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Wesley Early
Alaska Public Media's Every Little Bit recognizes
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Narrator/Anchor
people who go above and beyond to
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Wesley Early
strengthen our community in Anchorage and south central Alaska.
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Senator Rob Myers
I think if someone wants to start a community event, they should just go for it.
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Ashley Edgington
I believe in serving your neighbor. Love one another.
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Shelby Herbert
There's always something that you can do
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Senator Rob Myers
wherever people meet one another's needs.
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Narrator/Anchor
All of us are enriched by that.
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Wesley Early
Do you know someone doing good in your community?
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Narrator/Anchor
Nominate them at alaskapublic.org Littlebit.
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Senator Kathy Giesel
It's our responsibility to make sure that we are getting value for this gas.
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Narrator/Anchor
State lawmakers consider a bill that calls for more transparency in the latest version of the Alaska Gas Line Project from Alaska Public Media. This is statewide news on Alaska News nightly for Monday, March 16th. Good evening. I'm Wesley Early. Also tonight, a change to work requirements could limit some veterans access to federal food security programs.
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Angela Johnson
This bill didn't come with a job offer, didn't come with we'll provide transportation.
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Narrator/Anchor
Those stories and more tonight on Alaska News Nightly. The head of a powerful state Senate committee is calling for stronger legislative oversight and changes to state oil and gas taxes as the developer of the Alaska LNG project approaches a final investment decision. As Alaska Public Media's Eric Stone reports, the sponsor says it's an effort to ensure the state gets a fair deal if a North Slope gas pipeline moves forward. But others worry it could have a chilling effect on the project.
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Wesley Early
Anchorage Republican Senator Kathy Giesel calls it the Alaska Gas Line Transparency and Accountability act, and she says it would update state law to reflect a very different project than lawmakers considered the last time the Legislature passed a major gas line bill in 2014.
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Senator Kathy Giesel
It's our responsibility to make sure that we are getting value for this gas.
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Wesley Early
The bill is sprawling and complex. A document from Giesel's office lists 16 different topics covered in the 37 page bill. But first, a quick reminder of what we're talking about. The state is currently partnering with the private developer Glenn Farne to advance the Alaska LNG project. It includes an 800 mile pipeline taking gas from the North Slope to South Central for both in state use and for export, plus processing plants at each end of the line. Giesel says the bill is all about making sure the state and Alaskans actually benefit if the pipeline goes forward. For now, she says she's not sure Alaskans will.
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Senator Kathy Giesel
What we're looking at is how to ensure that this pipeline actually brings gas to Alaskans that we can afford and that it doesn't leave us with a tremendous debt or infrastructure that's only partially completed because a company went bankrupt and left the state.
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Wesley Early
Giesel says she's frustrated that so many details about the project's finances have become confidential since the state turned over three quarters of the project to Glenfarn. And some elements of the bill seek to give lawmakers and the public more transparency. For instance, the Alaska Gas Line Development Corporation would have to disclose major investors and gas buyers associated with the project, and it couldn't do business with a foreign entity without lawmakers approval. And it would set up a system that could allow legislators to sign confidentiality agreements to view non public information like updated cost estimates or internal projections. Giesel says that that's essential information for lawmakers.
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Senator Kathy Giesel
They're not used to understanding what we need to know and what our focus is. So at this point I think we just we have a failure to communicate.
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Wesley Early
Other pieces of the bill would change the state's oil and gas tax system to make sure the state would actually make money from the gas line. It's still early days. The bill just had its first hearing a few days ago and that means it's hard to say for now how far it'll go in the two months or so remaining in the legislative session. But the bill is already taking some heat. Fairbanks Republican Senator Rob Myers, a member of the all Republican minority caucus, says some of the provisions make sense, like beefing up the legislature's ability to audit the gas line agency. But he says for the most part the bill goes too far.
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Senator Rob Myers
There's a lot more going on than just oversight and accountability and transparency. This is the state moving to take over more and more of the project.
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Wesley Early
And he says the sheer fact that the bill exists, whether it passes or not, could have a chilling effect. He says it's hard enough to convince customers or investors that this project deserves
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Senator Rob Myers
their money if the attitudes in this bill that are expressed are what we are projecting out to investors, especially where we're altering the deal at this stage of the development. Who's going to want to invest for this?
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Wesley Early
Giesel and some other allies in the Democrat heavy bipartisan majority coalition say they're not trying to block the project. But Giesel says she didn't review the bill with Glenn Farn before ruling it out publicly. Glenn Farn, for what it's worth, says the existing legal framework has taken the project to the cusp of becoming a reality and would generate millions in tax revenue. But in a statement, the stopped short of opposing the bill outright and would not say whether the bill would make the pipeline more or less likely to move forward. For now, Glenn Farn says its biggest ask of the Legislature this session is for a break on property taxes. That is not a part of Giesel's bill. But Governor Mike Dunleavy says he plans to introduce a bill in that vein in the coming days. Reporting to Juneau, I'm Eric Stone.
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Narrator/Anchor
Some veterans in Alaska will face a harder time receiving federal food assistance next year. That's after Congress passed a law that requires many veterans to work in order to receive benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. As Shelby Herbert reports for the Alaska Desk, supporters call it reform, but critics say it adds new hurdles for a program that some veterans rely on to get by.
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Shelby Herbert
Ashley Edgington is the volunteer coordinator for Meals on Wheels in Fairbanks. But on a particularly cold morning and we're talking negative 30s, she's making the deliveries herself.
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Ashley Edgington
Sometimes the weather is like and you're going to also be driving in immense ice fog today. And so you just take it slow and steady.
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Shelby Herbert
Alaska has some of the highest food prices in America. It's also home to the highest share of veterans. And for many of them, those two facts collide at the checkout line. There are several food insecure veterans on Edgington's delivery list today, but she says as a group, they can be really hard.
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Ashley Edgington
To reach that population specifically, you have to be one of them. You know, I go stock materials at the VFW hall or the VA clinics and most of them are military in their background and it's different coming from them.
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Shelby Herbert
Part of Ashley's job is connecting her food insecure clients with assistance programs they can apply for, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or snap. But she says that's out of reach for many. Alaska is experiencing an administrative backlog for SNAP applications.
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Ashley Edgington
I often hear I tried before and they denied me. We've had people who perfectly qualify because again, maybe they're income was zero, but you have months and months and months and months of delay.
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Shelby Herbert
And there's another barrier on the horizon. Veterans used to be exempt from the program's work requirements, but the One Big Beautiful Bill act passed by Congress last year removes that exemption. Most SNAP recipients, including veterans, will have to work, volunteer or study at least 80 hours a month unless they're pregnant, responsible for a dependent child or have a documented disability. Most states rolled out the stricter work requirements on February 1st of this year. Alaska is exempt from the new work requirements for the rest of the year. The state can also apply to waive the rule in areas with high unemployment. Still, food security experts are concerned about how vulnerable groups will fare when the rule goes into effect. Gina Platagnino is the director for SNAP at the Food Research and Action Center, a nonprofit advocacy organization that addresses food insecurity. She says it's already hard for many veterans in need to comply with the new law.
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Angela Johnson
This bill didn't come with a job offer, didn't come with we'll provide transportation, we'll fly you out, we'll provide broadband, we'll provide a computer, we'll provide the training necessary.
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Shelby Herbert
About 6% of Alaska veterans participate in SNAP, and according to the center on Budget and Policy Priorities, one in five veterans in the nation experience food insecurity. But many do not claim those benefits. And Platanino says the able bodied designation might not account for veterans with disabilities that are harder to see.
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Angela Johnson
There's some of them depending when they serve that they do come with certain physical or mental disabilities and those necessarily are not as easily documented or as easily able for them to be exempted.
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Shelby Herbert
Some Alaska legislators are also concerned. In an emailed statement, State Senator Scott Kawasaki, who co chairs the state's Joint Armed Services Committee, called the new work requirements misdirected policies that would deny veterans benefits they have already earned through their sacrifice, end quote. All three of Alaska's federal delegates voted for the law. U.S. senator Lisa Murkowski and Representative Nick Begich III didn't respond to a request for comment, but a spokesperson for Senator Dan Sullivan said in an emailed statement that the senator views his choice as, quote, consistent with the overall goals of social safety net programs, which is to take care of the most vulnerable and disabled in society, but also to encourage upward mobility, to enable able bodied Americans to rise up and eventually graduate from such programs. Back in Fairbanks, Meals on Wheels coordinator Ashley Edgington comes to a stop at one of the last homes on her route. It belongs to an elderly veteran and his wife who signed up for Meals on Wheels because the food bank is too far away from them to safely drive on the frozen roads.
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Ashley Edgington
But it's really quite a commitment to haul yourself out and the husband's on oxygen, so there's a lot of barriers and layers there.
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Shelby Herbert
She says she doesn't know what the future holds with the new law, but she urges veterans facing food insecurity to not give up hope and to reach out to local and regional nonprofits for help. Reporting in Fairbanks, I'm Shelby Herbert.
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Narrator/Anchor
Still to come on Alaska News, nightly basketball returns to Coctova's home court after a years long hiatus.
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Maya Aishana
It really felt amazing. Like our crowd, just hearing them cheer for us like made me so happy.
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Narrator/Anchor
That's ahead. Stay with us.
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Rhonda McBride
The PFD application is open. Just a small amount of your PFD will help share local news and stories about Alaskans with Alaskans across this great state. When you choose Alaska Public Media through
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Narrator/Anchor
Pick Click give this year's risk of river breakup flooding is above average for much of the state, according to a report released Friday by the Alaska Pacific River Forecast Center. The heightened risks apply broadly to the Interior, much of the Yukon river, the Tanana river and the lower Kuskokwim River. Factors for the increased flooding risk include above average snowpack, average to above average river ice thickness, high water when freeze up occurred, and rough ice conditions or freeze up ice jams reported at multiple interior locations. Snowpack for the upper Yukon river and Tanana river basins, as well as across much of the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta has been as much as one and a half times the average this winter. Rivers in the interior part of the state have seen above average ice thicknesses following the coldest winter in the region in 30 to 50 years, according to the report. Ice thickness in early March on the Tanana river at Nenana tied the thickest ever recorded for that time of year, reaching 51 inches. High water levels and jumbled ice conditions for interior waterways during the fall freeze up have increased the chance of ice jam flooding along the lower Yukon river and portions of the Kuskokwim River. The average date of breakup on the lower Kuskokwim river at Bethel is May 9. The average date for communities at the mouth of the Yukon river is May 20, the report says. It is still early to tell how all the melting ice and snow will play out. Near normal temperatures predicted through May for western Alaska could lead to a dynamic breakup in ice jam related flood risks on much of the Yukon river, but the report says there is also a potential for above normal temperatures during the same period, which would significantly reduce flooding risk along both the lower Yukon river and Kuskokwim River. The exceptions are the Koyukuk river basin in the western Interior and the south central part of the state, which face a lower threat of breakup flooding due to below average snowpack, according to the report. The forecast center plans to release its next spring breakup report on April 10th. Nelson Lagoon on the Alaska Peninsula has spent years trying to secure new water infrastructure, but climate change keeps battering the Alaska Native Village's coastline. Now it' days away from running out of water KUCB Sophia Stuart Rossi reports.
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Angela Johnson
The 40 people who live in Nelson Lagoon expect their water supply to run dry by Friday. That's because a January storm destroyed the underground pipeline connecting the community to its only water source. Angela Johnson is president of the native village of Nelson Lagoon. She says the storm washed out two miles of pipe that had just been reburied the previous fall. And after that January storm, it's now exposed to freezing temperatures again.
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It was just crazy how one, one storm could do something so detrimental.
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After temperatures briefly rose, a small crew of community members spent 10 hour days repairing the damage, beating ice from the pipeline and fusing broken sections back together. They eventually got water flowing again, but another cold snap set in and has lasted for several weeks. The pipes are still exposed.
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It still freezes up. When it's that cold out, there's nothing we could do about that fact right now. We just have to wait, wait it out until it warms up so they could work on it.
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When the tank dries up, residents will rely entirely on bottled water that the tribe has been purchasing and shipping in. But that's a cost Johnson says the tribe cannot sustain long term. Residents have already begun collecting snow to use for dishes, sponge baths and flushing toilets. Johnson says those with boiler heating systems risk losing heat entirely if water pressure drops.
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Everybody's kind of worried. Everybody's a little nervous to be going without water. But we're all sticking together and we're all going to be helping each other out and we're all just, you know, we know we're gonna make it through it.
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The village has babies who depend on formula and elders who need reliable access to clean water. Johnson says there is no question about what's causing the crisis long term.
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100 climate change cause over relationship A decade ago we used to get a big ice bench in front of town so before the big winter storms hit, there would be a significant amount of sea ice already built up on the Bering Sea beach. That sea ice would protect against, you know, the big tides because the tides get bigger in the winter.
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Nelson Lagoon has been seeking new, larger water holding tanks for years that would eliminate the need to pump water during winter. The project is estimated at roughly $4 million. Johnson says the tribe has been asking Alaska Republican U.S. senator Lisa Murkowski to include the project in her appropriation bills every year for the past three years. The tribe was also awarded a 2022 Climate Resilient Grant from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But the new federal administration froze the funding before eventually releasing it, causing significant
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delays and so now we're here in dire straits. Now people are finally like, oh man, we gotta work on this, we gotta help you guys out. And so this has been something that we have been vocal about working on, trying to find solutions for and it's just been kind of a headache.
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Nelson Lagoon has served as an Unangan fishing camp for generations, only becoming a year round community in 1965 when a school was built. Johnson hopes the crisis brings renewed urgency to the long stalled infrastructure project.
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Hopefully after all this we'll, we'll be getting a new water tank installed by next year. I hope. It feels like we continuously are watching just our home get taken out by climate change and there's not really anything that we can do about it besides try to adapt.
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For now, the community is waiting for warmer weather and for a replacement pipeline to arrive by charter plane. From the Anchorage based Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium in Unalaska, I'm Sophia Stewart Rossi.
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Shelby Herbert
I'm Shelby Herbert, a reporter with the Alaska Desk. That's a joint reporting effort from Alaska Public Media and kuac where I work in Fairbanks and other public radio stations in Anchorage Haines and the Allusions. It allows us to connect to the issues happening in communities all across the state. You can hear our stories during the morning news, Alaska News Nightly or online@alaskapublic.org the Alaska Desk is only possible with the support of grants and listeners like you. Thank you.
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Narrator/Anchor
Sled dog teams in the 2026 Iditarod are racing across the sea ice of Norton Sound as defending champ Jesse Holmes holds a solid lead in the hopes of joining a handful of mushers with consecutive wins. Only five others have repeated his champs in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and the last was a decade ago in Koyuk. This morning, Holmes told the Iditarod Insider that mushing over the Blueberry Hills into the previous checkpoint of Shaktulik had been a highlight of his race.
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Senator Rob Myers
It was the best ride of my life. Most amazing dog team I ever seen and they're all barking, howling to go every time I stop. Dogs that typically don't even bark in at home, you know we're just losing their minds.
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Narrator/Anchor
Holmes and team Can't Stop have led much of the thousand mile race. Other top teams, including Cantwell musher Paige Drobny and veteran Travis Beals have been leapfrogging each other and will continue as mushers alternate run in recovery. Holmes fed his dogs beef fat and kibble in Koyuk this morning and told Iditarod Insider that good nutrition keeps the dogs in the right mood and it
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Senator Rob Myers
makes it to where if you need to do a long run it's no problem. It keeps the dogs attitudes up. It doesn't give them any chance to go calorie deficient. I mean I wish I knew all this stuff, you know before, you know, a couple more years I'll learn a couple more tricks too.
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Jody Potts Joseph
Hopefully.
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Narrator/Anchor
From Koyuk, it's another 90 miles or so to White Mountain where teams take a mandatory 8 hour rest. With enough of a gap on the rest of the pack, the leader out of White Mountain often wins the race. It's 77 miles from White Mountain to Nome where a first place team could finish as early as tomorrow afternoon. As of 5pm only one musher, Jay Fouche of New Hampshire, had scratched from the race. The 34 teams still on the trail were spread out over nearly 200 miles today. Non competitive expedition class mushers Thomas Werner and Steve Curtis ended their run Sunday and Unilikleet and McGrath respectively. Norwegian billionaire Xiao Roki, the third expedition musher, arrived in Nome Monday afternoon. Meanwhile, Jodi Potts Joseph is perhaps one of the most best known rookies in the Iditarod. Her daughter Koana Chasinghorse, is a model who has appeared on the COVID of Vogue magazine, and both mother and daughter are outspoken environmental advocates. But now Potts Joseph is making a name for herself along the trail. As KNBA's Rhonda McBride tells us. On her way to McGrath, her team ran into the unexpected.
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Rhonda McBride
At the ceremonial start, Jody Potts Joseph's dogs did a lot of talking. You could hear their excitement, as if maybe they knew what was ahead on the trail.
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Jody Potts Joseph
I just came around a corner and there's a bison standing in the middle
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Rhonda McBride
of the trail just past the Rhone checkpoint. Her dogs went wild when the bison appeared. Other mushers had encountered them as well. With this year's heavy snow, it's been easier for the animals to use the hard packed Iditarod trail. In an interview with the Iditarod Insider, Potts Joseph described how the bison appeared ready to charge. She pulled out her gun to fire warning shots, but it misfired. It just went click click click.
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Jody Potts Joseph
So I was just grabbing sticks and throwing it at it and hollering and didn't do anything. It was just standing there and it still was just pawing and looking pissed off.
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Rhonda McBride
At a loss for what to do next, a memory suddenly clicked. A story her grandmother once told about how she fended off a grizzly bear outside her cabin.
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Jody Potts Joseph
My grandma got the kids inside and then she just went right up to that bear with, like, courage and boldness and just said to it in our language, which means, go away, have mercy on us, leave us alone, her grandmother said.
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Rhonda McBride
The bear calmed down, turned and walked away. So, Potts, Joseph wondered, would it work to confront the bison in Han Gwichin?
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Jody Potts Joseph
That was my last resort. So I just said, antlachin cha chichi ne huchina. And that bison, like, popped its head up and then just turned around and trotted on down the trail. I almost can't believe it myself. Putz.
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Rhonda McBride
Joseph says her grandmother was right. Animals do understand Gwichin.
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Jody Potts Joseph
Dang.
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Rhonda McBride
But that wasn't her last brush with a bison. Further down the trail, it appeared again. This time she had a gun borrowed from another musher and fired some warning shots that sent it off into the woods. So whether it was words of warning in Gwichin or the crack of a gun, the message was loud and clear. Time to move on.
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Jody Potts Joseph
Yep, leave it to a native woman
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Rhonda McBride
in anchorage, I'm Rhonda McBride.
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Narrator/Anchor
The North Slope community of Coctowic hosted a regional basketball tournament last month in a new gym that was finally rebuilt years after the old one burned down. The Alaska Desk's Alyona Knightsen reports that for at least one family, the new gym's significance was bigger than basketball.
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Alena Neidson
The Kaktovic High School girls basketball team is playing against Point Lay. It's the one A North Slope regional championship, and the Kaktovik Lady Rams are down by a couple of points. One of the players, senior Maya Aishana,
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Maya Aishana
hears her mom yelling, that did something to me. That, like, snap. I have five minutes up. I can do this.
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Alena Neidson
The Cocteauc Lady Rams did not win the game. The team shared a big hug and a good cry afterwards, but Aishana says the moment was still special. The community's gym and school burned down six years ago. The new gym took years to rebuild and was finally finished in December. The tournament was the first big event the community held there, and players from six Northlop villages flew in for the competition. Aishana says Kaktovik residents could finally support their team in person from the sideline.
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Maya Aishana
It really felt amazing. Like our crowd just hearing them cheer for us, like, made me so happy, almost cried again.
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Alena Neidson
The school is still under construction, but the gym was a long time coming for both the students and their families. Aishana says not having a place to play sports for so long was hard on the team. She says the students often practiced outside and eventually in a temporary tent structure with intermediate heating.
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Maya Aishana
It was kind of difficult because polar bears and the wind and the coldness, but like also all our players were like kind of rusty shooting because we had nowhere to shoot.
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Alena Neidson
Kaktovic's Harold Kavilik School is kindergarten through 12th grade. Enrollment numbers stayed relatively steady after the fire, except for a dip in 2022, according to the North Slough Borough School District officials. They acknowledged that several students left the school, though they said they can't publicly share how many. Local leaders say they hope the new facility will help to bring some of them back. Maya Aishana's brother was one student who left the village. Maya's mother is Stephanie Aishana.
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Jody Potts Joseph
He missed the gym so much he
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Narrator/Anchor
moved to Fairbanks to live with my brother, she says.
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Alena Neidson
The change was hard and it meant the family lost a hunter to help during the subsistence season. Stephanie Aishana says the community used the facility for funerals, Thanksgiving feasts and other gatherings.
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Narrator/Anchor
It was the heartbeat of our community
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Senator Kathy Giesel
and we totally lost that.
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Alena Neidson
Maya Aishana was a part of the group of students who advocated for the construction of the new gym. They wrote letters to municipal leadership and held a silent protest during the North Sloboro assembly meeting about four years ago, bringing signs that said they needed a place to exercise.
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Maya Aishana
We just had to act because us students had to have somewhere to play because it's too dangerous here.
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Alena Neidson
Now that they have the new facility, Aishana says she already feels the difference. The team can finally practice shooting and work on their endurance.
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Maya Aishana
That's what kind of let us play a little bit harder.
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Alena Neidson
The weekend tournament also proved that the new facility is more than a place to practice and Play. More than 100 people also took refuge there during a major storm over the same weekend. Now that the basketball tournament is over and most of the town is dug out from the snow drifts, adults and students regularly go there to play and exercise. And in a few months, Maya Aishana's class will be the first to graduate in the new facility. Her mom says she will make sure that her son, who already graduated in Fairbanks, will attend his sister's ceremony as well. With reporting from Kaktovik, I am Alena
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Angela Johnson
Nydin,
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Narrator/Anchor
and 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 in Juneau, Shelby Herbert in Fairbanks. Evan Erickson in Bethel, Sophia Stewart Rossi in On Alaska, Ava white and Rhonda McBride in Anchorage, and Alena Neidson in Kaktovic. If you want to send us a news tip, question or comment, email us@newsalaskapublic.org Our audio engineer tonight is Tobin Shelby. Kirsten Dobroth is our producer, and I'm Wesley Early. Good night.