The Aleutian East Borough has hired a new administrator. Rick Gifford took over at the borough last month, coming to the job from 7 years in Kodiak as a borough administrator.

While Kodiak’s government tended to focus on education, Gifford says infrastructure will be one of his top priorities at the Aleutians East Borough. He’ll be involved in the proposal to build a road through Izembek National Wildlife Refuge to link King Cove to the Cold Bay airport.

Alaska Airlines is back in the running for Adak’s Essential Air Service contract. The airline currently flies a Boeing 737-Combi to Adak twice a week, but said earlier this year it wouldn’t try to renew its contract for the federally subsidized flight route. But on Wednesday, in a letter to the DOT, the airline said, “Alaska is now undertaking a new analysis to determine whether it will now decide to do so.”

After last year’s triple disaster in Japan, a group of Alaskan fishermen started collecting funds to help rebuild the country’s decimated fishing industry. Earlier this month, the first of those donations made it to Japan.

The fishing village of Arahama lies on the outskirts of Sendai, a large city in northern Japan. Canadian filmmaker Linda Ohama was there last month.

“They’re trying to get back on their feet and they’re having to deal with a lot," Ohama says. "Number one, the loss of their fishing equipment and boats. And they’re dealing with the radiation factor.”

Sockeye salmon are almost done spawning at Cape Wislow, but the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has just started counting the run.

It wasn’t a lack of funding, but rather, personnel problems that kept Fish and Game from opening their weir last month. They rushed to make two new hires, and sent them to track the run from Reese Bay to McLees Lake this Monday.

Though the season count will be far from complete, Fish and Game employee Matt Keyse says some data is better than none.

Two contracts sparked some debate at Tuesday night’s city council meeting. Councilor Dennis Robinson voted against awarding Northern Mechanical a $321,000 aggregate materials contract, saying the city discriminated against the other bidder, Bering Shai Construction, by including a per-mile road tax in the contract.

“That being 20 cents a mile to Department of Public Works, it puts Ugadaga quarry at an unfair advantage to any other quarry in the community, unless that quarry was built next to Public Works," Robinson said. "It is unfair, it is unethical in my belief. I have really serious problems with it and I think it should go.”

An ammonia leak on board the processing vessel Excellence has finally stopped.  The leak started Friday afternoon while the ship was tied up at the Kloosterboer cold storage dock. The Excellence was towed to Wide Bay this weekend, and a Hazmat team has been monitoring the spill and venting the ammonia fumes since then. Coast Guard Lt. Jim Fothergill says the ship could be free of ammonia in the next 48 hours. At that point, a tug will tow the Excellence back to the Kloosterboer dock for repairs. The Coast Guard is still investigating the cause of the leak.

A coalition of environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the federal government Tuesday morning over Shell's Arctic oil spill response plan. The lawsuit is not intended to stop Shell from drilling in the Arctic this year, but it is supposed to change the way the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement deals with future permitting. That office approved Shell's response plan in case of a spill in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.

City council meets tonight to vote on four separate contracts.

The first would let the city manager sign an agreement with R&M Consultants to do work on the pavement resurfacing project. That contract is not to exceed $177,000. The second is an annual contract with Northern Mechanical for $321,000 worth of aggregate materials. The third contract would pay Industrial Resources, Inc., $215,000 for work on miscellaneous maintenance projects. The fourth and final contract would allow the city to do business for All Wall Contracting for painting done over the next year. That contract is valued at $207,000 and could be extended for another three years.

One of Shell's drill ships has arrived in Unalaska and the other is expected by the end of the week. The Noble Discoverer pulled into port on Saturday, accompanied by a small flotilla of support vessels. While the ships were originally scheduled to bypass Unalaska on their way to Arctic, persistent sea could keep them around for a while. 

“We are obviously watching the ice very closely because it has so far delayed our entry into both theatres," says Shell Alaska spokesperson Curtis Smith. "We couldn’t legally be on site until July 15, but it looks now like we’ll be on site and start drilling sometime in the first week of August. And that’s disappointing, because that’s time, of course, that we will not get back. But we will make the most of the time that we do have.”