Laborers, union reps and fuel executives gathered at the Grand Aleutian Hotel to hear the results. (Lauren Rosenthal/KUCB)
Update, 7 p.m. Wednesday: Delta Western fuel workers in Unalaska have voted in favor of unionizing.
The Inlandboatmen's Union of the Pacific got the support of a slim majority -- eight of 15 eligible employees.
David Schaff of the National Labor Relations Board ran the election and tallied the votes. Schaff said there were some challenged ballots. But according to NLRB rules, there's no need to examine challenged ballots after a majority vote.
Emergency responders were called to Captains Bay road today to put out a fire inside North Pacific Fuel's warehouse.
Fire chief Abner Hoage says warehouse employees accidentally started the blaze.
"They were doing electrical work and some of the beams caught on fire," Hoage says. "The employees quickly isolated the power and called us, so they did a great job."
Two fire engines and about a dozen public safety personnel responded to the scene. Hoage says the fire was still burning when they entered the warehouse, but firefighters kept the flames contained and put them out quickly.
City councilors got a look at the next five years of major spending at an early meeting last night.
City manager Chris Hladick walked the council through a draft of the new Capital and Major Maintenance Plan, or CMMP. It lays out extensive upgrades to the city’s water storage facilities and big equipment purchases through fiscal year 2019.
On top of that, city councilors heard pitches from the Department of Parks, Culture and Recreation. The department's considering major renovations at the aquatics center and the library.
City council will meet early tonight to take a look at Unalaska’s roadmap for major capital projects.
The city updates its Capital and Major Maintenance Plan, or CMMP, every year as part of the budgeting process. According to a new draft, Unalaska can expect 23 big projects and upgrades worth $85 million between now and fiscal year 2019.
The Unalaska Marine Center dock and the Bobby Storrs Small Boat Harbor are both scheduled for extensive renovations in the next few years. The city is also planning to wrap up a major overhaul of its public utilities.
The proposed 44-mile right of way between King Cove and Cold Bay. / Courtesy of Alaska Department of Law
Over the last year, residents of King Cove have been ramping up their campaign to build what they say is a life-saving road to Cold Bay through a federal wildlife refuge.
The issue has made national news. Alaska’s lawmakers have taken up in the fight in the state legislature and in Congress. And now, the issue may be headed for court.
Kent Sullivan is an assistant attorney general for the Alaska Department of Law.
"Before the state can legally file suit against the federal government, it has to give notice to the affected agency," Sullivan says. "And so that’s what the state’s done with by recent filing, with the secretary of the Interior and the secretary of Homeland Security."
This weekend, Unalaska’s public safety department took steps to keep a family of bald eagles from returning to nest in the center of town.
Police chief Jamie Sunderland says the area around the Iliuliuk Family and Health Services Clinic has always been a popular neighborhood for eagles -- and a hotspot for attacks during their annual nesting season. The birds already swooped one jogger near the clinic this spring.
The Islands of the Four Mountains are at the center of the Aleutians -- geographically, and in folklore passed down from prehistoric times. But we don’t know much about the people who lived there.
An upcoming expedition to the site may change that. KUCB’s Annie Ropeik caught up with the researchers in Unalaska as they prepared for their trip -- and for what it could reveal about the earliest Unangan people.
The Coast Guard has released the results of an investigation into the grounding of Shell's Kulluk drill rig at the end of their troubled Arctic drilling season.
The agency found that Royal Dutch Shell and its subcontractor, Edison Chouest, severely underestimated the risk of towing an unpropelled oil rig through the Gulf of Alaska in a winter storm in December 2012.
After a research review, the National Marine Fisheries Service is prepared to loosen controversial limits on commercial fishing in the western Aleutian Islands.
NMFS closed fishing grounds three years ago to protect an endangered population of Steller sea lions. That triggered several rounds of litigation and a new evaluation of the science behind fishing bans.
