City Council got a preview of what’s to come in 2012 from City Manager Chris Hladick at last night’s meeting.  The five-word summary: water, wastewater, wastewater, paving and Shell. 

The three big, ongoing projects are getting secondary filtration for the city’s drinking water, upgrading the wastewater treatment plant to comply with federal standards and managing the landfill’s heavy metal runoff.

It turns out freezing spray isn’t just dangerous for cars and crabbers, it’s a hazard for birds as well.

A storm sweeping through Unalaska Tuesday coated everything in thick ice - including many birds.

“The eagles, when they do take off, and they’ve got this frozen layer on their wings, you can hear the ice cracking as they’re attempting to fly, but the weight is quite a bit.”

Public Safety has concluded there was no foul play involved in the death of Alaska Warrior crewmember Sui Filisi.

The 36 year old was found dead by crewmates aboard the vessel in early November.  

Public Safety Director Jamie Sunderland says the autopsy results indicate his death was due to heart problems,with potential complications from drug and alcohol use.  Public Safety has closed the investigation. 

The City of Unalaska has another year of big projects ahead.

In addition to continuing work on the water treatment, wastewater treatment and landfill projects, the city will be tackling several large paving initiatives and some serious harbor maintenance. 

How to prioritize and pay for those undertakings will be the main topic of discussion at tonight’s City Council meeting. 

The three ongoing projects are all mandated by state and federal regulations.  Their total cost is estimated at $34.5 million. 

The 180-foot crab tender Baranof was switching docks to pick up crab pots Monday morning when it beached itself on the backside of Little South America. 

It didn’t take long for a crowd to form, despite blizzard conditions and a travel advisory in effect for the area. 

Most of the onlookers were other crab fishermen, but one had been a sailor aboard the Baranof back in the 1970s, when it was a Coast Guard buoy tender. 

Blizzard conditions and a travel advisory have shut down most city offices today. 

National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Lawson says a large low-pressure system to the southwest is creating the stormy conditions. 

"The front that's associated with that is pushing a lot of wind and snow up into your area and that going to continue to progress just to your south over the next day or so."

What would you do if Unalaska were cut off from supplies or communication after a disaster?  Where would you go? 

Those are some of the questions that Kelly McGuirk is going to tackle in two disaster training courses this weekend. McGuirk is Director of Disaster Services for the Red Cross of Alaska.  She says it’s important for communities to think about these questions in advance. 

The 20th annual Unalaska Christmas Bird Count actually took place on New Year’s Day this year.  

For those you alert enough to remember, it was a cold, snowy day, but 23 local birders put on their winter boots and divided into 10 teams to go hunt some birds.  Not literally of course.  In fact, count organizer Suzi Golodoff says the tradition started as a protest of hunting.

“The bird count started 112 years ago, in 1900, around Christmas time, I think on Christmas Day.  Some early conservationist and birders on the East Coast got the idea to kind of do a census or count birds, sort of as a protest to the tradition of the day, which was to go out and shoot everything you could on Christmas and see what you could get.”

Last week Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano waived the Jones Act for the Russian tanker Renda so it could transport gasoline from Unalaska to ice-bound Nome.  Among other things, the Jones Act says foreign-flagged vessels can’t transport cargo between U-S ports. Napolitano got around it by declaring the delivery a matter of national security.

But Wednesday, KUCB reporter Stephanie Joyce discovered another provision of the Jones Act – one that says foreign-flagged vessels can’t transport passengers between U-S ports.