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Narrator/Announcer
Support for Alaska Public Media on Demand comes from Siri, an Alaska native corporation with operations and investments spanning five continents, 45 states and two US territories.
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John Sims
This is how we're making sure that we're not going to be at war in Venezuela.
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Casey Grove
President Trump is angry with Senator Murkowski this time over efforts to limit his use of the military in Venezuela. From Alaska Public Media, this is statewide news on Alaska News nightly for Tuesday, January 13th. Good evening. I'm Casey Grove. Also tonight, despite the recent cold snap in South Central, NSTAR says natural gas supplies are stable.
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John Sims
As long as there is an equipment failure or something going on in the fields, we can meet all of our customers needs.
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Casey Grove
Those stories and more tonight on Alaska News Nightly. I'm Theo Greenlee, a reporter with the Alaska Desk. That's a joint reporting effort from Alaska Public Media and kucb, where I work in Onalaska, and other public radio stations in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Haines and the Aleutians. It allows us to connect you with 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. In a speech in Michigan today, President Trump denounced US Senator Lisa Murkowski and other Republicans who voted to check his use of military power in Venezuela. Trump said he's plagued by, as he put it, some real losers. On the Republican side. He named Murkowski, but focused his ire mostly on Senator Rand Paul. Trump said he did rallies for Paul in Kentucky and he votes against all the time.
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John Sims
It's just crazy. I don't get it.
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Casey Grove
Then you have Lisa Murkowski and you have Susan Collins disasters, and you had.
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John Sims
A gentleman from Indiana that I don't believe, a Todd Young.
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Casey Grove
He voted against.
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John Sims
And you say, why are you voting against? They can't give you an answer. They're unable to give you an answer.
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Casey Grove
Five Republican senators, the ones Trump named, plus Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, voted to advance a war powers resolution last week. If enacted, the resolution would prohibit Trump from using further military force against Venezuela without the approval of Congress. The resolution infuriated Trump, who personally called each of the senators Thursday to berate them for their votes. Murkowski had nothing but praise for the military operation that deposed Venezuela's president and brought him to the United States for trial. She called it masterful and precise. But she said she has concerns about what comes next as the Trump administration tries to control Venezuela.
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John Sims
I don't want this to be a war I don't think anybody wants. I don't think the president. I don't think the president wants to be at war. So this is how we're making sure that we're not going to be at war in Venezuela.
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Casey Grove
As for Trump's anger at her, Murkowski shrugged it off last week.
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John Sims
Let's just say I've been in this boat before where I have met the displeasure of the president when it comes.
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Casey Grove
To decisions like using military force, murkowski said. She can't shirk from what she sees as her obligation under the Constitution just because the president will criticize her. The Senate was expected to bring the War Powers Resolution to a final vote this week, but Axios and other publications report that the Trump administration is leaning on Republican leaders to figure out a way to drop it. The Alaska House of Representatives will have two new faces when lawmakers return next week for the start of the legislative session. Governor Mike Dunleavy appointed Mat? Su Republicans Steve St. Clair and Garrett Nelson to fill two open seats in the state House. So who are these two new lawmakers and what do they hope to accomplish in their first year as a budget crunch looms? Alaska Public Media's Eric Stone reports.
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Eric Stone
One is a newcomer to politics, another is an old hand, newly minted. Representative Garrett Nelson is the former, and he says he's doing his best to get up to speed with the session fast approaching.
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Garrett Nelson
I've never been up till 2 o' clock in the morning so many days in a week in my life as I have been this week, trying to figure this stuff out.
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Eric Stone
Nelson has spent most of his life in the private sector, first as a welder in his home state of Idaho and most recently in sales at the financial services firm Gravity Payments. He, his wife and nine children moved to the Mat? Su community of Sutton in 2016, where he chaired the local community council. Nelson is steeling himself for what could be a tough first year. He calls the world of politics a cesspool.
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Garrett Nelson
My expectations are like to hold to principles as much as I can, and I just expect to go down and get my teeth kicked in.
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Eric Stone
He's already found himself in something of a spat with a senior Republican senator who suggested in a newsletter that his large family could present a conflict of interest when voting on the permanent fund dividend, nelson said. The comment was, quote, weird. Nelson calls himself a, quote, unashamed conservative and often references his Christian faith and devotion to family. He says he's in favor of paying large permanent fund dividends in line with the formula outlined in state law, about $3,800 this year. Gov. Mike Dunleavy's budget proposal would do exactly that by taking $1.8 billion from the state's main savings account. But at the same time, Nelson says that might not be the right move. He says the state shouldn't just try to live off its savings and put off harder questions for another day.
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Garrett Nelson
We could raid the permanent fund and pay all our bills this year. Piece of cake, you know what I'm saying? Like we could pay all the bills and give everyone a full PFD and everyone's going to be happy. But that's not a good long term solution.
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Eric Stone
Nelson says he hasn't quite figured out the right approach. He says he's still boning up on the ins and outs of the myriad issues facing the legislature. But Nelson says he's planning to bring with him a built in support system. Nelson says the whole family is going to join him in Juneau for the session.
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Garrett Nelson
The way that we're doing it is like it's, it's a family adventure, like we are all in this together.
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Eric Stone
Joining Nelson in the House is representative Steve St. Clair, longtime staffer for former House speaker and now Senator Kathy Tilton, a Wasilla Republican. St. Clair spent two decades as a military policeman, including a stint at Fort Wainwright in the early 2000s. Like Nelson, St. Clair says he too is spending long nights preparing for his first session. But with seven years of experience in the Capitol plus an mba, he says he thinks he'll be able to hit the ground running.
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Casey Grove
I'm a budget guy, like I said the numbers, but I'm also very familiar with all the other departments, their budgets. I've worked on amendments, I've worked on bills.
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Eric Stone
So he's coming with ideas for how to shrink the state's budget gap, for example, freezing state workers pay and gradually reducing so called optional Medicaid services offered by the state. Those include things like dental and vision care and prescription drugs.
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Casey Grove
They're not required by law. They're basically it's the Cadillac version instead of the Pinto version. I think we need to pare that down.
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Eric Stone
And he says he's skeptical of proposals to restructure the permanent fund to function more like a University Endowment. But St. Clair acknowledges that on most fronts he might not get his way, given that he's in the minority for his first year in office.
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Casey Grove
I'm humbled to be here and going to do the best I can for my district and Alaskans, sinclair says.
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Eric Stone
He's also not expecting lawmakers to solve the state's budget issues in the four months of the session, given that it's an election year. But St. Clair says he'll do his best to contribute. Reporting in Juneau, I'm Eric Stone.
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Casey Grove
Natural gas use soared in south central Alaska during the recent cold snap. In December, NStar pulled almost three times the amount of natural gas from storage than initially anticipated. But the utility says they're confident the supply is sufficient to serve their more than 150,000 customers. December brought unseasonably cold temperatures to the region. John Sims is the utilities president and of the main storage facility in Kenai.
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John Sims
During a winter like this winter, we rely on everything to work perfectly to serve our customers. And as long as everything's working, we assume that we're going to be able to serve customers. We're confident that we can serve customers.
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Casey Grove
Two years ago, the failure of two wells strained the utility so severely that NStar was almost unable to meet the demand for gas during piercing below average temperatures. Since then, a $68 million expansion of the storage facility brought on two additional wells that Sim says were essential during last month's cold snap. The new wells are meant to provide redundancy and flexibility to the state's largest utility company. Sim says if everything functions as planned, Instar won't have an issue delivering natural gas to their customers.
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Garrett Nelson
We're designed to be able to operate.
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John Sims
In these exact conditions, and as long.
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Garrett Nelson
As there is an equipment failure or.
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John Sims
Something going on in the fields, we can meet all of our customers needs.
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Casey Grove
To save energy, NStar recommends turning down your thermostat when you're not home, adjusting the temperature on your water heater and washing full loads of laundry. Still to come on Alaska News Nightly, scientists are strapping cameras to arctic grizzlies to better understand the bear's habits.
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Ellery Vincent
Once the vegetation emerges, they're eating a lot of like horses, horsetail and bear flower and then a lot of berries.
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Casey Grove
That's ahead. Stay with us.
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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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Casey Grove
An evacuation advisory remains in effect for Juneau's Barrens avalanche path downtown for a fifth day. But now the city and borough of Juneau's evacuation alert is using more urgent language. The city issued a new advisory today saying that the risk of large avalanches is increasing significantly and would be highest today and into Wednesday morning. That's because heavy rain, high wind and warmer temperatures can destabilize the deep snowpack on Mount Juneau. The Centennial hall emergency shelter remains open. The city urges people in the Barrens pathway who have not evacuated or who have returned to their homes to evacuate immediately. Thain Road closed again today at noon due to the heightened risk of avalanches. The closure will be reevaluated tomorrow morning. And for the first time, the city is using a radar detection system to track avalanches, thanks to state money freed up by the city and tribe's disaster declaration last week. Severin Stahle works for an avalanche technology startup called Gravamon in Zurich, Switzerland. On Sunday, he installed the Doppler radar system on Douglas Island. It's called an Avimonster and it points at Mount Juneau continuously to scan for avalanches. We can really see where it happens and where it starts, where it ends, measure the speed and give all this information to the forecasters. John Preset, the city's avalanche advisor, says it works just like a boat radar and notifies staff instantaneously. It allows us to detect avalanches when we can't visually see them, which in Juneau is often with the darkness and with the weather. Using drone flights and binoculars, when the clouds rose a bit on Sunday, Brissette says he was able to see where avalanches released some snow down the Barrens path to the end of Judy Lane. But he says the avalanche didn't start from very high up on the mountain. There's a lot of undisturbed snow at the top of Barron's Pass still that hasn't been affected yet. We feel that there's still potential for if that were to go to potentially reach homes. That's where the city is still advising residents to keep clear. Brissette says his next step is to work with the Alaska Department of Transportation to fly a helicopter mounted LIDAR sensor over the mountain to measure the snow. And he wants to dig snow pits to look at layers in the snowpack. He says that will help forecasters better estimate the risk to those who live in the path. The city says the radar system and installation costs about $200,000 or less. Since Governor Mike Dunleavy approved the city and tribe's disaster declaration, city staff say they're confident the state will pay for. Two Soldotna based Alaska state troopers pleaded not guilty in federal court in Anchorage last week to one count each of violating a Kenai man's civil rights. KDLL's Ashlyn O' Hara has more.
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Ashlyn O'Hara
A federal grand jury indicted 43 year old Jason Woodruff and 50 year old Joseph Miller in December over their alleged conduct during a violent 2024 arrest in Kenai. It was a case of mistaken identity and the federal indictment says Woodruff and Miller deprived a person of their right to be free from unreasonable seizures and use of unre reasonable force by law enforcement. The federal government says Miller tased, hit and kicked the man without legal justification, causing him bodily injury and that Woodruff unreasonably used his police dog to bite the man even though the man did not pose a threat. Woodruff and Miller face separate criminal charges in state court. State prosecutors say body worn cameras captured the incident. Charging documents say the two troopers later learned they'd arrested the wrong person who was a relative of another man wanted for failing to appear for a 10 day jail sentence. One day after entering not guilty pleas in the federal case, a state judge agreed to bump back the troopers pending state trial, which had previously been scheduled for early February. Lawyers for Woodruff and Miller argued in state court the trial should be delayed. Matthew Widmer represents Miller in both cases. He says they need time to square discrepancies between state and federal evidence before proceeding.
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Daniel Shorey
There are very possible pitfalls here where a defense to the allegations in one case could fundamentally destroy his ability to successfully combat another because of information we don't have.
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Ashlyn O'Hara
But Assistant Attorney General Daniel Shorey says the victim's position is that, quote, justice delayed is justice denied. This May will mark two years since the initial Kenai arrest. Here's Shorey relaying the position of the victim's attorney, Daryl Thompson.
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Daniel Shorey
Quote, I also don't think there should be delay due to competing prosecutions as there is no jeopardy associated with parallel proceedings between federal and state court.
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Ashlyn O'Hara
Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews agreed in part with both sides. Just as the victim in the case is entitled to his day in court, Matthews says the two defendants are entitled to due process under the law.
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Daniel Shorey
Justice needs to be provided for all concerned and a complete record and a complete opportunity for everyone to have full and fair disclosure of information about what people are going to say or perhaps have said, I should say, and the information that's out there is critical. Defendants are entitled to due process. The state is entitled to due process.
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Ashlyn O'Hara
Miller and Woodruff are next scheduled to appear in State Court February 11th in Kenai. Their next appearance in federal court is set for February 23rd in Anchorage. Neither Miller nor Woodruff were arrested in either case. Both were put on administrative leave after the Alaska Department of Public Safety learned of the incident during a routine use of force review. Miller is no longer employed by the state, and the police dog K9Olex was released from the department. Woodruff is still employed by the state but is on administrative leave. Reporting in Soldotna, I'm Ashlyn o' Hara.
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Casey Grove
In Emonik, A long awaited port expansion is nearing completion, realizing the dream of the late Martin Moore Sr. Who served as the village's city manager for nearly half of his adult life. As Kanom's Ben Townsend reports, the upgraded dock paves the way for new opportunities for the regional sub hub, and it's taken over two decades to get here.
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Narrator/Announcer
In early November, the last bits of open water on the north bank of Kwigg Pass finishes freezing. Snow machines, dormant for months, carry locals across the ice to check on traps for Emonik, the Yupik word for blackfish and namesake of the community. Just a month before small fishing boats and giant barges buzzed across the open water. It was their first season using a brand new port championed by the late Martin Moore Sr. The village's city manager for three decades. His successor, Dave Rowland, says the project owes itself to Moore.
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John Sims
Martin's vision was, and this goes all the way back to about 2009. He had already had like they'd already made inroads to Congress, State House and everything.
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Narrator/Announcer
On that, Moore's name is stamped on dozens of letters sent to state and federal legislators. In them, Moore envisioned a massively expanded port that would serve as the economic hub of the Upper Yukon. Moore died in 2022, but not before he was able to convince Congress to award just over $23 million for the project. Construction began in 2020 and finished in 2024. The expansion features a new, nearly 600 foot dock face that supports larger vessels than ever before.
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John Sims
This year was the first year of the dock where we actually had an ocean going vessel come in and it was a monster. I mean it was 122ft tall with conexes and we never had anything like that in here. You know, it was amazing.
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Narrator/Announcer
In the past, Demonic typically received large freight from Nenana over 900 miles upstream on the Yukon River. Now, Roland says the hub community can receive freight from larger ocean going vessels up to a month earlier than before. Matt Sweetser owns and operates Ruby Marine, based in the Nana, and has decades of experience running cargo up and down the Yukon. Sweetser doesn't envision the project fundamentally changing his operations. Instead, he views the massive metal dock face as a game changer for Emonix Shoreline, which is battered by fast flowing water and ice moving out toward the Bering Sea.
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Daniel Shorey
In my mind, the advantage to that dock has got nothing to do with it being a dock. It's an erosion control project and it did exactly that.
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Narrator/Announcer
Sweetser sees the former city manager's fingerprints all over the project, which was initially pitched as a potential hub for liquefied natural gas.
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Daniel Shorey
To me, the greatest success of that thing was he did a combination project and this is not what he sold, but it's what has occurred, roland says.
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Narrator/Announcer
The city has also secured funding for a new heated storage building adjacent to the dock that's scheduled to arrive later this year. The facility will be used to stage and stockpile materials for use year round. Reporting in Nome, I'm Ben Townsend.
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Casey Grove
The southeast Alaska city of Saxman is on a water conservation notice due to low water levels in the city's holding tank. The notice went into effect Sunday and is believed to be the result of a leak in the city's water system. Saxman city clerk Ginger McCormick said a representative from the Alaska Rural Water association, which services water systems around the state, would be in Saxman today to investigate the issue.
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John Sims
We're producing twice as much water as we did last year. We're just dealing with a big leak. So once we get our leak repaired with the water production that we have.
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Daniel Shorey
We'Ll be back to a full tank.
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Casey Grove
McCormick says the advisory is not a boil water notice and that the city's water is safe to drink. The water conservation notice is to prevent a boil water notice, which she says are issued when a holding tank has only 3ft of water remaining. In the meantime, the city is asking residents to completely turn off their faucets when not in use.
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John Sims
In order to do a lot of.
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Daniel Shorey
The repairs, we have to have water running through the pipes.
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John Sims
We just ask that everybody just be.
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Daniel Shorey
Very conservative with their water.
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Casey Grove
McCormick said she was unsure when the city's water conservation notice would be lifted. She says the city will announce updates on its Facebook page. The cost to move Juno's City hall is coming in millions of dollars higher than expected. The Juneau assembly agreed last night to cover the shortfall by pulling money from lower priority city projects, but not everyone was on board, KTO's Clarice Larson reports.
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John Sims
According to city administration it's expected to cost $20.5 million to purchase, renovate and move into the two floors of the Michael J. Burns Building, which houses the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation downtown. The floors are slated to become Juneau's new City hall location. In September, the General assembly greenlit the purchase of the floors from the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation. Mayor Beth Weldon says the move to the Burns building is the best option for both city staff and citizens. We have to find a solution.
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Ashlyn O'Hara
We have looked under every rock to.
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John Sims
Find a cheaper solution. There is no cheaper solution. Those rocks include trying to build a new City hall and looking at existing buildings like the current U Haul building in Lemmon Creek, Marie Drake Building and the Floyd dryden campus. The $20.5 million price tag is millions of dollars higher than anticipated it would be just a few months ago. That cost is to cover moving expenses and a partial remodel of the floors, including things like new paint, carpet and cubicles. And while the assembly has already put aside about 14.5 million for a City hall project during recent budget cycles, they still needed to find another $6 million. So at a meeting on Monday, assembly members agreed to pay for that shortfall by pulling that amount from a hodgepodge of other proposed city projects, including the Capitol, Civic Cent, the Lemon Creek Multimodal Pathway and a waterfront museum. But not everyone was in favor of the plan. New Assemblymember Nano Brooks voted against the transfer of funds, arguing it was too much money.
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Casey Grove
The amount of $20 million is just.
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Narrator/Announcer
I can't support that in good conscience. It's not what the taxpayers voted for, and even the funds that were initially.
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Casey Grove
Set aside has left a lot of.
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Narrator/Announcer
The community feeling very disparaged and unheard of.
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John Sims
The Assembly's vote comes after multiple years of push and pull between city administration and Juneau voters. The city asked voters twice during recent Minnesota elections to approve bond debt for new City Hall. They said no both times. Juneau's current City hall near Marine park fits less than half of the city's employees, and it needs millions of dollars in maintenance and repairs. The new Burns building location would consolidate several departments that are now in separate buildings. Assemblymember Alicia Huskandes says the plan isn't perfect, but she'll support it. There is no workable alternative that I.
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Ellery Vincent
Have heard, and so we need to find the solution, and this is frequently.
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John Sims
Where we find ourselves, which is just.
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Ellery Vincent
Choosing the best of our least favorite choices.
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John Sims
According to city administration, the renovations and the move to the new City hall location are expected to take at least a year to complete. In Juneau, I'm Clarice Larson.
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Casey Grove
A small population of grizzly bears makes its home above the Arctic Circle, occasionally coming into conflict with human development and even polar bears. But not much is known about them or how they find enough food to survive the extreme winters. As Shelby Herbert reports for the Alaska Desk, researchers are strapping cameras to bears to better understand their lives out on the tundra.
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Shelby Herbert
You're hearing a male Arctic grizzly bear stomping across the northern interior foraging for berries. He's one of a dozen camera wearing grizzlies monitored this summer by researchers with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and Washington State University.
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Ellery Vincent
It's a slow process, but so far we're seeing like a really wide range of things.
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Shelby Herbert
Ellery Vincent is a PhD candidate at Washington State and is heading up the project to study the subpopulation of grizzlies, which is made up of only a couple hundred bears. She says the bear's currency is calories, and the tundra is in short supply. Way up north, the growing season is short and Arctic grizzlies have to hibernate longer, sometimes up to eight months out of the year. Vincent says the cameras are giving them clues as to how the bears make it work.
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Ellery Vincent
Like in the springtime when there's no vegetation and there's snow, they're utilizing overwintered carcasses that have been sitting on the landscape. And then once the vegetation emerges, they're eating a lot of, like horsetail and bear flower and then a lot of berries.
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Shelby Herbert
Vincent says some bears even hunt caribou, both calves and adults. In recent years, caribou herds across the Arctic have taken a downturn, and there's been controversy about the role predators like bears play. Mark Nelson is the area Fish and Game biologist for northeastern Alaska and a partner on the bear monitoring project. He doesn't believe that Arctic grizzlies are making a significant enough dent in the herds.
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Daniel Shorey
There's very little evidence that predators are actually driving these population changes.
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Shelby Herbert
Nelson says the department fishman's main interest in the project is learning about what sorts of habitats they're using and when. He says that Arctic grizzlies aren't a popular hunting target by themselves, but some caribou hunters up north take grizzly bears, too, if they see one. And the data from this study can help Fish and Game sustainably manage the population. Nelson says Fish and Game is also hoping to gain a better understanding of human interactions with the bears, which are known to wander around oil and gas developments as well as the Dalton highway, which cuts through their territory.
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Daniel Shorey
And trying to understand how we can minimize and mitigate those, you know, interactions and concerns we see on the slopes.
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Shelby Herbert
Practical matters aside, Vincent with Washington State University says it's been exciting to have a window into the lives of this understudied subpopulation of exceptionally scrappy bears. She says they even caught some surprising bear romance.
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Ellery Vincent
It's known that males will follow the females around for a while as they're breeding, but what we found is that they really follow each other around for quite a bit of time, like if all their needs are being met. Like, it almost looks like a couple of the bears were playing, which was really unique and cool because, you know, it's tough out there and they're trying to survive.
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Shelby Herbert
She says she's pleased with the data they've gathered so far, but the project is still in its beginning stages. They have two more years ahead and dozens of additional bears to catch and attach cameras to. Reporting in Fairbanks, I'm Shelby Herbert.
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Casey Grove
And that's all for this edition of alaska news nightly. We had reports tonight from liz ruskin in washington, d.c. eric stone, alex solomon and clarice larson in juneau, ava white in anchorage, ashlyn o' hara in soldotna, ben townsend in nome, hunter morrison in katchikan, and shelby herbert in fairbanks. Our audio engineer is crystal hyde, madeline rose is our producer. And I'm casey grove. Good night. This is statewide news on Alaska Public Media.