an episode about the show's titular character navigating the complex history of Thanksgiving to create a celebration that honors Alaska Native culture. KTOO's Jamie Deeb spoke with Starbart about the nomination and writing the episode.
- [19:09]
Jamie Deeb
Vera Starbard was nominated for outstanding writing for a preschool animated series for an episode of Molly called Thanks for Giving.
- [19:16]
Victoria Lidell
Hey everyone, it's me, Molly.
- [19:18]
Casey Grove
Molly.
- [19:18]
Jamie Deeb
The episode aired last year and follows Molly and her friends as they learn why some Alaska Native people don't celebrate Thanksgiving. Starbart says she'd been pitching the episode early in the show's creation.
- [19:29]
Harley Hedlund
It was sort of a Let me add it, you know. I want to tell a Thanksgiving episode from a Native perspective. I don't personally celebrate Thanksgiving.
- [19:40]
Jamie Deeb
In the episode Grandpa Nat, Molly's grandfather, talks about why he doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving and calls it a time of mourning. He spoke about new people who outlawed many indigenous traditions and destroyed different cultural pieces.
- [19:55]
Casey Grove
Sometimes people do awful things when they don't understand other people's way of life.
- [20:01]
Jamie Deeb
Starboard says the scene explaining that traditions were outlawed was the core of what she wanted to convey with the story.
- [20:07]
Harley Hedlund
It wasn't something lost like I think when we hear about it it's as if we forgot it. That Native people just sort of blacked it out for some reason. It was taken from us. It was very forcefully and violently taken from us. And that is difficult to do in a show like Molly. When you're trying to talk to 4 year olds and 8 year olds and you don't want to re traumatize people with it, but you do want to tell the truth and you want to tell the full truth that really hasn't been told to us in our history books.
- [20:34]
Jamie Deeb
In the rest of the episode, Molly and her friends host a community wide celebration that brings back Alaska Native traditions, including time to mourn. In the episode, Molly asks her Auntie Myrna about it.
- [20:45]
Casey Grove
How can you be sad and celebrate?
- [20:49]
Victoria Lidell
When we remember our ancestors together and.
- [20:52]
Rhonda McBride
Talk about what was lost, we know we're not alone.
- [20:58]
Victoria Lidell
Then we can all heal together and celebrate what we have.
- [21:03]
Jamie Deeb
Camino grieving through ceremonies like a Hlinget Kuweek, also known as a potlatch, was also outlawed. Sarbard says she wanted to bring that into the show.
- [21:11]
Harley Hedlund
I don't see many people talking about communal grief outside of Native communities. I think Native communities, we talk about it a lot and I don't see that many other places. This, to me was a gift the Native people could give the rest of the world. This is how you grieve together, and it's a good thing to grieve together.
- [21:29]
Jamie Deeb
StarBroad says this fourth nomination means a lot to her, but it's a bittersweet moment. She says she thought about her dad when she was nominated again. She brought her mom and sister to the Emmy ceremony for her previous nomination and wished she could have brought her dad as well.
- [21:43]
Harley Hedlund
He had said, oh, but next time you're nominated, I'll go to that one. And he passed away a couple months ago and that was definitely on my mind. Just that he was so confident that I would be nominated again for my work, but also sad that he can't be there.
- [22:05]
Jamie Deeb
The winner of the outstanding writing for a Preschool Animated Series will be announced at the Children's and Family Emmy Awards ceremony in March in Juneau. I'm Jamie Deep.
- [22:14]
Casey Grove
As winter settles over rural Alaska, the heat is building up inside gyms across the state where mats are filled with hungry, tired and determined wrestlers. High school senior Ari o', Domin, who lives in King Salmon, is one of those wrestlers. Despite a disability that makes it hard for her to use her left arm. O'Dahen is one of the best wrestlers in the state in the 235 pound weight class. Her high school classmate, senior Liv Harvilla, talked to o' Damman about how Bristol Bay has shaped who she is as a person and an athlete.
- [22:45]
Victoria Lidell
I've lived in Bristol Bay my whole life. I do basketball, wrestling, nyo. I have four siblings, three sisters and one brother. I'm a senior. How big is your graduating class? 4. Made you join wrestling 10th grade year two weeks before regionals, Liv, Brookie and Bella were like, we need a girls team for wrestling, like, really, like right now. And I was like, okay. And I, I just got out of surgery for my foot and I was still healing, but it was good. And so I just joined and I stuck with it. What was your mindset going into this season? I'm not a cocky person, so I'm not going to be like, oh, I'm going to beat everyone. So then like, I'm just, I'm going to do good this match. I can do it if I really put my mind to it. What inspires you? The little girls like my sisters, they want to do wrestling like me and my uncles who helped me a lot with it, telling me what moves can help. I just want to be inspiration for the little girls. What challenges have you faced being a women's wrestler? The weight classes there's a lot less than the men's. The one below mine is 185, which is £50. And it's just hard because the girls that I wrestle, they're bigger than me, and it's kind of hard. And my arm, it's just kind of hard because some girls are like, oh, look at her arm. And I'm just like, okay, now can you elaborate on your arm? I was born with Erb's palsy. They had to break my collarbone, which made all my nerves and my shoulder ball up, so I can't use it that much. What has that been like for you and what have you learned from those challenges? With my arm, there's just like, not really anything I can do but really try harder and make myself believe that I can beat them. And it really helped. And with the weight classes, I don't really care because, like, I know I'm strong and I can do it.
- [25:16]
Casey Grove
That was Ari o' Damman speaking with student radio reporter Liv Harvilla about her mindset tackling her senior wrestling season. O' Damen will continue to train to prepare herself for the regional and state tournament in December. Foreign. That's all for this edition of Alaska News Nightly. If you missed any of tonight's stories, we're online@alaskapublic.org and wherever you get your podcasts. We had reports tonight from Eric Stone and Jamie Deep in Juneau, Wesley Early, Rachel Cassandra, Rhonda McBride and Ava White in Anchorage, Maggie Nelson in Unalaska, Brian Venoit in Kodiak and Liv Harvilla in Naknik. Our audio engineer is Crystal Hyde. Annie Feit helped produce tonight's show, and I'm Casey Grove. Have a great weekend. This is statewide news on Alaska Public Media.