Every two years, legislators from across the state visit Unalaska to get a sense of how the community – and its economy – operates.
Today, Sen. Linda Menard of Wasilla, Rep. Bryce Edgmon of Dillingham, Rep. Tammie Wilson of Fairbanks, and Rep. Lance Pruitt of Anchorage are touring the town and meeting area residents.
This morning, they stopped by the powerhouse, OSI, the clinic, and the school. They also got a chance to check out the Klooesterboer cold storage facility and have some of their questions about the seafood industry answered by operations manager Matt Darbous.
Tomorrow, politicians, Coast Guard admirals, and Arctic experts will descend upon Unalaska for a meeting of the Northern Waters Task Force.
The Task Force was created by the state legislature, and its goal is to develop Arctic policy that works for Alaska. To do that, they’re hosting meetings in places like Nome, Barrow, and Kotzebue, and talking to residents about how changing Arctic conditions affect them.
This month, the City of St. Paul was finally able to cut the ribbon on its new small boat harbor.
The ceremony didn’t come soon enough – the project has been in development for about thirty years, and the many fishermen who live there say that the harbor is important both for keeping St. Paul’s economy running and protecting the town’s growing fleet.
For nearly a month now, the Aleutian volcano has shown persistent thermal anomalies. According to a status report by the Alaska Volcano Observatory, a scientist saw a small amount of steam coming from the volcano this week. Previously, reports stated that a lava dome was growing inside the volcano’s crater. So far, the eruption has not produced any ash clouds or lava flows.
Around this time last year, toxin levels in shellfish collected in Unalaska were through the roof. Some samples contained more than 30 times the safe amount of paralytic shellfish poisoning toxins. This year, levels seem to have gone down, but scientists are still recommending that subsistence harvesters exercise caution when collecting clams or mussels.
A lava dome continues to grow in Mount Cleveland’s crater.
The Alaska Volcano Observatory raised Cleveland’s aviation color code to orange last Wednesday, and the volcano’s lava flow has grown 30 feet in the past week. Because there is no seismic monitoring equipment on the Aleutian volcano, AVO’s advisory is based on satellite data.
Last week, AVO geophysicist Dave Schneider told the Alaska Public Radio Network that the observatory would like to have better data on Cleveland, but that it would be “an extremely costly operation” to install and maintain monitoring equipment.
The Dutch Harbor Fisherman is here to stay. The Calista Native corporation has found buyers in Nome for the paper, plus four more holdings of Alaska Newspapers Incorporated. The corporation's board decided to cease publication this month.
Ben Mathison has more from Nome radio station KNOM.
Twenty years ago, a big group of Unalaskans were able to travel to Petropavalask-Kamchatsky to bring the communities closer as sister cities. Now, a Russian airline has decided to revive a flight from Alaska to Kamchatka, which could make fostering that relationship easier.
Jobs data for June is in, and the unemployment rate in Alaska continues to hover around 7.5%.
That puts the state below the nationwide rate of 9.2%. According to the Alaska Department of Labor, the state also has a lower unemployment rate than it did at the same time last year. In June of 2010, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 7.9%.
While regional data have not yet been seasonally adjusted, early figures suggest that Southwest Alaska continues to have the state’s biggest jobs problem. Unemployment is at 12.4% for the region overall. The bulk of that figure comes from the Wade Hampton Census Area, which struggles with a 22% rate of unemployment.
