Pyramid Peak in snow last winter, seen from the Unalaska Valley side of the trail. (Lauren Rosenthal/KUCB)

Unalaska police believe they’ve found the body of a hiker who went missing on Pyramid Peak on Sunday.

Jessica Acker, 33, apparently left Westward Seafoods for a hike near Pyramid on Sunday afternoon. She was reported missing when she didn’t return that night.

Late Monday afternoon, a search team spotted a person who appeared to have fallen down a snowy ravine. 

(NPR stock photo)

In two weeks, recreational marijuana use will become legal in Alaska.

Voters’ move to regulate the drug like alcohol has left towns like Unalaska scrambling to get rules in place ahead of legalization day.

City council will take a first look on Tuesday at an ordinance prohibiting marijuana use in public places, and setting a $100 fine for violations.

Pyramid Peak in snow last winter, seen from the Unalaska Valley side of the trail. (Lauren Rosenthal/KUCB)

Unalaska police and the Coast Guard are searching for a missing woman who didn’t return from an apparent hike in the Pyramid Peak area Sunday night.

Jessica Acker, 33, is a fisheries observer working for Alaskan Observers at Westward Seafoods.

Police Chief Jamie Sunderland says she appears to have taken her hiking gear and left for a hike early Sunday afternoon, possibly in the Pyramid area above Westward.

The DPW will shut off water service on Standard Oil Hill and the East Point Loop from the airport to the APL dock for four hours on Friday morning. (KUCB Stock)

The Department of Public Works will be flushing water lines on Standard Oil Hill Friday morning. That means residents will be without water for about four hours.

Water service will be shut off in the Standard Oil area and on the fuel dock side of the East Point Loop from 8 a.m. until 12 noon Friday.

"The reason for that is to redirect the flow so that the flow goes through the lines we're actually trying to flush," says water utility manager Clint Huling. "It'll also eliminate unnecessary mud and debris from traveling down all those different lines, and it'll shorten the length of time that the dirty water is passing by each location."

A vacant lot off Ptarmigan Road is one of more than a hundred included in a new city analysis. (Courtesy: City of Unalaska)

If you live in a residential part of Unalaska, chances are you’re neighbors with a vacant lot. That’s what city planners have concluded after a year spent analyzing land use.

They’ve compiled their findings into a new inventory, which was presented at Thursday’s planning commission meeting.

The department found more than a hundred vacant lots that are already subdivided and near utility lines. About half of those are on flat ground, and more than half have all three utilities available. 

The 984-foot Mina Oldendorff in port in Vancouver last month. (Credit: Andre Castonguay/marinetraffic.com)

Local paramedics made a trip out to Unalaska's Wide Bay on Monday to evacuate a sick crew member from a supersized bulk carrier.

The Mina Oldendorff is a Liberian-flagged vessel nearly a thousand feet long.

Police chief Jamie Sunderland says their crew called for help on Monday morning for "a person who was very sick, lethargic, and just not feeling well." 

A vacant lot in the Valley neighborhood. (Annie Ngo/KUCB)

City council got a list of choices for how to move forward addressing Unalaska’s housing shortage at their meeting Tuesday night. Their short answer: do it all.

Councilors asked city staff to get legal opinions on certain tax abatements. And they wanted information on the financial status of city utilities before looking at making new lines cheaper.

City council will decide how to move forward in addressing residents’ concerns about affordable housing in Unalaska at their meeting tonight.

At their special session on housing, several councilors expressed support for offering tax abatements for developers and finding ways to lower the cost of utility extensions for new subdivisions.

Tonight, they’ll choose from a list of directions to staff on how to do that -- like finding out the pros and cons of deferring or ending certain property taxes, or setting up a housing website or a forum with government lenders.

A vacant lot in Unalaska's Valley neighborhood. (Annie Ngo/KUCB)

Unalaska’s developers were out in force at a special city council meeting on housing Tuesday night, asking for all the help they could get to build new properties.

The request from landowners and builders like Brian Whittern was clear: 

"Anything that the city can do to make development easier, and lower the cost and offer incentives," he said.