Alaska Business November 2022

ALASKA

DEANTHA SKIBINSKI Executive Director Alaska Miners Association

Seward Highway, AK

A thousand factors impact your bottom line every day. Some in your control, some well beyond it. One thing you have the power to choose is who you work with.

Our job is to keep you moving forward. Our machines are engineered with a “get it done” mentality and our After Sales Solutions are designed to keep you up and running.

The tougher your job gets, the easier it is to see we’re here when Hitachi

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Alvin Ott Fairbanks Branch Mining Sales

Jay Ahrenholz Anchorage Branch Sales Rep.

Seward Highway, AK

Geostationary Equatorial Orbit (GEO) 22,370 miles above Earth

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) 450 miles above Earth

*Diagram not to scale

Static

TWO SATELLITE NETWORKS. BEST-OF-CLASS BENEFITS.

Alaska Communications is designing solutions to fully meet the future demands of increased traffic and data needs in Alaska. By combining the strengths of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Geostationary Equatorial Orbit (GEO) satellite networks, traffic will be routed to GEO or LEO satellite constellations based on use case. With this satellite integration, GEO can serve large downloads and one-way video streams, while low-latency LEO supports near real-time voice communications and data transmission.

With LEO-GEO integration, we are offering a multi-path satellite solution with a landing station in Alaska, for a best-of-class solution with the flexibility to meet budget needs and deliver the uptime and reliability desired.

Contact Alaska Communications to learn more at tellmemore@acsalaska.com

©2022 Alaska Communications. All rights reserved. Terms and conditions apply. Service not available in all areas.

GEO

LEO In Motion

By Vanessa Orr

By Tracy Barbour

By Katie Pesznecker

By Tracy Barbour

By Amy Newman

By Scott Rhode

CONTENTS

70 THE REALITIES OF NET ZERO Green energy needs minerals, and Alaska should provide them

By Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse

76 WHERE IT'S AT Mapping Alaska is good business

By Hillary Palmer & Ed Fogels

80 LIQUID

ENERGY

Using Alaska’s waterways to provide power

By Rachael Kvapil

86 ‘EVERY TREE TELLS A TALE’ Niche products put Alaska timber to creative uses

By Nancy Erickson

92 VOICES OF SEAFOOD A chorus sings the praises of Alaska’s ocean bounty

By Scott Rhode

58 PRODUCING, PERMITTING, AND PROSPECTIVE MINES Alaska’s big mining picture

By Alexandra Kay

Coeur

52 MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS An international partnership for mineral security leaves Alaska miners scratching their heads

By Vanessa Orr

ABOUT THE COVER

If you’re looking for an expert on the mining industry in Alaska, look no further than our November cover subject, Deantha Skibinski, the executive director of the Alaska Miners Association, which encourages and supports responsible mineral development. Before taking on that role, she worked for the Resource Development Council, where she was a projects coordinator advocating for the mining and tourism industries.

In this issue, she lends her insights on the Minerals Security Partnership, an international agreement with the goal to catalyze investment from government and the private sector in minerals projects that adhere to high environmental, social, and governance standards. In theory, it should be good for Alaska, which is rich in several critical minerals, has a long record of responsible mining, and is well positioned geographically to deliver minerals around the world. “More Questions Than Answers” provides more information on the Minerals Security Partnership, including why that theory may or may not play out.

Coeur

NOVEMBER 2022 | VOLUME 38 | NUMBER 11 | AKBIZMAG.COM

Alaskans have been working on energy solutions for decades. Our state has been at the forefront of developing and deploying microgrid projects designed to take advantage of our many natural resources—wind, hydro, solar, coal, biomass, oil, or natural gas—in various combinations. Alaska is a natural proving ground for energy systems and innovations that must function in extreme conditions at the end of complicated supply chains with minimal maintenance. Keeping every Alaskan warm in the winter, powering lifesaving equipment off the road, and keeping lines of communication open across the state is a big ask—and it all needs to be done affordably.

Recently energy has taken root in national and global conversations, as well. For many years the United States and other developed countries were content to reap the rewards of cheap natural resource extraction, however and wherever that was possible. Escalating tensions with China and Russia’s war against Ukraine have made what seemed like a gray area very black and white: how and where energy is produced, and who is producing it, matters. Our future depends on responsible energy production and use, and responsible energy requires responsible resource development. A conventional gasoline-powered car contains between 18 and 49 pounds of copper while an electric vehicle contains approximately 183 pounds. That’s just one example of one mineral that could easily be the next bottleneck in establishing an optimal energy posture.

So it’s heartening to see initiatives at the federal level such as the Minerals Security Partnership. This international partnership has the intent to make sure critical minerals are “produced, processed, and recycled in a manner that supports the ability of countries to realize the full economic development benefit of their geological endowments,” according to the US Department of State.

It is equally disheartening to see the federal government throwing up roadblocks to natural resource development in Alaska, such as its flip-flopping on ConocoPhillips Alaska’s Willow project or its back-and-forth on the industrial access road to the Ambler Mining District. Even while our federal government is apparently joining a global mission to make sure that natural resource development is conducted with an emphasis on keeping people and the environment safe, somehow it continues to resist the reality that Alaska excels at doing exactly that.

But we do! So this year in our Natural Resource Development special section we have once again broadened our coverage of Alaska’s natural resources, ranging from minerals and fish to lumber and hydropower. Every one of those resources, properly managed, can last for generations, powering, building, and feeding not only our homes but worldwide communities.

EDITORIAL STAFF

Managing Editor Tasha Anderson 907-257-2907 tanderson@akbizmag.com Editor/Staff Writer Scott Rhode 907-257-2902 srhode@akbizmag.com Social Media Carter Damaska 907-257-2910 enews@akbizmag.com Editorial Assistant Emily Olsen 907-257-2914 emily@akbizmag.com

PRODUCTION STAFF

Art Director Monica Sterchi-Lowman 907-257-2916 design@akbizmag.com

Design & Art Production Fulvia Caldei Lowe production@akbizmag.com Website Manager Taylor Sanders webmanager@akbizmag.com

Photo Contributor Kerry Tasker

BUSINESS STAFF

President Billie Martin

VP & General Manager Jason Martin 907-257-2905 jason@akbizmag.com VP Sales & Marketing Charles Bell 907-257-2909 cbell@akbizmag.com

Senior Account Manager Janis J. Plume 907-257-2917 janis@akbizmag.com

Senior Account Manager Christine Merki 907-257-2911 cmerki@akbizmag.com

Tasha Anderson Managing Editor, Alaska Business

Accounting Manager James Barnhill 907-257-2901 accounts@akbizmag.com

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Office of Broadband

Taking the lead on expanding Alaska’s internet connectivity

By Vanessa Orr

To take part in the global economy, communication is key. Yet parts of Alaska still lack access to highspeed internet or to any internet at all.

To help improve access, the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), provides $42.5 billion to expand high-speed internet access by funding planning, infrastructure deployment, and adoption programs in all fifty states, Puerto Rico, and other US territories. The funds will be administered to each location by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) newly established Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth.

Alaska has an office of its own. In August, Governor Mike Dunleavy formed the Alaska Office of Broadband to bridge the digital divide in rural, suburban, and tribal communities. The state office will distribute federal funds to prioritized

communities. Though each state is expected to get $100 million minimum from the IIJA, money isn’t the only issue facing Alaska when it comes to increasing connectivity.

“In terms of magnitude, the sheer vast distances that the broadband infrastructure has to span between locations is far greater than anywhere else in the United States,” says Lisa Von Bargen, senior project manager at the Office of Broadband in the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development. “Pair that with a lack of population density in many areas of the state, and that makes it even more difficult when you take into consideration not only the capital expenditure but ongoing costs for maintaining networks.”

Across the Miles

For Alaskans to take advantage of highspeed internet, an immense amount of middle- and last-mile infrastructure needs to be put into place. After construction is over, funds need to be set aside for operational expenses.

“We face the typical challenges that other states face, only more extreme,” says Thomas Lochner, director of the Office of Broadband. “Other than a couple of valleys in Colorado, most places don’t experience -50°F temperatures that freeze the creosote on the poles, which creates hazardous conditions for workers.”

Areas that already have internet connections still struggle with quality, so the office has plans to upgrade them.

“While some locations are served by geostationary satellites, the difference between low-earth orbiting satellites [LEOs] and fiber latency is immense,” says Lochner. “Depending on distance, fiber takes 20 to 60 milliseconds to send a data packet; geostationary satellites take 600 to 700 milliseconds.” A human eyeblink is around 250 milliseconds; double or triple that time can trip up computers.

“A health clinic in an ultra-rural community using a geostationary satellite connection often has trouble because 700 milliseconds of latency causes some modern software to detect that the connection is broken, so it resends the message,” Lochner explains, “and that creates its own problems.”

EASY, TASTY CATERING

“By creating digital equity, we are looking to make new entries into the workforce that are best exemplified by remote workers… They will be able to join the global economy from their own villages.”

Thomas Lochner

Director

Alaska

Office of Broadband

The BEAD program prioritizes how funding can be spent, targeting unserved communities first, followed by underserved communities and then community anchor institutions, such as libraries, that lack gigabit service.

Collaboration and Transparency

Such a massive project takes collaboration between a lot of different entities.

“The broadband funding coming to the state is an amazing opportunity for collaboration, but we’re only going to accomplish this universal build-out through strong collaboration with tribal partners, municipal partners, internet providers and utility companies, and a strong workforce,” says Von Bargen. “It’s going to take everyone coming together, including community anchor institutions, to coalesce around the plan. We’ll need to use everyone’s resources to get it done.”

Lochner adds, “We understand that some organizations and municipalities may not have experience in this area, so we are encouraging existing carriers—

including for-profit companies and nonprofit co-ops—to work with them as well as the Office of Broadband to make sure that the outcomes outlined in HB363 and IIJA are met… We need to make sure that this influx of capital funding isn’t used to build projects that in three years are in disrepair.”

Broadband carriers will submit grant applications to access the funds, which will first be used to provide service in areas that have none.

“When Congress passed the IIJA, communities with broadband speeds of 25 Mbps [megabits per second] download and 3 Mmps upload were considered unserved, and the money will first be used to bring them up to that service level,” explains MTA CEO Michael Burke. MTA currently provides broadband services to a 10,000 square mile region in Alaska.

“The second step will be to help communities whose networks cannot get up to 100 Mbps download speeds and 20 Mbps upload speed,” he continues. “That will be considered the new baseline, and whatever networks are being built will be scalable for the

future since broadband speeds are continually evolving. We want to make sure that we can scale up to what may be needed thirty years in the future.”

“There are going to be a lot of challenges since everything in Alaska is on a grander scale,” says Becky Windt Pearson, GCI’s general counsel and senior vice president for law and corporate advocacy. “In many places, equipment will need to cross mountain ranges where the ownership is a patchwork of federal and state agencies. Permitting requirements will make installing this infrastructure more difficult, but we have other hurdles—like massive icing on rural microwave towers and bears playing with fiber optic cable—that other states don’t have.”

Even if the install goes relatively smoothly, maintenance is a challenge in communities with small populations, which adds to operating costs.

“Because the customer base is fairly small in some of these communities, the economics of getting broadband there and maintaining it can cost millions for

requirements will make installing this infrastructure more difficult, but we have other hurdles, like massive icing on rural microwave towers and bears playing with fiber optic cable, that other states don’t have.”

“Permitting

Becky Windt Pearson General Counsel and Senior Vice President for Law and Corporate Advocacy GCI

GCI’S AU-Aleutians Fiber project is about the same length as TAPS, spanning 800 miles from Kodiak to the Aleutians. It will begin delivering “urban-level speed, service, and reliability” to Unalaska by the end of this year; to Sand Point and King Cove by the end of 2023; and to Chignik Bay and Larsen Bay by 2024.

only a couple hundred people,” says Burke. “The hope is that with this grant money, it will cover a large portion of the capital cost, which will make it more viable to provide the same type of service that is available in urban areas.”

A Head Start on Connecting

The state and its broadband providers have already been laying the groundwork to increase service in some underserved areas.

“What’s missing in a lot of areas is the middle-mile connection, which

connects communities to an internet peering point. It’s a critical piece,” says Burke. “Calculations done about six or eight years ago estimated that it would cost $1 billion to $1.5 billion to build that middle mile, but since then, a lot of middle mile construction has been going on.”

In 2020, using private capital, MTA completed AlCan ONE, the first allterrestrial fiber line connecting Alaska to the Lower 48, and GCI is currently closing the digital divide through the AU-Aleutians Fiber Project. GCI also recently received a federal Rural Utility Service grant for the Lower Kuskokwim project to serve communities surrounding Bethel. A tribal broadband connectivity program has provided funding for projects, as well.

“The nice thing is that, in addition to the federal infrastructure money, a program called ReConnect provided federal grants to the state for broadband projects, including more than $200 million in grants in the last few months to get broadband out to different communities,” says Burke. “A number of carriers have taken advantage of the ReConnect program, including MTA, which recently put fiber into homes up north near Caswell that didn’t have phone or broadband services before.”

Workforce and Supply Concerns

Broadband providers call statewide fiber connections a “game changer” because it could enable Alaskans in the most remote villages to pursue careers without leaving home.

“By creating digital equity, we are looking to make new entries into the workforce that are best exemplified by remote workers,” says Lochner. “They will be able to join the global economy from their own villages.”

To build this broadband infrastructure will require engineers, heavy equipment operators, technicians, technical and front desk support, transportation and logistics coordinators, and more. The problem is there might not be enough skilled workers to go around.

“The Infrastructure and Jobs Act is also funding road, bridge, and airport construction, and they’ll need personnel to get that work done,” says Burke. “We’ll be competing with other sectors to find the employees we need.”

As the supply of people is spread thin, so is the supply of critical parts.

“Carriers all across the country are working with vendors, the administration, and people in Congress to try to get companies to ramp up production to make sure that we have the supplies we need when the money starts flowing,” Burke says. “We’re trying to get ahead of it. Fingers crossed that things will get better.”

While Congress has mandated that the broadband expansion needs to be completed within five years, it may take longer to come to fruition.

“When we order fiber optic cable, the lead time is about two years,” says Burke, adding that MTA is currently ordering supplies for work to be done in summer 2024. “This creates a real challenge to build things quickly. We’re also struggling to get a skilled workforce, which could create a roadblock as well.”

From Plan to Project

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is working on nationwide broadband mapping that pinpoints what kind of broadband service and speed is available at every location, called the “fabric.” This map will help determine how money is allocated to each state, weighted for areas with high installation costs.

The first iteration of the fabric map was released at the end of June, and Alaska’s internet providers noticed some pretty significant problems.

“At the time the original maps were released, we became aware that at least sixty-nine Alaska communities were missing, and there were more than a hundred others deficient in structures based on the 2020 census,” says Von Bargen. “That data set has since been improved upon by the FCC’s contractor, identifying tens of thousands of potential locations in Alaska. We are confident we can get to where we need to be working with our federal partners.”

The Alaska Office of Broadband has since done a high-level review of the revised fabric map, and the office is also acquiring` its own satellite mapping data in partnership with the Rasmuson Foundation.

“This will allow us to extract building footprints to compare to the FCC information to make sure that potential broadband service areas are not missed,” says Von Bargen.

Planning funds are on the way, with a $567,000 Digital Equity planning grant and a $5 million BEAD planning grant arriving this fall. Once fabric mapping has been completed, the NTIA will make its calculations and the remaining

$95 million in funds will be released to the state.

“We don’t know exactly when the NTIA will make those allocation decisions, though we’re working on getting our five-year action plan, initial proposal, and final proposal finished as quickly as possible,” says Von Bargen. “While states are given statutorily mandated maximum timeframes to get these done, we believe that time is of the essence, and we want to get it finished in less than the allowable time.”

Though an almost overwhelming task, the Office of Broadband has been able to keep the project moving at a fast pace since the day Governor Dunleavy created it.

“We have been really impressed with the work that the administration did to get the groundwork in place for the establishment of the broadband deployment office, including the foresight to put together the broadband task force that led to the passing of House Bill 363,” says Windt Pearson. “They have positioned the state well to participate in the BEAD program so that we can hit the ground running.”

“We have a lot of work ahead of us to get the job done, and we’re really excited,” says Burke. “Just imagine what an impact this project will have on Alaskans’ lives.”

MTA’s fiber yard at it is headquarters in Palmer.

MTA

THE FUTURE OF ALASKA IS IN YOUR HANDS.

At the University of Alaska, we are on a mission to empower Alaska. We offer accessible, affordable education and job training to students of all backgrounds, ages and identities. A fortified economy begins with a commitment to learning and growing. From job training certificates to PhDs, we empower our students by giving them the tools they need to build a future for themselves, their families and their communities. Through education and research, the University of Alaska nurtures the minds of today and the economy of tomorrow. Let’s shape the future together. Learn more at empower.alaska.edu

Tools for the Future, Today

Capitalizing on VR, AR, and AI

By Tracy Barbour

Virtual reality (VR) was supposed to be the next big thing in the early ‘90s. Then the World Wide Web happened, and VR was sidelined for almost thirty years. Now, the technology to immerse users in a simulated setting is the next, next big thing, rebranded

in some quarters as the “metaverse,” which blends innovations in hardware, networking, and artificial intelligence (AI).

VR’s sleeker and more pragmatic sister technology, augmented reality (AR), blends digital elements into the real world; it projects information

on top of what the user is already seeing. The most familiar example is the 2016 game Pokémon Go, which superimposed imaginary creatures onto the environment viewed through a smartphone screen. AR, VR, and AI have since graduated beyond their initial uses in gaming

Alaska Airlines Airspace Intelligence

and entertainment to much broader business applications.

For example, AR is being combined with excavator systems that use cameras mounted on heavy equipment to visually drape what is being built on top of what is there at the job site. This enables the operator to work more accurately, efficiently, quickly—and safely.

By 2024, more than 50 percent of user interface interactions will use AI-enabled computer vision, speech, and natural language processing, as well as AR and VR, according to market researcher International Data Corporation (IDC). And IDC predicts that at least 90 percent of new enterprise apps will embed AI by 2025.

“AI and machine learning have applicability in a wide variety of industries, from cybersecurity to fisheries management, and have solutions for business processes,” says Alaska Developers Alliance Executive Director Andre Andrews. “AR and VR are innovations that can enhance the user experience and have changed how

people might interact with products and people in the future.”

AI, VR, and AR can be particularly useful in Alaska. “A key benefit for any technology relevant to Alaska is in removing the need to travel—or if travel is needed, to know exactly why and what is needed to reduce the possibility of multiple trips—and to reduce the time onsite and maximize the value of the time spent,” says Daniel Sawyer, a principal consultant at Computer Task Group (CTG). “Advancements in technology such as AI and visualization through VR and AR can help meet the challenge in efficiency of identification, diagnosis, planning, and execution of work.”

There’s an obvious benefit to using VR for employee training. Sawyer, who specializes in deploying costefficient technology with a focus on user workflow to increase business productivity, says, “An immersive environment can be desirable to place the user in various scenarios and significantly improves knowledge retention over simple computer-based training.”

“An immersive environment can be desirable to place the user in various scenarios and significantly improves knowledge retention over simple computerbased training.”

Daniel Sawyer Principal Consultant CTG

Learning Simulators

Virtual training has existed in some form since the first flight simulators of the 1920s. From a barrel rigged with sticks and wires to the hydraulically actuated capsules of today, pilots have learned to fly using cockpit mock-ups tied to realistic displays of their surroundings. The latest version shrinks the system to a more affordable scale.

Alaska Airlines uses VR headsets to enhance its pilot training program. The headsets allow pilots to immerse themselves in a virtual cockpit so they can prepare for simulator training. The technology creates visuals that are shockingly realistic and convincing, says Pasha Saleh, head of corporate development at Alaska Airlines. “If you can have a student enter that simulator with a much better sense of the controls, it brings the training to life more,” he says. “You get a better training outcome.”

The use of VR headsets does not replace traditional training; it’s a supplemental study aid. “I’ve been a pilot for over thirty years, and had this been available when I was flying, it would have greatly reduced the time for learning,” Saleh says. “I expect great benefits.”

Alaska Airlines

efforts. VR is a tremendous tool, Saleh says, and the company is just scratching the surface of what the technology can do. “It’s a really exciting time to be innovating in aviation,” he says.

Kartorium, an Alaskan-owned software startup founded in 2019, is developing VR in the form of 3D digital twins. A digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical environment, asset, or process. Anyone looking at the digital twin can see information about how the physical thing is doing in the real world.

A primary application for Kartorium’s digital twins is training. Not having to send trainees to a remote site saves on travel and assets. Or, conversely, a lessexperienced worker can be sent to the field while an expert uses a digital twin to coach them through a procedure.

“The thing I’ve been most encouraged by has been the ability to promote a less technical workforce,” says Jay Byam, Kartorium’s founder and CEO. “There is a huge turnover in workforce problems in Alaska. Either positions go unfilled or they are filled by experts Outside.

The company’s digital-twin platform is also being used to address issues related to data availability. Businesses often have people using different systems and computers to manage their data, and not everyone will have access to that information. Digital twins can solve this problem. “If I can navigate to this 3D environment and get all the information I need to know, that cuts down on troubleshooting time and a loss of assets— and it allows for greater efficiency,” Byam says.

Machine Control

Kartorium’s online drag-and-drop, digital twin platform helps visualize data and physical assets. Using a cloudbased tool, the user can access the VR construct through their web browser. One of the most basic ways to use digital twin technology is to navigate through an environment without having to physically go there. Byam explains, “It might be a power plant that you’re navigating through. From there, you can call out hotspots or assets in the environment that you want the user to know about. You can click on these things and the camera will go there. A

is also employing VR to support its maintenance training

The more we can empower local individuals to take care of utilities, I really see this as transformative.”

Jay Byam Kartorium

Digital twin technology creates a simulation of real-world equipment or facilities, enabling long-distance troubleshooting, training, or control. Kartorium

Pasha Saleh Alaska Airlines

side panel will pop up and give more details, which could include images and video.”

VR, AR, and AI have potential benefits for any facility or equipment control scenario. That’s the case at GPS Alaska, which provides machine control solutions in the construction, surveying, engineering, and natural resource development industries. “We take different positioning technology and we automate heavy equipment with that technology,” says Vice President Michael Williams. “We take paper plans and have them digitized… and put them into a computer.”

Machine automation used to be an after-market add-on, but it’s becoming standard equipment. “It has really taken hold in the industry,” Williams says. “The OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] like John Deere and Caterpillar are starting to design their own system and install it at the factory.”

In addition to selling, installing, and calibrating infrastructure technology, GPS Alaska also provides service, training, and support. It is the only authorized Topcon Dealer in Alaska, and it offers additional products from other vendors such as Sokkia, Carlson Software, Pfreundt Scales,

and RDS Technology.

Machine control software can automate graders, dozers, excavators, and other heavy equipment. For example, 3D machine control combines inputs from lasers, slope sensors, or sonic trackers, along with mounted sensors and satellite receivers. “The operator still has to drive the machine and understand how to move dirt around, but the blade is still controlled by that system,” Williams says.

However, with fewer details drawing their attention, operators make fewer mistakes and are less fatigued at the end of the day, according to Williams. They can improve their material placement speed and quality by 50 percent or more—and create a safer work environment and cost savings in the process.

Machine control systems also improve accuracy, reducing the number of people needed to measure and set up grade stakes. “Bringing in automation frees up those guys and gets them out of harm’s way,” Williams says. “For construction companies, when you can increase how you ‘get to grade’ by 50 percent and the more accurately you can get something done, it’s money in the pocket.”

“Even smaller companies have the ability to harness these technologies because industry has been generous with free trainings, allowing businesses to understand which problems have already been solved and where they can’t help yet.”

Andre Andrews Executive Director Alaska Developers Alliance

The Flyways AI system by Airspace Intelligence recommends route changes for an Alaska Airlines dispatcher to choose.

Alaska Airlines | Airspace Intelligence

Andre Andrews Alaska Developers Alliance

Such automation might threaten to take away a construction worker’s job, if not for the persistent shortage of skilled labor. “There’s simply not enough people out there to get the work done that needs to be done,” Williams says. Adding AI, AR, and VR to the crew multiplies the productivity of human workers.

Ear to the Ground

Once confined to Isaac Asimov’s robot fantasies, AI is a commonplace tool, though often hidden from users. Machine learning has made great strides in visual perception, speech recognition, language translation, and decision-making.

Number crunching is still the most natural task for computers. McKinley

Management, an investment, research, and consulting firm, employs AI for analytics services from its offices in Anchorage, Juneau, and Chicago. Financial services face a problem of managing massive amounts of data. “There are subsets of tools that help us deal with that problem,” says McKinley Management CEO Robert Gillam. “Tools like machine learning and natural language processing can read through all that data.”

McKinley partnered in 2019 with UAA’s Alaska Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (ADSAIL) to focus on the use of data science and AI in finance. Under the academic partnership, student researchers earn college credits by exploring the application of AI and machine-learning

“We need young people who are well-trained, and the tools for the future are not the tools of the past.”

Robert Gillam CEO

McKinley Management

McKinley CEO Rob Gillam, UAA Chancellor Sean Parnell, and members of team McKinley and UAA gathered outside the ADSAIL space at UAA’s College of Business and Public Policy.

McKinley Management

Who We Are

skills to solve real-world problems in global financial markets.

The ADSAIL program—which went on hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic and is expected to restart next spring—selects two to four participants each semester. So far, ten students have completed the program, and Gillam is optimistic about its broad potential. “We’re thrilled about it,” he says. “It is going well—and I think it is getting even better.”

Student researchers work under the supervision of McKinley’s manager of data science in the firm’s Anchorage headquarters. Space for ADSAIL is currently designated at UAA on the third floor of the College of Business and Public Policy. As part of its contribution, McKinley is outfitting the space with technology to assist students in their data science and AI projects.

Participants of the ADSAIL program apply AI and machine learning to financial markets in a professional environment. McKinley, in turn, receives access to “smart kids with different perspectives” to conduct research. “It helps us keep our ear to the ground to explore new techniques,” Gillam says. “It also creates a conduit for us to give feedback to the university with skills development.”

AI is the tool of the future for financial services, Gillam says. Perhaps the most compelling insight he has gained from McKinley’s partnership with UAA is how important that tool is to workforce development. “We need young people who are well-trained,” he says, "and the tools for the future are not the tools of the past.”

Smart Routes

Optimizing finances led Alaska Airlines to adopt AI analytics last year. Alaska Airlines became the first commercial airline in the world to fully implement the new Flyways AI technology created by Silicon Valleybased Airspace Intelligence. The flight monitoring and routing platform uses machine learning to help dispatchers choose the best

route structures to avoid congested airspace or bad weather. During 2021, the technology helped the airline optimize 20,869 flights; save 2.8 minutes of flight time per optimized flight; achieve a net savings of 241 pounds of fuel per flight optimized; and avoid 17.3 tons of estimated carbon dioxide emissions, according to Alaska Airlines’ 2021 Care Report.

“Flyways makes aviation faster, safer, and more environmentally friendly,” says Saleh. “It also makes aviation more predictable, and predictable arrival times are key to running an airline smoothly.”

Saleh says Flyways originated as a project by a few Google employees trying to solve problems around self-driving cars. Alaska Airlines felt their application would be ideal for the aviation industry. “The primary reason behind that is there’s nothing random that happens in the sky; the airline has to file a flight plan,” he explains.

Alaska Airlines has always been one of the most technologically advanced airlines in the world, Saleh says. It was the first airline to use GPS and to sell tickets on the internet.

“Even smaller companies have the ability to harness these technologies,” says Andrews, “because industry has been generous with free trainings, allowing businesses to understand which problems have already been solved and where they can’t help yet.”

Companies should be wary of choosing a technology solution before evaluating alternatives, though. “Implementation of systems should be grounded in the size of the opportunity for business improvement, following a solid process of gathering requirements, solution selection, implementation, integration, and ongoing support and benefits realization,” says CTG’s Sawyer.

Streamlining tasks with VR, AR, and AI enables humans to focus on higherorder thinking that these technologies are not ready for. “These technologies are currently providing real value to businesses and have not yet peaked,” Andrews says. “There is still much to learn about this new frontier.”

“The thing I’ve been most encouraged by has been the ability to promote a less technical workforce. There is a huge turnover in workforce problems in Alaska. Either positions go unfilled or they are filled by experts Outside. The more we can empower local individuals to take care of utilities, I really see this as transformative.”

Jay Byam Founder and CEO Kartorium

Daniel Sawyer CTG

Rob Gillam McKinley Management

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Thin Airwaves

Local radio broadcasters do more with less

By Scott Rhode

Two years ago, I was sitting in the tiny room where I had worked for nearly a quarter century. My entire professional radio career was spent in the newsroom at KENI in Anchorage. At that point in 2020, the studios in the Dimond Center were practically empty as a COVID-19 precaution; only essential personnel worked at the station in person. I had a badge that said I, as a news reporter, was essential.

My audience was relatively deserted, too. Radio stations depend so much on drivers listening in their cars that COVID-19 crashed ratings by keeping people at home.

The medium is doing much better now. “It was a recordsetting ratings period, as far as the entire cluster,” says Andy Lohman, area president for iHeartMedia’s ten Alaska stations, of the spring “book” results, published in August.

Ratings were also up for independent, locally owned KLEF. Rick Goodfellow, president and general manager of Chinook Concert Broadcasters, says his station placed 7th among commercial stations in Anchorage (non-commercial KSKA always dominates) and 6th nationwide among stations playing classical music. At times, he says, KLEF has been the highest-rated classical station in the country. Goodfellow sees potential for the audience to grow; today’s teenagers don’t know they’re supposed to hate classical music.

Rick Goodfellow

Lohman is likewise optimistic about his format mix of news-talk, classic rock, Top 40 pop, new country, adult contemporary, and sports stations. “From the listener’s standpoint, it’s as good or better than it ever has been. The music is more on target, we have more custom formats from which to

choose, we have more and stronger talent throughout the day,” Lohman says. “Below the surface, it’s very different. There’s not as many people.”

Don’t I know it. Lohman was my boss for all those years I was on KENI, and he’s the last person still working at the Dimond Center who was there when I started. The company was smaller then, with only three stations, but more people were on the payroll.

Not So Essential

Broadcast announcers and radio DJs in Alaska numbered 117 in 2018, according to the most recent data from the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development. The department projected a 22 percent decrease in that occupation by 2028, leaving 91 on-air staff. The drop would be the biggest in the category of “Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media.”

Engineer Van Craft knows why. “The equipment is more reliable now. Doesn’t fail as often,” Craft says, “so you have fewer people doing the job.” He is the only other person who

worked at the Dimond Center longer than I did (although some more senior broadcast veterans arrived later, after a merger with another company). Last year, Craft jumped ship for Alaska Public Media, where he is now the FM broadcast engineer.

He had a choice; I didn’t. Two years ago, I was sitting in my tiny room when I was laid off. A few other very experienced broadcasters lost their jobs that day. The company started scaling down before COVID-19, losing one or two people at a time, but the fat was gone and iHeartMedia was cutting to the bone.

Kim Williams has seen layoffs from both sides. She was a sales manager at the Dimond Center in 2009 when she was let go, but a few months later she was hired back to lead iHeartMedia sister stations in Fairbanks. As the boss in November 2020, she had to cut four positions, leaving just two on-air people, three salespeople, and one engineer for four stations. WKRP in Cincinnati had a larger ensemble.

“It was devastating to the managers who were telling these furloughed

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“From the listener’s standpoint, it’s as good or better than it ever has been… Below the surface, it’s very different. There’s not as many people.”

Andy Lohman Alaska and Hawaii Area President iHeartMedia

employees, ‘Everything’s gonna be fine,’” says Williams.

The situation was similarly bleak in Juneau for Richard Burns, president and CEO of Frontier Media, which owns all six commercial radio stations in the capital city. “At no point in my business career did I ever think—as 99 percent of business people in any sphere thought—that all their revenue sources would be cut off at one point in time,” Burns says. “There was a very deep breath moment where you go, ‘Is this how my business life ends?’”

Leveraging Talent

Frontier Media and its Juneau Radio Center survived, allowing Burns’ secret weapon to exit on top. Pete Carran, the news voice of KINY, had been trying to retire since 2014, but he was only able to leave last spring after convincing Burns to replace him with two newcomers, aged 19 and 23.

“It was like the crowning achievement of my life training those two people,” Carran says. “I think you have to find people with potential and

On the wall of his office/studio at KLEF in Anchorage, Rick Goodfellow keeps a photo of himself working at Juneau’s KINY in the ‘60s.

Alaska Business

develop them. Like any other field of endeavor, it’s hard to find people.”

At iHeartMedia, nobody replaced me. The news department is gone— or rather, DJs relay whatever news they find. “You see it on social media,” explains Mark Murphy, senior VP of programming for Alaska. “They’re the ones that are breaking the news, really, so we’re just reiterating stories throughout the day that we feel our listeners need to know about.”

Lohman calls it “leveraging talent” for the sake of efficiency. “No matter what industry you’re in anymore, you’re doing a lot more with less,” Lohman says. “There’s been other talent from other markets doing shows on stations in cities for a long time. It’s not something new.”

Indeed, for years iHeart Fairbanks stations relied on my newscasts recorded in Anchorage. I also regularly exchanged material with Carran in Juneau. And a decade before COVID-19, iHeartMedia had personnel, both on and off the air, move away from Alaska while continuing to work remotely.

By 2020, iHeartMedia codified the practice with its “Centers of Excellence” model. Centralizing everything from technical monitoring to the production of commercials allows for scaled-down facilities. The Federal Communications Commission had just rescinded a requirement that stations have at least one main studio, opening the possibility of a radio station originating from a faceless computer server.

Outlet for Creativity

A corporation with more than 850 stations can centralize. Goodfellow’s KLEF is still a hand-made operation. He’s been at it since 1989, and he has no plans to change or sell.

“Frankly, I do this because I enjoy it. I don’t mind at all if people listen; I like it better if more people listen, but really I do it because it pleases me,” Goodfellow says. “Anybody who doesn’t like my selections, there’s probably an off button on their radio, and occasionally I’ve encouraged people to use it.”

The Alaska Broadcasters Association (ABA) named Goodfellow its Broadcaster of the Year for 1993 and inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2012. He’s been in radio since the ‘60s, including a stint at KINY.

After a career in commercial radio, engineer Van Craft switched to Alaska Public Media last year, coincidentally just like Paul Jewusiak, Craft’s counterpart from Anchorage’s other six-station radio cluster, Alpha Media.

Alaska Business

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President and General Manger Chinook Concert Broadcasters

Carran, named an ABA Hall of Famer in 2019, also started his career in the ‘60s. In Pittsburgh, he heard an ad for a four-month broadcasting career academy. He trained further while in the Army, and when he was posted to Fort Richardson, Carran got his first job at KWKO (now KTMB Classic Hits 102.1) from the top of the McKay Building (now the McKinley Tower apartments). He became news director when the previous news director simply didn’t show up. “Not only news director,” Carran recalls. “I became Chief of News Operations, which was me. One person.”

Murphy has been doing what he’s loved since high school. Craft responded to an ad for careers in radio while at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Burns got into radio at age 17. Even I was a teenager when I started in radio.

Is broadcasting still a job that young people can aspire to? Burns suggests

they might not need to; they can make the same noise via social media. “You can see talent in people that are developing their own audiences. Thirty years ago, that would happen in a different way,” Burns says. “It’s still very much there, and broadcast gives them another outlet for that creativity.”

that automation came into being,” Craft says. “We rode on the coattails of all those improvements.”

Automation was key to KLEF starting originally. A live DJ would get bored during a 20-minute concerto, so Goodfellow records tags for every piece of music as it arrives. The human touch comes in assembling the pieces for different dayparts: drive time, daytime, dinner, and evening. Goodfellow does that job himself. “There is no such thing as an automated music selector that will do classical music properly,” he says.

Lohman entered the radio business in a more calculated way. He worked a variety of jobs, including the slime line at a seafood processor. It was former Anchorage mayor Rick Mystrom, then running an advertising agency, who suggested that radio sales would open the door to any industry Lohman might care to explore. Lohman discovered that radio itself was the industry he enjoyed.

“I still repeat Rick Mystrom’s advice today,” Lohman says. “Radio presents far greater opportunities than radio sales in general twenty years ago. For example, there’s no geography; we can call on any business, anywhere on a national level and, with our radio stations in 150-plus markets, we can cover those markets. With the digital assets, we can cover anything.”

Digital Assets

There were no computers when Craft started in radio. He recalls the first computer in the office was for traffic (scheduling ads). Then the program director got one for scheduling music. Craft had just installed a “music on hard drive” system when I started at KENI, and it was so buggy that it triggered the “dead air” alarm at least once per day.

“Fast forward from there to now, and you just see all the R&D that we have been able to take advantage of, just because of where IT was when

Listeners worldwide have access to Goodfellow’s unique taste, thanks to online streaming. That technology opened a new channel to reach an audience. Stations had been multicasting since the early ‘90s, but internet radio really took off in 2005 with Pandora and in 2006 with Spotify. Late to the game, Clear Channel launched its iHeartRadio app in 2008 and renamed the entire company after the product in 2014.

The killer feature of iHeartRadio, Lohman notes, is streaming live radio stations. Three-quarters of users are finding stations rather than creating their own playlists, which suggests a desire for professionally curated music.

Podcasting, too, complements broadcasting. The largest podcast publisher in the United States is, believe it or not, iHeartMedia. With 678 active shows and 427 million downloads and streams globally, iHeartMedia dwarfs Amazon’s Wondery, with 202 shows and 177 million downloads. National Public Radio is a distant third.

“I like it better if more people listen, but really I do it because it pleases me. Anybody who doesn’t like my selections, there’s probably an off button on their radio, and occasionally I’ve encouraged people to use it.”

Rick Goodfellow

Richard Burns Frontier Media

Pete Carran Carter Damaska

C M Y CM MY CY CMY K

Additive Platforms

New technology has also had an impact off the air. For the sales department, Lohman says, a local radio station has become a point of contact for advertising clients who don’t want to deal with multiple sellers for every media option. In that respect, Lohman says iHeartMedia’s digital platform is “additive,” not zero-sum.

Sales calls haven’t changed, but sellers have more options for advertisers. Lohman explains, “Years ago, you would drive down the street, and there’d be twenty businesses. A seller would say, ‘I betcha three or four of those are radio prospects.’ Now, nineteen of them buy things that we sell.”

It’s the same story in Juneau. “It doesn’t matter to us whether people listen on AM, FM, they stream it, they get it on an app—we don’t really care,” says Burns. “We’re kind of delivery mechanism agnostic.”

Streaming numbers skyrocketed in the last couple of years, Williams says, as did podcasting. “It’s been a solace for salespeople to sell all of that in addition

to radio,” she says. “Now the shift is, let’s get back to the basics on radio because it’s still a popular medium. Everybody loves it. We have seen the numbers come back up again, across the board.”

One area of broadcasting that appears technology-proof is, perhaps ironically, the field most enmeshed in it: engineering. “Technology hasn’t figured out a way to fly a robot out to Hoonah, Alaska and take a helicopter to a mountain to troubleshoot why something isn’t working,” Craft says with a laugh. “As soon as that happens, yeah, I’m out of a job due to technology, too.”

While working out of his Anchorage office, either at iHeartMedia or Alaska Public Media, the engineer has opportunities to take contracts for other stations around the state. Craft, the ABA Broadcaster of the Year for 2008, especially likes visiting places where broadcasting has, for decades, consisted of a walkie-talkie relaying stories from a newspaper carried by a Bush pilot.

“When you go there and install a translator that can rebroadcast, say, a station out of Anchorage or Nome or Bethel or Chevak or anywhere, and then all of a sudden that location can turn on a radio and have that information… That’s one of the things that I gravitated toward was the satisfaction in providing that,” says Craft.

The same technology that makes broadcasting a lonelier workplace also connects its audience. “Yeah, some people may say it’s killing radio,” Craft says, “but it’s technology, you know? Everybody is going to use some kind of technology to try to make their product better.”

Andy Lohman (left) and Mark Murphy have enjoyed long careers in radio, even as the company they work for changed names multiple times before settling on iHeartMedia.

Kim Williams iHeartMedia

The Story of Three Bears

Tok was too small, cities are too big, and the retail chain’s future is just right

By Katie Pesznecker

The Three Bears Alaska grocery and retail chain began as an unassuming roadside store and has blossomed over the decades.

“We’re definitely an Alaska company,” says Three Bears’ CEO Dave Weisz. “We started in Alaska. Our employees are all Alaskan. We will be moving up in the next few years in the range of about 1,200 employees to staff all the new locations we have going on.”

In August 2022, Three Bears opened a store in Sterling on the Kenai Peninsula

with a fun and splashy community open house, inviting locals to enjoy free hot dogs and burgers, prize giveaways, and shopping discounts.

More plans for the Alaska market are in the chute, with anticipated stores opening in Ketchikan, North Pole, and another Kenai Peninsula location in Cooper Landing. These locations reflect Three Bears’ growth strategy over the years. Avoiding the urban centers in Anchorage, Fairbanks, or Wasilla, the retail chain more commonly

targets smaller-town markets where people live an inconvenient distance from city supermarkets.

“Where the legacy of Three Bears is concerned, I like to say, it’s like the American dream, but it’s the Alaska way,” Weisz says.

Weisz’s father, Larry, founded the company’s first grocery store in the sleepy junction town of Tok in November 1980. He named it Gateway Food Store. Larry had a background in the Navy, then worked for the Carrs

grocery chain, managing various stores before striking out on his own. It so happened a grocery store in Tok was for sale.

“They didn’t have much of a meat case, and any meat they had was frozen,” he recalls. “They hardly had any fresh vegetables. One of the first things we did, we worked on putting in fresh meat and fresh produce. We had to learn to cut meat and handle produce and do all the ordering, but it was just part of the growth.”

Weisz, the oldest son in the family, had just graduated from high school. Working at the family business that first winter in Tok, Weisz experienced extreme Interior Alaska cold for the first time.

“I look at some of the old pictures where the company started,” Weisz says. “We found one photo of the old Gateway Food Store, and it’s just incredible to look at. We pretty much just had that store for quite a few years… It wasn’t until the late ‘80s that we actually expanded out with another location.”

Taking Care of Customers

Playing off that classic children’s bedtime story “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” Three Bears quite literally strove to provide more towns with a business that was “just right” for them, Weisz says.

“At that point, you know, as a small operator, it’s pretty tough to make yourself ultra-competitive,” he says. “We realized that the only way that we could get ultra-competitive was to get bigger.”

In 1989, Larry Weisz and two partners opened a grocery called Three Bears in Valdez. Four years later, Three Bears opened a “super-convenience” store in Seward with a fuel station added later. In 1997, a mini-warehouse store format opened in Kenai.

“I’m an optimistic person,” Weisz says. “I just looked for ways we could grow the company, things we could do to improve. Along the way, we wanted to take care of the customers that we have. We always say that when we open a new store, we come in with a basic plan, but we allow our customers to tell us what they’d like to see, and we allow the managers to make those changes. That’s been a part of our success: we

“We always say that when we open a new store, we come in with a basic plan, but we allow our customers to tell us what they’d like to see, and we allow the managers to make those changes. That’s been a part of our success: we adapt to the different communities we’re in.”

“Based

for

adapt to the different communities we’re in.”

Case in point: the Kenai store, which Weisz was running personally after moving from Tok, seemed to be calling for sporting goods. “I felt like it would be great for the community and it would be a good fit. There’s a need for it,” Weisz says. “My dad had said, ‘We’re a grocery company.’ Shortly after we bought him out, I got us into sporting goods. It made sense.”

missing out on a huge demographic, and Weisz wanted to attract more male shoppers.

“Some of our locations had stuff for the home office and a pretty large assortment of new appliances,” he says. “We didn’t sell a lot of that product, but it ate up a lot of sales floor space. I reviewed what we did in sales in some of our stores, and, based on sales per square foot, this stuff wasn’t carrying it. So we said we’re going to get out of this and get into hunting, fishing, camping, and reloading.”

With sporting goods in place, sales soared—and quickly. Shopper demographics rapidly leveled out, with men now making up half the customer base. By 2004, that Kenai Three Bears grew to 48,000 square feet to include a mix of bulk warehouse products and conventional grocery products.

Another warehouse-model location launched in July 2005 at Four Corners, between Palmer and Wasilla. A mini-warehouse location in Meadow Lakes opened in 2008, and Three Bears moved

its corporate headquarters to a building about a mile away along the Parks Highway.

‘This Is Their Store’

After twenty years of expansion, Larry Weisz decided to retire from the chain he founded. Dave Weisz, his siblings, and a couple other employees put together a buy-out program to take over the company.

Since then, other ventures have included stores, warehouses, and gas stations on Knik Goose Bay Road outside of Wasilla and in Chugiak, Big Lake, and Ninilchik.

For Dave Weisz, researching, planning, and opening stores presented fun projects, a combination of math and economics and community needs and schematics.

“I enjoyed opening stores, merchandising, and finding the right products,” he says. “I’m an Alaskan and there are a lot of things I like and a lot of things I know my customers will like. I go to buying shows with those kinds of thoughts. If I see something I know I’ll purchase, I’ll make sure we carry it in the store.”

In December 2017, Three Bears opened a complex in Healy, its most far-flung location since Tok. Healy residents previously faced a twoand-a-half-hour drive to Fairbanks for groceries and goods. Now they could enjoy a 37,000-square-foot, full-sized grocery store, an Ace Hardware, a Bear’s Den liquor store, a Shell fueling station, and an Outpost sporting goods department.

Designing this, once again, was a matter of determining what retail combination was “just right” for the

community at hand, Weisz says.

“Based on community size, we determine what all amenities we’re going to put into the location, what kind of square footage,” he says. “You want to make sure it will last the community for years to come. We listen to the customers and listen to what they want. We want them to feel like this is their store. That’s been part of our growth and success. It’s all based off the customer.”

More Three Bears owned-andoperated convenience gas stations

In August, curious customers began lining up for barbecue early on the day of the grand opening of the new Three Bears store in Sterling.

opened in Palmer, Houston, and Trapper Creek. Other properties added space and new features, like liquor stores and car washes.

Nuts and Bolts

By revenue, Three Bears is the most successful family-run Alaska business. The $323 million reported for 2021 puts the company at #17 on the Top 49ers list of Alaskan-owned businesses. It’s also the last supermarket on the list; the six retail chains that appeared in the inaugural 1985 ranking have since faded away or been bought by larger companies, as with that year’s topranked Carr-Gottstein Foods.

Three Bears has survived by evolving. A major development in Three Bears’ business model came when the chain began offering hardware—a service expansion prompted by its own business needs. Three Bears had negotiated a five-year lease on an empty Big Lake grocery store and purchased adjacent property with plans to build a new store.

“We’re setting that store up and we need screws, nuts, and bolts, and we’d have to run all the way to Home Depot in Wasilla, and we’d lose an hour just to buy something really basic,” Weisz says. “I said, ‘If everything goes well with this store and we build the new store I want to build in five years, we’re going to add a hardware store.’”

Partnering with Ace Hardware, Three Bears began adding tools and supplies to multiple locations where residents previously had few if any options.

“There are a lot of do-it-yourselfers in Alaska, a lot of people who have cabins in remote areas, so these hardware stores are there for the convenience of our customers,” Weisz says. For example, before adding a hardware store in Ninilchik, folks would have driven to Soldotna for nuts and bolts. “So we added a small footprint hardware store there, and Ace did an exceptional job,” Weisz says. “There’s a lot of product in that little building.”

The Tok location’s Ace Hardware even includes a lumber yard, added in 2021, a huge asset to locals, Weisz says.

Aggressive Growth

As Three Bears has grown, so has its buying power. Opening larger warehouse stores in larger-population areas like Palmer/Wasilla and Kenai has afforded Three Bears higher volumes, which means more affordable acquisition of goods that find their way to mom-and-pop stores in smaller areas, lowering prices for consumers.

At the August grand opening of the Sterling store, locals turned out in droves. That day saw 1,700 customer purchases—more than twice the volume of a normal day, says Steve Mierop, Three Bears’ vice president and CFO.

“We had tons of great giveaways, free food, music, and great deals,” Mierop says. “I’d say we had 4,000 or 5,000 people during the course of the day— tons of folks just hanging out, checking out the store, and having a good time.”

The parking lot of the new Three Bears store in Sterling filled up on the day of the grand opening in August.

Three Bears Alaska

TRUST

Three Bears Alaska Supports 4-H

By Julie Stricker, UAF Cooperative Extension Service

In early August, John Green, the meat buyer for Three Bears Alaska grocery chain, was in a familiar spot: the arena at a local 4-H livestock auction.

Before the Kenai Peninsula Ag Expo ended, Green purchased the grand champion beef, champion medium weight hog, reserve champion medium weight hog, and market lamb.

Within a few days, the animals had been processed and were available at the Kenai and just-opened Sterling Three Bears stores. The refrigerated stand holding the meat was draped with banners displaying the 4-H clover and a sign that told shoppers the meat had come from members of the Kenai Peninsula District 4-H at the 2022 Junior Market Livestock Auction.

Green says he started buying livestock raised by 4-H members more than twenty years ago when he worked for another local grocery chain, and he took the practice with him when he joined Three Bears seventeen years ago.

“It’s just good for the community. It’s good for the kids,” he says. “It’s just a way to give back.”

His budget in the early days was about $2,500, but Three Bears now spends considerably more than that at the 4-H auctions.

On September 3, Green and other Three Bears meat buyers were ringside at the 4-H & FFA Junior Market Livestock Auction at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer. Overall, forty-five buyers spent $270,820 for ninety animals. Three Bears spent $31,930.

Shonia Werner, longtime KP 4-H parent and one of the auction coordinators, says, “One of the most exciting times during the auction is when Three Bears meets a bidder willing to match their bids. The crowd loves the energy they bring!”

“I think we’re probably the biggest spender at the fair,” Green says. “We’re also the only grocery store that is actually buying the product and being able to offer it back to the kids and to the public.”

He continues, “So far, it’s worked out really, really good for us. And, you know, we just enjoy doing it every year. It’s fun.”

The backbone of the business model remains groceries—providing better access to real butchers and fresh fruits and vegetables. Beyond that, the company grounds its businesses in three different retail formats: the “super C store format,” which are the large convenience stores; smaller grocery stores that range from 25,000 to 35,000 square feet; and the mini warehouse concepts, running 45,000 to 65,000 square feet.

The chain’s largest store isn’t in Alaska at all. The branch in Butte, Montana is the lone ambassador for the brand in the Lower 48. It will remain alone while Three Bears spreads more paw prints across its home state.

In the next few years, “We have a very aggressive growth schedule,” Weisz says. This includes a convenience store and fueling station coming to Kenai and a small warehouse store in the works for Ketchikan, the first expansion off the road system. Weisz says Three Bears’ ease working with freight bound from Seattle affords a high comfort level coordinating with barges and freight. He expects groundbreaking on the Ketchikan project in Spring 2023.

Three Bears also plans a 2023 groundbreaking in North Pole. Plans call for a 54,000-square-foot building, an adjoining Ace hardware, a fueling station, and more. Cooper Landing is also targeted for development in 2023.

All these projects follow a similar trajectory, Weisz says: analyze demographics and sales projections, decide on store size and type. Then, start putting plans to paper. What’s the layout like? What products will they carry? What’s already in the community and what’s missing?

“Before you know it, you have a store layout,” Weisz says. “Then we send it off to the contractor, then it’s off to the engineers, and everyone puts their stamps on it and we move forward.”

Possibilities for growth are as endless as the number of Alaska communities where a supermarket has yet to take root. One by one, Three Bears is crossing them off its list.

“We know we don’t take care of 100 percent of customer needs, but we try to cover the majority of the bases they need day in and out,” Weisz says. “It’s a challenge but it’s fun.”

NATURAL RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT

Economists consider resource extraction to be a primary activity. Without raw materials, the secondary sector (manufacturing) would twiddle its thumbs in idle mills and factories, and without workers supporting those two, the tertiary sector (services) would pass the same dollars around among themselves until the bills wore out.

Alaska’s abundance of minerals, timber, energy, and other extractible outputs from land and water form the foundation upon which the rest of the state’s economic activity depends. Natural resource development is so essential that it extends outside the pages of this special section. “45 Years of TAPS” celebrates the monumental infrastructure that brings North Slope crude oil to the world, and “Into the West” reports on new infrastructure to access mining areas in Southcentral and Northwest Alaska.

Within the special section, guest authors Hillary Palmer and Ed Fogels explain how mapping is an ongoing effort in Alaska, essential to any resource development endeavors. Those could include new hydropower projects or picking through forests for niche timber products, topics both covered in this section.

For the mining industry, our annual overview covers current major projects in development, permitting, or operation. Also, “More Questions Than Answers” goes into detail about the Minerals Security Partnership, a new international agreement that ought to benefit Alaska, in theory. Guest author Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, president and CEO of Contango ORE, further explains why mineral development, especially in the United States, is essential for a secure, green future. In partnership with Fort Knox mine owner Kinross Gold, Contango is developing the Manh Choh project in the Upper Tanana region in a way that respects the landowner, the Native Village of Tetlin. That respect, and the regulatory regime that reflects it, is why Van Nieuwenhuyse says Alaska is a better place to extract resources than other places in the world.

Coeur

More Questions Than Answers

An international partnership for mineral security leaves Alaska miners scratching their heads

By Vanessa Orr

n June, the United States and other countries established the Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) to bolster critical mineral supply chains. The goal, according to the announcement made at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention, is to ensure that critical minerals are produced, processed, and recycled in a manner that supports the ability of countries to realize the full economic development benefit of their geological endowments.

The need for critical minerals, which are essential for clean energy and other technologies, is projected to expand significantly in the coming decades. Members of the MSP—which include Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Commission—are hoping that this partnership helps to catalyze investment from governments and the private sector for strategic opportunities that adhere to the highest environmental, social, and governance standards.

“The Biden administration has a bold, aggressive agenda when it comes to transforming the electric grid and transitioning to electric vehicles, and given the need for raw materials to ramp up production of alternative energy sources in the way that the president has articulated, it should be no surprise that the administration is looking to all available resources to meet those immediate needs,” says Deantha Skibinski, executive director of the Alaska Miners Association. “This includes our allies, which is why they claim that the Minerals Security Partnership is necessary.”

While it makes sense that national governments are paying attention to how and where these minerals are obtained, mining and development interests in Alaska question how the MSP will help the state.

What Are Critical Minerals?

“Everywhere we turn, we hear about critical and strategic minerals—it’s almost a generic term at this point,” says Skibinski. “A rule that Alaska miners live by when it comes to minerals is, ‘Critical means you need it, and strategic means you don’t have it.’ And we have a problem with both.”

NATURAL RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT

Although gold is essential for electronics, USGS does not count it as “critical” because the country has adequate domestic reserves, such as the output from the Kensington mine.

Coeur

While the MSP is focused on critical minerals, there is some concern that the minerals that fall into this category should not be the partnership’s only focus.

“Everyone is aware of widespread supply chain issues on all fronts. Major automakers are producing $90,000 vehicles that don’t have poweradjusting seats because they can’t get the computer chips necessary to build that part of the vehicle,” Skibinski says. “Many of the supply chain issues boil down to the availability of minerals, and the information that has risen to the top implies that we are only facing a shortage of rare earth minerals like gallium, beryllium, et cetera.”

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) updated a critical mineral inventory late last year, classifying fifty minerals as “critical.”

“However, the USGS chose to overlook copper, gold, silver, and more, with the rationale that the United States has an adequate and secure supply of these minerals in domestic deposits,” Skibinski explains, “but it ignores that said supplies are still in the ground, and the projects proposing to mine them are being told ‘no’ through the federal permitting system.”

Case in point, she says, is copper needed to meet alternative energy goals. “The United States does not produce enough copper for today’s needs, and that shortage is going to intensify. It would seem prudent that critical mineral inventories and programs include what Americans truly need and not just what is novel or popular,” Skibinski says.

Recent setbacks in mine development seem to work at cross purposes to the goal of increasing domestic production of important minerals, according to Skibinski. This includes the development of the Pebble Mine in Alaska, which had its final permit denied in 2020; that decision is currently under appeal. The US Department of the Interior cancelled leases for the Twin Metals nickel and copper mine in Minnesota in 2022, and in March 2021 the US Forest Service rescinded its Environmental Impact Statement and draft record of decision for a land exchange to allow Resolution Copper mine in Arizona to move forward.

While Alaska currently has five large metal mines that supply the world with gold, silver, zinc, and lead, it is still in the developing stages of identifying and advancing projects to pursue copper, graphite, molybdenum, cobalt, and other minerals.

“Owners of these projects have done drilling and analyzed surveys of their mineral holdings; they have done baseline environmental studies, and some have looked into engineering and mine plans,” says Skibinski. “However, it remains to be seen if the federal regulatory system will provide for bringing these important domestic mineral sources online.”

She also notes that rare earth elements and critical minerals generally exist as a byproduct of a more marketable mineral.

“For instance, there are promising qualities of cobalt and gallium at the copper deposits in the Ambler Mining District. If the copper operation does not move forward, mining for the critical minerals the administration is interested in simply won’t be feasible,” Skibinski says.

“There is a new mineral source being produced at a copper mine in Utah

only because the copper mine exists in the first place,” she adds. “To obtain these minerals, we have to look at the realities and the economics of mineral production; otherwise, we will continue to import them from China, where they have that figured out.”

Mixed Messages

While details of the MSP are not yet available, the overall reaction of Alaskans has been skepticism tempered slightly with hope.

“Production of minerals from allied nations isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as the projections on demand are so staggering it really may be an ‘anywhere we can get supply’ situation,” says Skibinski, “but we should look to produce minerals in America first, where we know that mining is conducted with the highest environmental, labor, and safety standards in the world, and the economic and community benefits can be realized by our citizens.”

Leila Kimbrell, executive director of the Resource Development Council for Alaska (RDC), agrees that efforts to expand and improve mineral security are always welcome, and it’s important to make American sources a priority.

“We know that Alaska's mining industry is held to some of the highest environmental standards in the world, and we should continue to responsibly develop our resources rather than outsource them from places we know have little to no regulatory protections, be it environmental or labor,” says Kimbrell.

“We hope that the MSP leads to prioritizing domestic production rather than outsourcing the necessary supply of these minerals to the partner countries listed in the MSP,” she adds.

That said, Kimbrell adds that the RDC remains concerned about the mixed messages it feels it is getting from the current federal administration.

“We are specifically concerned that— similar to President Biden’s executive order earlier this year supporting increased domestic production of critical minerals—this is merely lip service, as we have experienced efforts to delay and even proposals to preemptively veto many of Alaska's responsible resource development projects,” she says.

Kimbrell notes that many current and planned Alaska projects should be prioritized as minerals and metals

The owner of the Kensington gold mine, Coeur Alaska, has spent years in the permitting process to expand its waste storage.

Coeur

essential to producing cleaner energy technologies. These include the graphite deposit near Nome; deposits of cobalt, germanium, gallium, palladium, lead, gold, silver, and copper in the Ambler Mining District; the rare earth element minerals known to exist at Bokan Mountain on Prince of Wales Island; and the copper deposits known in the Pebble project.

Rebecca Logan, CEO of the Alaska Support Industry Alliance—a nonprofit trade association made up of more than 500 businesses, organizations, and individuals that provide products and services to the oil, gas, and mining industries, and represents more than 35,000 Alaskan workers—says her group has reservations as well.

“My gut feeling—and I hate to be cynical—is that the MSP may mean spending more time supporting other countries in their efforts to develop these minerals and less time focusing on the United States. It is a pattern that this administration is following on almost everything,” she says.

One exception that Logan sees is the stipulation in the Inflation Reduction Act, signed in August, that a high percentage of metals needed for electric vehicles must come from US manufacturers and producers. However, one of the major sticking points is that the Inflation Reduction Act fails to address federal permitting reform.

“This agreement is only going to drive investment if the opportunity is there,” she says of the MSP’s objective to catalyze investment from governments and the private sector. “One of the challenges facing the development of oil, gas, and mineral resources is that the regulations are getting more restrictive and not less. There have to be policies in place that encourage companies to explore and develop these resources long before any kind of investment can be expected.”

Kimbrell describes the situation as putting the spending cart before the permitting horse. “While the administration is saying a lot of the right things about what needs to happen, it seems that we’re often more comfortable supporting our neighbors in their development of critical minerals than focusing on what we’re doing here,” she says.

While prioritizing mineral development in other countries helps to chip away at the minerals shortage, Skibinski is concerned that it could deny Americans and Alaska the economic opportunities that come from mining. According to the 2022 Economic Benefits of Alaska’s Mining Industry report prepared by McKinley Group, more than $1.1 billion is spent on goods and services by Alaska’s mines and advanced projects, including $640 million spent with 400plus local businesses; $44 million in local tax revenue to support services like libraries, road repairs, and public safety; $83 million in state government revenue for services like education, highways, and airports; and $161 million in royalty payments to Alaska Native corporations.

The mining industry also contributes roughly $4.4 million to approximately 250 Alaska nonprofits, including $800,000 to civic, business, and industry organizations in Alaska through sponsorship and membership fees and more than $1.1 million contributed to UAA and vocational schools.

The industry provides roughly 10,800 total direct, indirect, and induced jobs and $985 million in wages statewide, and mining employees live in approximately ninety-five communities throughout the state.

“I worry that the MSP will prompt decision makers within the federal administration to prioritize mining in other countries in an attempt to walk a line between getting the minerals we must have but not developing ones in America under the name of conservation,” says Skibinski. “This would help them obtain needed minerals from places we would consider friendly and responsible, and they don’t risk upsetting the organized groups that administrate opposition to mining projects in our country.”

Ultimately, the head of the mining association is hopeful that the MSP promotes more mining overall. “This doesn’t have to be an either/or—it’s ‘and,’” Skibinski says. “We need to work closely with allies on finding secure, responsible supplies, and we absolutely must also encourage mining at home that develops our vast resources under world-leading environmental and labor standards.”

Deantha Skibinski Executive Director

Association

Producing, Permitting, and Prospective Mines

Alaska’s big mining picture

By Alexandra Kay

Six. The question “How many large mines are operating in Alaska?” can be answered with one hand plus an extra finger. Six large-scale mineral producers collectively employed nearly 2,700 workers in 2019. Alaska’s mines produced nearly $4 billion worth of non-fuel minerals in 2021, from vast quantities of zinc and lead to precious gold and silver. More projects are lined up to join them, aiming to enlarge the statewide mineral portfolio to a second or third handful of mines, extracting copper, cobalt, and rare earth elements (REE). What follows is an overview of Alaska’s mines, those in production and in the advanced exploration or permitting stages.

Producing Mines FORT KNOX

Fort Knox is an open-pit gold mine northeast of Fairbanks. The mill has the capacity of processing up to 45,000 tons per day, with large volumes of lower grade ore and mineralized waste materials processed in the heap leach. In December 2021, Fort Knox celebrated its 25th anniversary.

Kinross Fort Knox spent a total of $377 million in Alaska in 2021, a contribution of 6 percent to the gross domestic product of the Fairbanks-North Star Borough. Between contractors and Kinross employees, Fort Knox accounts for approximately 4 percent of jobs in the Interior region. The company also received the Business of the Year award from the Greater Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce.

GREENS CREEK

As of September 2022, Hecla’s Greens Creek mine, located on the City and Borough of Juneau’s slice of Admiralty Island, had produced 4.8 million ounces of silver, nearly 24,000 ounces of gold, 10,000 ounces of lead, and almost 26,000 ounces of zinc. Last year Hecla conducted underground drilling in the Southwest Bench, 200 South, East, and West ore zones focused on resource conversion and performed exploratory drilling in the East and Gallagher Fault block zones.

The headframe adjacent to Ambler Metals’ camp at the Bornite copper-cobalt deposit, part of the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects in the advanced exploration phase.

NANA

Assay results from Southwest Bench, 200 South, East, West, and 9A areas confirm and expand the mineral zones.

Also over the past year, Hecla Mining made a significant investment in infrastructure, working on a camp expansion and upgrade as well as the reconstruction or replacement of road bridges. Eighty-seven percent of the mine’s power was generated by hydro, which significantly reduced the operation’s carbon footprint.

In partnership with Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology, the company

completed the longest automated underground truck haulage route in North America.

The company expects the US Forest Service to begin taking public comment in January on its Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for a request to expand the mine’s tailings storage facility by approximately 13.7 acres. For the only mine operating inside a national monument, it’s a tricky project, but one that could extend Greens Creek’s operations for another decade. According to a

Hecla spokesperson, “The expansion is designed to avoid any new Monument disturbance outside the existing lease boundary, avert any disturbance to the fish-bearing reaches of Tributary Creek, eliminate the need to construct a new, ‘remote’ tailings facility, and continue the use of a ‘dry-stack’ tailings disposal method.”

KENSINGTON

North of Juneau, Coeur Alaska’s Kensington Mine is the second largest private employer in the capital city, with

more than 400 full-time employees.

In its 2022 second quarter report, Coeur Alaska anticipated full-year production to be 110,000 to 120,000 ounces of gold. Kensington’s gold production for the April-to-June quarter increased 23 percent versus the first quarter, driven by mill throughput that set a quarterly record.

Kensington Mine has been engaged in permitting efforts for the last several years. Coeur Alaska proposed an amendment to its Plan of Operations (POA 1) to increase tailings and waste

rock storage capacity to reflect positive exploration results, improved metal prices, and ongoing operational efficiencies. On February 24, 2022, the US Forest Service released the final Record of Decision in support of POA 1. Coeur Alaska will continue to work with federal, state, and local regulators to execute the plan and permit associated facilities.

Coeur Mining, parent company of Coeur Alaska, increased its exploration investment for 2022 by approximately $11 million due to positive drilling results.

The Q2 report states that approximately $1.6 million was invested in Kensington’s exploration efforts in the first half of 2022, and late 2022 exploration drilling is focused on continued expansion and infilling of Elmira, Johnson, Kensington, Jualin, and Raven targets.

Because of its remote location, Kensington generates electricity from a diesel power plant. Coeur Alaska has a long history of advocating for hydropower, but until the Sweetheart Lake project south of Juneau is completed in 2025 or 2026, the company is trying to offset its carbon emissions by other means.

In 2021 Coeur Alaska committed $52,000 to the Juneau Carbon Offset Fund (JCOF), a special project of Renewable Juneau, a nonprofit that works toward clean energy for Juneau. The contribution divides into $35,000 to offset crew transport vessel emissions and to support heat pumps for lower income families and $17,000 for JCOF to seek third-party certification as an official carbon offset project. In 2021 Coeur Alaska’s contribution through JCOF helped to

offset 1,572 tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Coeur Alaska strengthened its commitment in 2022 by contributing another $50,000 to JCOF.

POGO

Pogo is an underground gold mine northeast of Delta Junction with a vast network of more than 90 miles of subterranean roads winding to depths more than 1,000 feet below the surface.

The quartz veins yield an average of 0.5 troy ounces of gold per ton of rock, which makes Pogo a high-grade gold mine. The onsite mill processes up to 3,500 tons of ore daily.

The mine’s website notes that “extensive exploration efforts are underway to identify additional ore reserves” at Pogo, saying that the mine site shows five known deposits, but that “the extent of these deposits is not clearly defined, creating the possibility to extend the life of the mine. Pogo has a robust exploration program and the technical services team is working hard to ensure that Pogo will operate for many years into the future.”

RED DOG

Red Dog is one of the world’s largest zinc mines. It is located on land owned by NANA Corporation and is operated by Teck Resources Limited.

Approximately 80 percent of revenue from Red Dog derives from zinc. To turn the concentrate into metal, the material is shipped to smelters around the world, but only during open-water season. After October, concentrates are stockpiled near shore until ships return in the spring. So far in 2022, fifteen ships have carried away 700,000 tonnes of zinc concentrate.

With less than a decade left in Red Dog’s operational life, Teck is doing additional exploration on state land known as the Aktigiruq and Anarraaq (A&A) deposits. By further exploring these two zinc deposits, Teck will have a better idea of the zinc-lead content within each one. These studies will help determine the viability of potential mining, though it will take several more years to reach an investment decision.

As another part of the exploration program, Teck applied for a permit with the Alaska Department of Natural

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Resources (DNR) to build a 10-mile road extension to the A&A deposits, along with related facilities and bridges.

“The biggest shift in Red Dog operations this summer has been increased social interaction made possible by looser COVID-19 restrictions given the state of the pandemic, which has increased employee morale,” says Elizabeth Rue, senior director of communications for NANA. “The pandemic brought restrictions that didn’t allow for much social interaction. That has shifted now with workers gathering again at tables in the dining room and using facilities like the gym.”

USIBELLI COAL MINE

In continuous production since 1943, Usibelli Coal Mine in Healy is the state’s only operating coal mine, with an annual production of approximately 1 million tons of coal, which powers Alaska’s interior.

In 2021, Usibelli attained Phase III bond release for 367 acres of its Poker Flats area by successfully showing the diversity of vegetation coverage. The company had pledged

$2.5 million for cleanup when mining began there nearly forty years earlier, and the completion of reclamation released the last $411,000 held by DNR. For his work, the company’s reclamation engineer, Rich Sivils, earned the 2022 Reclamationist of the Year award from the American Society of Reclamation Sciences.

Mines in the Permitting Stage DONLIN GOLD

Located in the upper Kuskokwim River region, Donlin Gold is one of the largest undeveloped open pit gold deposits in the world, with reserves estimated at 33.8 million ounces. Developers expect to produce 1.3 million ounces annually during its twenty-seven-year operational life.

The exploration budget for 2022 was the largest in a decade, based on 2021 drilling results. Barrick Gold and NOVAGOLD, which are 50/50 owners in the venture, say assay results from this summer’s drilling support recent modeling concepts and strategic mine planning work. The mine is being developed on land owned by Calista

Corporation and The Kuskokwim Corporation, the joint corporation for ten villages in the region. All federal permits are in hand, as are all but a few state permits.

In May, the environmental law group Earthjustice filed suit on behalf of the Native Village of Eek and the Orutsararmiut Native Council, the tribal association for Bethel, challenging DNR’s decision to issue Donlin Gold twelve water sourcing permits.

PEBBLE

Pebble Limited Partnership (PLP) is proposing to develop the Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum porphyry deposit in southwest Alaska as an open pit mine.

In July, a wildfire damaged some exploration equipment at a supply camp about 17 miles from the village of Iliamna. No one was injured, but the mishap followed a disappointment in May when the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a proposed determination to prohibit the discharge of mine waste into streams. That proposal is currently under appeal,

as is the US Army Corps of Engineers’ permit denial from November 2020.

Northern Dynasty Minerals has been the lone partner in PLP since 2014, when Rio Tinto relinquished $18 million in shares (originally purchased for ten times as much), gifting them to the Alaska Community Foundation and Bristol Bay Native Corporation’s Education Foundation. However, Northern Dynasty found a new investor in July. A private asset management company made a $9.4 million installment toward a two-year pledge of $47 million for the project. PLP says the new investment will move permitting forward.

Mines in Advanced Exploration BOKAN MOUNTAIN

Survey work, mapping, and sampling began in 2007 at BokanDotson Ridge near the southern tip of Prince of Wales Island. In 2020 and 2021, developer Ucore Rare Metals conducted additional mineralogy and metallurgical studies for REEs. As early as next year, Ucore aims to begin building an ore separation facility in Ketchikan,

at first processing REEs imported from Canada before extracting ore from its own mine.

GRAPHITE CREEK

Graphite Creek, north of Nome, is North America’s largest high-quality graphite deposit. Interest in graphite has grown in recent years due to its use in lithium-ion batteries and other high tech applications. Proposed annual production for the Graphite Creek project is more than 55,000 tonnes per year, with nearly 42,000 tonnes of battery-grade material produced each year.

Additional funding for the project was completed in February 2021, and the pre-feasibility study resumed in March 2021. A summer 2021 field program included infill and step out core drilling and additional core and sonic drilling for geotechnical data collection in the proposed mill site and dry tailings/waste rock storage area. The drill program generated additional information to update the resource model and provide technical data for the feasibility study. Other work

included access route engineering, surface water and groundwater hydrology studies, wetlands mapping, and aquatic life surveys.

LIVENGOOD

The Livengood gold project northwest of Fairbanks is the largest North American gold-only deposit by reserves that is not wholly owned by a major or producer, according to its developer, International Tower Hill Mines. A pre-feasibility study released in late 2021 includes a mine plan for enough ore to support an annual production rate of approximately 317,000 ounces per year over an estimated twenty-year mine life, producing a total of approximately 6.4 million ounces of gold.

NIBLACK

The Niblack copper/gold/silver/zinc project, located 27 miles southwest of Ketchikan on Prince of Wales Island, comprises 6,200 acres of federal and state mineral claims and 250 acres of patented (private) lands and related mineral exploration permits. The site

was mined from 1905 to 1908. Onsite infrastructure includes 3,300 feet of underground development, a water treatment plant and discharge system, a dock and barge camp, and 1.5 miles of road. In June, the US Forest Service authorized a surface exploration project plan of operations for the developer, Blackwolf Copper and Gold. The authorization allows for further drilling in unexplored areas.

PALMER VMS

Far from the Matanuska Valley— nothing to do with it, really—Palmer VMS (volcanogenic massive sulfide, a type of ore deposit associated with ancient deep-sea volcanoes) is an advanced exploration project 37 miles from Haines. The project is operated by Constantine Metal Resources as a joint venture with majority partner Dowa Metals & Mining Co. and has two resources, the Palmer Deposit

and the AG Zone Deposit. The two combined contain 4.68 million tonnes of indicated zinc equivalent and 9.59 million tonnes of inferred zinc equivalent. A preliminary economic assessment from 2019 was amended in March, but the amended technical report did not change the mineral resource estimates, economic analysis, conclusions, and recommendations.

UPPER KOBUK MINERAL PROJECTS

East of NANA’s Kotzebue headquarters, the corporation has an exploration agreement and option to lease with Ambler Metals for the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects (UKMP). Ambler Metals, a partnership between South32 and Trilogy Metals, began its summer field program for approximately 33,000 feet of drilling and around 4,000 soil samples. The copper, zinc, gold, lead, silver, and cobalt in the Ambler Mining

District, including UKMP, may extend NANA’s revenue base beyond Red Dog.

The UKMP consists of a 448,217 acres of Native, state, and patented lands. The two most advanced projects are the feasibility-stage Arctic copperzinc-lead-gold-silver VMS deposit and the Bornite copper-cobalt carbonate replacement project.

The 2022 exploration program was budgeted at approximately $28.5 million.

As of this month, the US Bureau of Land Management is concluding the public input phase of scoping for a new environmental review of a 211mile access road to the Ambler Mining District from the Dalton Highway. A right-of-way through Gates of the Arctic National Park had been granted in 2020, but after the change of administrations, the Interior Department decided the environmental impact statement was insufficient.

An aerial view of Donlin Gold’s base camp, where workers not only eat and sleep but also inspect drilling cores to be shipped out for further analysis.

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The Realities of Net Zero

Green energy needs minerals, and Alaska should provide them

By Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse

Organizations around the world are focused on addressing climate change. Most major corporations are rearranging priorities and reallocating capital and personnel to determine the most efficient path to achieve Net Zero (where emissions of carbon dioxide or methane are eliminated or balanced by removal from the atmosphere). The Paris Climate Accord focused the efforts of participating governments to achieve Net Zero by 2050—that’s less than thirty years away. Specifically, the Net Zero objective is driven by achieving two main gargantuan transitions: changing to non-carbonbased fuel for both the transportation and energy sectors. These are virtuous objectives for sure, but where is all the metal going to come from that will allow this galactic shift to occur?

Electric vehicles (EVs) require three to five times more copper than an internal combustion engine (ICE). Lithium, nickel, and cobalt are also necessary to store the energy in a car battery. Windmills and solar panels require five to ten times as much copper per megawatt than a coalfired power plant, along with a host of other metals, including the rare earth elements (REEs) that at present are only produced in a usable form in China. And the hydrogen highway—a chain of hydrogen-equipped filling stations that facilitate the use of hydrogen-powered cars—well, that requires some different metals, including the platinum group metals (PGMs), but certainly a lot more metals than old-fashioned ICE. And we haven’t even talked about battery storage yet—not for the vehicles but for the grid, since wind and solar energy sources are intermittent and require storage for efficient redistribution. Batteries are an absolute necessity to store and distribute power in any new electrical grid that hopes to replace what is currently in operation.

A Lot of Zeroes

There has been lots of talk about “critical metals.” The Biden administration acknowledged this fact with an Administrative Order followed up by language in the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act. There are fifty metals on the official US Geological Survey critical metals list. Oddly enough, copper didn’t make the list, which I find odd because it is the most critical of all the metals; none of the other metals work without copper. Bottom line: achieving all of our renewable energy goals will require more metal than has been mined in our brief history on planet earth!

To address the argument that all we need to do is consume less and recycle more, let’s agree to be realistic: we suck at consuming less, so let’s not pretend that is an answer to save the planet. As for recycling, let’s do some simple math. (I use copper as the example because it figures largest in the green energy and transportation future.) Globally we consume 27 million tonnes of copper annually. Approximately 32 percent of that is recycled copper, or about 8.7 million tonnes per year. Copper has a five- to thirty-year product life use,

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INVESTING NATURAL RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT

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meaning that we already recycle about 80 percent of the copper in use. So even if we could recycle 100 percent of the copper, it isn’t even close to meeting the green demand.

Copper is one of the most efficiently recycled metals because of its value, currently about $3.50 per pound. People make a living collecting scrap copper from old buildings—and unfortunately sometimes new ones under construction (definitely not cool!). Gold, silver, and PGMs are also efficiently recycled because of their value. On the other hand, iron rusts, and other metals like zinc, nickel, manganese, lithium, cobalt, and REEs are much more difficult to recycle because they are mixed with other metals and materials. Yes, we should absolutely recycle more! We should incentivize true recycling (not just feelgood recycling where the materials end up as a huge pile of (s)crap in some foreign land), and we should support research that develops the technologies to do so. I am a firm believer in recycling and would love to see it happen in earnest in Alaska,

but it’s important to accept that recycling is not a solution to Net Zero— and certainly not by 2050!

Since recycling can’t get us to Net Zero by 2050, let’s take a realistic look at the magnitude of the challenge ahead of the mining industry to provide the metal resources required to meet the energy and transportation transition. In less than thirty years, North America alone will have to convert some 400 million vehicles to electric or other non-ICEs. According to Mines, Minerals, and ‘Green’ Energy: A Reality Check by Mark Mills and published by the Manhattan Institute, every EV requires a half-ton battery made of multiple metals and minerals (iron, aluminum, zinc, copper, nickel, manganese, lithium, graphite, gold, PGMs, REEs) extracted and processed from some 250 tons of mined materials. To transition just the ICE vehicle fleet to electric in North America over the next thirty years will require 200,000,000,000,000 pounds in mined materials. For those who can’t keep track of zeros— that’s 100 billion tons of mined material.

And then there is Europe, China, India, Africa… you get the picture.

But there is also the green energy side: windmills, solar panels, and battery storage. It does no good for Net Zero to drive a Tesla powered by coal or diesel! It takes hundreds of billions of tons of material—way more than we have mined in human history. And to address the argument that we all don’t need to drive a car, mass transit alternatives are even more metal intensive, particularly over the next thirty-year period. The numbers are driven by population, and we can’t hide from that either.

Social License

With that background, let’s look at Alaska’s role in helping achieve Net Zero. We are a resource abundant state. According to the Fraser Report, Alaska ranks as one of the best jurisdictions for mineral potential worldwide and in the top five for investment attractiveness, meaning we have a rule of law that governs best practices to protect people and the environment.

Alaska’s Red Dog mine is the world’s largest zinc mine and was developed in partnership with NANA corporation. That mine development has transformed northwestern Alaska and the lives of many NANA shareholders in the Northwest Arctic Borough. It is a model of meeting environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. Alaska was doing ESG long before the three letters were put back-to-back! Let’s replicate this model, show the world what real ESG looks like, and do our share of contributing to Net Zero.

We know the metals and material needed to support the green energy and transportation transition are here. We have known deposits of copper, cobalt, tin, tungsten, lithium, graphite, REEs, and PGMs. What is holding us back from contributing more? Generally speaking, it is a lack of social license, or support from local communities most affected by mining activity. For the process to work, there has to be engagement and compromise. There has to be dialogue, which there is sadly far too

little of in today’s world, despite our technologically increased ability to do so!

At least part of this dialogue is education. Here is a perfect example of the disconnect between needing minerals but not wanting to invest in them. On July 19, 2022 the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy announced a new set of investment guidelines for the Holy See. Vatican City has $33 billion to invest. While the new policy encourages investment in companies working to protect the environment and promote the use of clean energy, investments in alcohol, oil, gas, coal, nuclear—and all mining—fell into the same category of activities for which investment is discouraged. According to this institution, mining is not generally acceptable. So what would the solution be for Net Zero? Why are many still demonizing an industry that is absolutely necessary to achieve the objectives of electrifying energy and transportation—and pays among the best basic wages in Alaska?

Unfortunately, we have made it too easy for people to forget or overlook

Hillary Palmer hpalmer@Dewberry.com

how fundamentally important mining is to nearly everything we do, especially as it relates to seriously addressing decarbonizing our energy and transportation systems. Hopefully we don’t end up making all the same mistakes we made when we developed our reliance on oil, which historically has required supporting unsavory dictators and tyrannical regimes. It still does: witness Europe’s hyper-dependence on Russia for energy. Today we are reliant on places like China, Russia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo for many of the critical metals we need for the energy and transportation transition.

Why not mine and process these materials ourselves, where we have control over ESG values and can make a real difference for all Alaskans? We need people to educate themselves on

the realities of achieving Net Zero and we need real dialogue and compromise between the mines and the communities most directly impacted. And we need to keep in mind that we have less than thirty years to make a difference.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse is the President and CEO of Contango Ore, which is working in partnership with Kinross Gold and the Native Village of Tetlin to develop the Manh Choh gold project near Tok. He started NovaGold Resources and developed the Donlin Gold project now being advanced in partnership with Barrick Gold. He also started Trilogy Metals, which is working in partnership with South 32 on the Arctic and Bornite deposits located in the Ambler Mining District. He is also the chairman of Valhalla Metals and the American Copper Development Corporation.

Bottom line: achieving all of our renewable energy goals will require more metal than has been mined in our brief history on planet earth!

Where It's At

Mapping Alaska is good business

By Hillary Palmer & Ed Fogels

Alaska is big and remote, so it’s no surprise that it lags the rest of the country in the accuracy and detail of its maps. Mapping can be expensive, but the good news is that mapping in Alaska has taken a huge leap forward over the last decade, benefiting the Alaska public, government, and private sector businesses, such as the resource development industry.

It was just ten years ago that pilots in Alaska were at risk of being forbidden to fly by instrument. The best available elevation data at that time was generated in the ‘60s using older

methods which sometimes resulted in mountains being out of place by a half mile or more. This posed serious risks to aviation safety and other industries that require accurate information. The State of Alaska initiated an effort to create an accurate digital basemap of the entire state.

This effort, which would eventually become the Alaska Geospatial Council (AGC), was initially a partnership among state and federal agencies to acquire statewide, high-resolution satellite imagery and digital elevation data. This data acquisition was no

simple task. The state government worked with Dewberry to host a series of workshops, which enabled partners and stakeholders to reach consensus on issues, such as data resolution and which type of sensor to use. The state then coordinated with federal agencies to contract with several companies, including Dewberry, to start collecting the imagery and elevation data. This new data provided the foundation for building a statewide geospatial data infrastructure, where other mapping data—such as wetlands, vegetation, and transportation—can

Hillary Palmer

be stored, maintained, and accessed by everyone.

The AGC serves as a framework for the coordination and collaboration of mapping-related activities. The AGC executive board is chaired by Alaska’s Geospatial Information Officer Leslie Jones and includes representatives from state and local governments, tribal entities, and federal agencies. Overall, the AGC is helping improve Alaska’s spatial data infrastructure by coordinating mapping activities and fostering collaboration at all levels, all of which benefit the resource development sector.

Mapping Natural Resources

For preliminary feasibility assessments, this new elevation and imagery data is great, but site planning and permitting for natural resource development projects need higher resolution data. Knowing where to find existing data or how to leverage funding partnerships could potentially save businesses millions of dollars.

Strong statewide coordination is critical to the evolution of Alaska’s mapping. The AGC seeks to simplify sourcing existing mapping data and minimize duplicative mapping efforts. Ultimately, the goal is to create a series of statewide basemaps that are accessible, accurate, and maintained. State leadership has already provided new digital elevation models and imagery for the state, but there are other data layers that still need to be added:

x Hydrography. Alaska is a waterwealthy state with millions of lakes, streams, and glaciers. New imagery and elevation data are being used to create more accurate maps of these resources, using elevation-derived hydrographic mapping technology.

x Wetlands. Any development activity in Alaska is likely to have some impact on wetlands, which are regulated by the federal government. Detailed wetland mapping allows prospective resource developers to see what wetlands are within their project area and can provide more information as to the level of permitting needed for the project. Approximately 42 percent of Alaska has been sufficiently mapped to National Wetlands Inventory standards.

x Infrastructure. An accurate picture of our state’s infrastructure is key to prospective resource developers. The ideal would be an interactive web application showing road and trail systems; road dimensions and weight capacities; bridge capacities and overhead clearances; locations of ports, railroads, and electric grids; and airport runway lengths. This data currently exists in various forms but is not yet compiled into a central, easily discoverable, interactive format.

x Coastline. Alaska has more than 66,000 miles of coastline, most of which is poorly mapped. Any resource development project close to the coast will benefit from accurate coastal mapping, which is more difficult due to requirements for coordinating mapping with tide stages. Better delineated administrative boundaries among federal landowners bring more money for land management to the state. The 2022 Alaska Coastal and Ocean Mapping Summit takes place virtually this month and is a great place to learn more about the status of coastal and ocean mapping initiatives active in Alaska.

x Vegetation. An accurate statewide basemap of Alaska’s vegetation will aid in infrastructure and community planning and land and wildfire management. The AGC vegetation technical working group is collaborating to advance vegetation mapping production and standards statewide.

Before investing in Alaska, prospective mineral and natural resource development organizations must have access to basic information regarding site conditions, the level of permitting required, and existing infrastructure that can be leveraged. If detailed information doesn’t exist, the cost of performing mapping activities is deferred to the investors and can make or break a project. Having statewide, detailed mapping data is good business for Alaska.

Where Is the Data?

Before collecting new elevation or imagery data, it's helpful to determine if suitable data already exists. Several helpful resources are available:

x Elevation. The United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) The National Map platform is a great starting place for finding contours, place names, hydrography, and other essential datasets. Using interactive tools, the data for an area of interest can be identified and downloaded.

x Bathymetry. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) is helpful for bathymetric data or information regarding the surface of the seafloor. The NCEI bathymetry archive houses more than 65 terabytes of data, most of which is in raw format but also includes processed data products and ancillary data. NOAA’s Christie Reiser points out that anyone with data to share can easily contribute to the NCEI. “We work closely with our data partners to help make the process as easy as possible,” Reiser states. Simply visit the NCEI site to find the point of contact for a given data type.

x Imagery. NOAA’s Digital Coast website provides access to hundreds of miles of oblique aerial imagery of various ages for coastal Alaska. The Alaska Department of Natural Resources’ imagery and elevation portal also hosts high-resolution imagery and elevation data available for access in a variety of ways, such as streaming via web browser or for download.

Furthermore, through close coordination between the Alaska Coastal Mapping Strategy and the National Ocean Mapping, Exploration, and Characterization Council, several helpful tools have been developed this year. First, the Data Acquisition Tracking Dashboard inventories existing data and planned mapping activities for coastal and ocean areas. Also, results from the 2021 Alaska coastal and ocean mapping prioritization survey are available for use through an interactive dashboard.

Partnerships for the Cost-Share Win

When the time comes to collect high-resolution data, it’s worthwhile to investigate whether a mapping costshare program might be a good fit.

The Brennan Matching Fund invites non-federal entities to partner with NOAA to map coastal and ocean areas, including lidar, sonar, subsurface feature investigations, and sediment sampling. Earth MRI is a program funded by the USGS, directed to states and awarded to private industry for the development of geological, geophysical, geochemical, and topographic information. This program aims to identify critical minerals deposits that can help the United States become less reliant on foreign sources. The Alaska Coastal and Ocean Mapping Partner Finder Tool is a great way to find a potential mapping partner, which may also help alleviate the cost of a mapping project.

If these programs or tools are not sufficient, please consider getting involved in the Alaska Geospatial Council’s technical working groups to help advocate for mapping modernization across the state.

Hillary Palmer is a project manager for Dewberry in Alaska and is currently serving as the coordinator for the Alaska Coastal Mapping Strategy. With more than thirteen years of GIS experience in Alaska, she co-chairs the Alaska Geospatial Council’s Coastal and Ocean technical working group. Palmer can be reached at alaskacoastalmappingcoordinator@dewberry.com.

Ed Fogels recently completed a thirty-year career with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, where he served most recently as deputy commissioner. He was instrumental in creating the Alaska Statewide Digital Mapping Initiative and served as its chair since its inception in 2006, through its reformation to the Alaska Geospatial Council. Fogels is currently a partner with Jade North, a consulting firm specializing in natural resource management.

Jade North

Dewberry

Fueling industries that fuel our economy.

Dawson

Liquid Energy

Using Alaska’s waterways to provide power

By Rachael Kvapil

Water lit the muddy streets of Juneau City, as the gold mining town was known in 1893. That was the year Alaska Electric Light & Power (AEL&P) started providing service from a simple water wheel. Two decades later, the utility developed the Annex Creek, Salmon Creek, and Gold Creek hydropower plants, and they remain in service, generating 3.6 MW, 6.7 MW, and 1.6 MW, respectively.

Juneau is awash in hydropower, especially since the federal government build the Snettisham project in 1973. Water tapped from two lakes 28 miles southeast of Juneau drives 70 percent of Juneau’s electricity, with a peak output of 78 MW. Another 20 percent comes from the Lake Dorothy facility on the east bank of Taku Inlet, generating up to 14 MW from the flow of water down a 5-foot diameter penstock. And that’s just Phase 1; AEL&P has plans to double the output from Lake Dorothy, as demand warrants.

“Under the right circumstances, hydropower is a cost-effective and reliable source of carbon-free electricity,” says Debbie Driscoll, AEL&P vice president and director of consumer affairs.

AEL&P isn’t 100 percent carbon free; Driscoll notes that the utility burns diesel for standby generators during planned maintenance and short outages. However, AEL&P is unique in Alaska having such a large portion of its generation portfolio come from hydropower. Most Alaska utilities rely on a combination of natural gas, petroleum, and coal, plus a smattering of renewables in addition to hydropower. Juneau stands as a benchmark for others to measure up to.

Powering the Railbelt

A single powerhouse supplies 10 percent of the electricity for customers from the Kenai Peninsula to Fairbanks. The Bradley Lake Hydroelectric Project north of Homer, completed in 1991, is the largest hydroelectric facility in the state. The five Railbelt electric utilities—Chugach Electric Association, Golden Valley Electric Association, Homer Electric Association, Matanuska Electric Association, and Seward Electric System—share its 120 MW output. From 1995 to 2020, the Bradley Lake facility averaged 392,000 MWh annually at $0.04 per kWh, providing some of the lowest cost power to more than 550,000 Alaskans.

The Bradley Lake Hydroelectric Project took forty years of planning, fieldwork, licensing, construction, and agreements before generating any power. The US Army Corps of Engineers first studied Bradley Lake’s potential in 1955, but it wasn’t until 1962 that Congress authorized the project. Another twenty years passed before the Alaska Energy Authority (AEA) assumed responsibility for the project and completed the final steps, including the Power Sales Agreement between AEA and the Railbelt utilities and acquiring a mix of legislative appropriations and AEA revenue bonds. In 2020, AEA completed an expansion by diverting glacial water from West Fork Upper Battle Creek into Bradley Lake Hydroelectric Project, increasing energy by 10 percent from its initial numbers in 1991.

Now AEA, in partnership with the Railbelt utilities, is pursuing another diversion project to further increase the power output at Bradley Lake by almost 50 percent. The Dixon Diversion would divert water from the East Fork of the Martin River into the Bradley Lake reservoir. According to a press release from Governor Mike Dunleavy, the Dixon Diversion Project could power an additional equivalent of up to 30,000 homes. At this time, AEA estimates five years of studies and permitting followed by five years of construction before the Dixon

Diversion generates power.

Curtis Thayer, AEA executive director, says other factors affect the amount of power the Bradley Lake facility can supply to the Railbelt. For example, transmission lines from the plant into Anchorage need upgrades before they can handle an additional load. AEA owns most of the transmission lines along the Railbelt, with smaller sections owned by partnering utilities. Together these utilities developed a plan to conduct needed upgrades using funds from the Power Sales Agreement negotiated in 1982. That’s because AEA retired its bonds early, but its utility partners have budgeted to finance them further into the future. That leaves a surplus to pay for transmission upgrades.

“Even though the plant is paid off, there is still a commitment by the Railbelt utilities to continue debt payments until 2050,” Thayer explains. “There is a stipulation in the Power Sales Agreement that AEA doesn’t need legislative approval to appropriate these funds as long as it goes to the betterment of Bradley Lake and participating utilities.”

This provision means costs for

upgrades won’t flow down to utility ratepayers or place an additional burden on the state treasury. Upgrading transmission lines from Fairbanks to Homer is estimated to cost around $200 million.

Microgrid Solutions

Upgrading the Railbelt grid to tap into Bradley Lake’s hydropower is fine for urban areas, but remote communities are entirely disconnected from these energy grids. According to the Alaska State Energy Profile and Energy Estimates, many rural communities primarily rely on diesel electric generators for power, which means higher costs to the ratepayer and increased environmental concerns. Without access to expanded infrastructure, rural Alaska is seeking alternative energy solutions on a much smaller scale.

For Igiugig, that solution came from a partnership with Ocean Renewable Power Company (ORPC), a global renewable energy company with offices in Anchorage. The village, situated where the Kvichak River enters Lake Iliamna, had for a long

time imported expensive diesel fuel for power generation. In 2014 when ORPC installed its first hydrokinetic project, known as the RivGen Power System, Igiugig saw the possibility of expanding its energy options. As ORPC further developed the technology, advanced versions of the power system proved capable of providing one-third of the electricity needs for the village’s seventy Yup’ik Eskimos, Aleuts, and Athabascans.

ORPC’s Alaska Director of Development Merrick Jackinsky says that the RivGen Power System is unique because it doesn’t require large-scale construction or permanent infrastructure to produce electricity. RivGen differs from traditional hydropower plants, which rely on the elevation difference between the intake and outlet. Hydrokinetic devices like RivGen are placed directly in a stream of flowing water, extracting energy with turbines. The RivGen system looks like a small watercraft with its generator, consisting of two turbines, connected through a single driveline to an underwater generator in the center. The generator sits on

Ocean Renewable Power Company installed its first RivGen device at Igiugig in 2014, tapping the flow of the Kvichak River without the need for a dam. ORPC

a pontoon that is self-deploying, easy to install, and easy to retrieve for maintenance or seasonal removal.

Each device has a rated capacity of 25 kW. ORPC ships components to a staging area near a project site for final assembly. Once assembled, the RivGen device is towed to the project site and anchored there. The device is held in the river or tidal current by the anchor lines and then ballasted into position on the riverbed. An underwater power and data cable runs along the river bottom to an onshore interconnection point.

“It’s a low vertical profile system,” says Jackinsky. “There aren’t any dams or reservoirs creating freeflowing water. It’s a small system with flexible applications.”

Lunar Power

Recently, ORPC received a grant to install a second unit in Igiugig, and Jackinsky estimates the two units together will reduce the village’s diesel usage anywhere from 60 percent to 90 percent. The success of this project has led to further

The Bradley Lake Hydroelectric Project, owned by Alaska Energy Authority, is the largest hydroelectric facility in the state. The 120 MW facility generates about 10 percent of the annual power used by Railbelt electric utilities from Homer to Fairbanks.

AEA

JUNEAU HYDROPOWER AND J-POWER ADVANCE SWEETHEART LAKE HYDROELECTRIC

In September, Juneau Hydropower announced an approximately $200 million joint development agreement with J-POWER, a Tokyo-based developer, for the construction of the 19.8 MW Sweetheart Lake Hydroelectric Facility, which would be located approximately 30 miles south of Juneau on the east shore of Gilbert Bay.

Construction on one of the largest hydroelectric projects scheduled for development in Alaska in the last twenty years is expected to start in 2023, according to Duff Mitchell, managing director for Juneau Hydropower. It’s a long-awaited step forward—Juneau Hydropower has been planning a potential development at Sweetheart Lake since 2009 and finished acquiring all necessary permits in 2016. Mitchell anticipates that construction will span two to three construction seasons, but an exact date when power generation would start has not been set.

In addition to the hydrokinetic facility, construction will include 40 miles of high voltage transmission line to connect it so the stateowned Snettisham electrical transmission line. When operational, the Sweetheart Lake hydroelectric facility is expected to provide power not only to Juneau but also to Kensington Mine, located nearby, reducing the mine’s dependence on diesel.

partnerships within the state. ORPC recently acquired a federal permit to install a 5 MW tidal energy pilot project near Nikiski, with plans to develop a 100 MW commercial-scale plant. Homer Electric Association, which is partnering with ORPC for this project, is currently installing a storage battery system to save surplus energy from renewables for later transmission to the power grid. Jackinsky says ORPC is also conducting initial studies at False Pass in the Aleutian Chain for a similar project to harness ocean currents.

ORPC also announced a tidal generation project in Port Mackenzie that will produce the 80 kW of power needed for a cathodic protection system that keeps the dock from corroding into Cook Inlet. Unlike the freshwater project in Igiugig, the system will require further adaptation for operation in salt water. If successful, it will be the first saltwater tidal generation system in Alaska.

“Hydrokinetic power is considered a base load resource,” says Jackinsky. “All you have to do is grab a tide book, and you will know the predicted time and amplitude. With lunar power, you can set a watch.”

Though ORPC systems have a low vertical profile and removable infrastructure, Jackinsky says the company is still required to conduct environmental impact studies in areas where wildlife is prevalent. The most extensive monitoring areas are where endangered beluga whales live and in locations with salmon runs. To date, no significant impacts have been found.

Hydrokinetic technology opens new possibilities for Alaska to harness its liquid energy, from free-flowing rivers to the wine-dark sea. They have the advantage of being deployable in more locations than the very particular topography that traditional hydropower requires. According to AEA, there are fifty operating utilityscale hydroelectric projects in Alaska, supplying 27 percent of Alaska’s energy profile. Thayer notes that Alaska’s fraction of electricity from hydro is 25 percent more than the national rate. The vastness of Alaska’s coastal miles and waterways gives the state a significant renewable energy advantage over the Lower 48, says Thayer, and communities will benefit from continued investments in hydropower and related infrastructure.

Hydropower converts the potential energy of water at a high elevation into kinetic energy at a lower elevation, spinning a turbine to drive a generator. The Bradley Lake Hydroelectric Project has two generators in its powerhouse.

AEA

You bring out the best in us.

Alaska’s most award-winning hospital.

Providence Alaska Medical Center has once again been recognized as the top health care provider in Alaska. U.S. News & World Report, the global authority in hospital rankings, has named Providence Alaska Medical Center as a High Performing hospital in seven categories including heart attack and stroke.

Thanks to the great work of all our caregivers, providers and community partners, enabling us to serve our community with award-winning care.

Providence Alaska Medical Center, a nationally recognized trauma center and Alaska’s only Magnet hospital, is part of Providence St. Joseph Health, a not-for-profit network of hospitals, care centers, health plans, physicians, clinics, home health services, affiliated services and educational facilities. For more information about PAMC, visit alaska.providence.org.

‘Every Tree Tells a Tale’

By Nancy Erickson

Rising from the sawdust of its past prime, Alaska’s timber industry is focusing on valueadded products made in Alaska with locally grown wood. The 400 jobs the sector currently supports is a pale shadow of the industry in the early ‘90s, when ten times as many Alaskans worked in the business.

In fact, the forest sector was Alaska’s second-largest industry in the ‘70s, but large-scale logging and milling are gone. In its place, smaller operators turn Alaska’s remaining wood harvests into niche products.

“Wood and wood products are ubiquitous,” says Tessa Axelson, executive director of the Alaska Forest Association. “Wood is used in a variety of products that our members provide supply for. Much of the highend musical instruments produced internationally, sailboat masts, cultural logs used for panels and totems, and high-end beams and custom finish carpentry products are made from wood that comes from the Tongass National Forest.”

Alaska Specialty Woods (ASW) salvages tonewood from old-growth Sitka spruce and cedar from the Tongass on Prince of Wales Island. “Woods for the world’s music, in harmony with the land,” is part of the company’s mission statement.

“Responsible stewardship is the essence of our process,” says ASW founder Brent Cole Sr., who owns and operates the business with his wife Annette and two sons. “The future of music and its cultural significance depends on the forest, and it is our responsibility to make the best use of it. Salvage is key in sustaining the Tongass old growth for future generations to appreciate and experience while supplying the world with quality soundboards.”

The family started the company in 1997, and ASW now annually supplies more than 50,000 guitar tops made of Sitka spruce, western red cedar, and Alaska yellow cedar to tonewood users such as custom luthiers, manufacturers, and other builders of acoustic instruments.

“Every guitar maker has their own distinct shape and design,” says Cole. “We manufacture hundreds of products, from ukulele tops to double bass fronts. Soundboards—the top or board that vibrates, moving air that creates sound, arguably the most important piece of any acoustic instrument—are our specialty.”

The Living Edge

While Cole’s wood speaks through music, Reid Harris of Aleph Designs gives his a voice through design.

Bethany Goodrich Sitka Conservation Society | Sustainable Southeast Partnership

Bethany Goodrich Sitka Conservation Society | Sustainable Southeast Partnership

The 39-year-old Juneau resident was on an Alaska Airlines flight a decade ago when a magazine article featuring a stunning live-edge table caught his eye. Instead of cutting a square slab out of a piece of wood, live edge tables follow the contour of the tree, from one bark edge to the other.

“What is that?” Harris recalls asking. “It was absolutely phenomenal.”

A woodworker himself, Harris determined the $25,000 price tag was out of his league, but he knew he had the talent to craft his own table. Months later while at a friend’s mill, he saw a shaggy old piece of red cedar with a live edge, took it home, and created a table he was proud of. Soon his expertise spread by word-of-mouth, and now Harris estimates he has more than 100 pieces floating around, mostly in Juneau.

Harris purchases many of his slabs from Wes and Sue Tyler of Icy Straits Lumber & Milling as well as from other local millers.

“Buying in slabs preserves the natural and unique characteristics of a tree. It is an actual segment right through the tree, from one bark edge to the other bark edge,” says Harris. “There’s a lot going on inside of a tree, and the slab cut helps reveal that beauty. Every tree tells a tale.” That character is lost when the slab is cut into dimensional lumber,

Bethany Goodrich Sitka Conservation Society Sustainable Southeast Partnership

“the type of mass-produced stuff you’d buy at Home Depot,” he says.

Harris says the heavy decline of the timber industry in Southeast is arguably for better or worse, but for certain the remaining local mills are struggling to keep the lights on and pay their employees.

“When I buy one of these slabs from Wes, I pay more than the dimensional value of that lumber if that was just a 2x4,” explains Harris. “He has to take extra care not to mar the edges, to cut it properly, to kiln dry and get it to me, so it’s a value-added product. I pay him a premium over other

buyers and then, when I sell a piece, it creates a value-added production loop from local resources. This is something I highly value and see as a community benefit.”

Icy Straits Lumber and Milling has been operating since 2003 on Chichagof Island near Hoonah, about 40 miles west of Juneau. Wes Tyler, 74, began working in wood right out of high school and learned most of what he knows about the forest products industry from his father, grandfather, uncles, and cousins.

“They all taught me how to work and to strive to do your best, no matter the circumstances,” says Tyler. He met his wife in 1970, and the couple have been living and working in the woods of Southeast for fifty-two years.

Tyler classifies his mill as a “custom cutting” operation, but that has never been the main objective.

“When handling any volume of wood fiber, you come across numerous odd pieces that can be turned into unusual items,” Tyler explains. “We keep an eye out for those and set them aside for future projects. Our particular local

Annette and Brent Cole Sr. have been salvaging old-growth Sitka spruce and cedar on Prince of Wales Island for Alaska Specialty Woods since 1997.

Bethany Goodrich | Sitka Conservation Society | Sustainable Southeast Partnership

wood species add to the uniqueness of many of these furniture items.”

Tyler credits his wife for the more creative side of the business. He says she has an excellent eye for decorating and artsy things.

“She would set ideas in front of one of our employees who was talented in woodworking and a gifted artist,” he explains. “She would talk over the idea, and he would wave his magic over the pieces of wood, and out would come neat one-of-a-kind pieces of furniture or artsy woody decorations.”

Heirloom Handicrafts

Jeremy Douse, the Northern Region Forester and acting Coastal Regional Forester for the Alaska Division of Forestry, says his agency is working to continue providing wood for valueadded wood products, even though it doesn’t create a huge amount of volume.

Based in Fairbanks, Douse says many folks in the northern region who make bowls, cutting boards, and other craft items supplement their income by selling firewood or wood for making

pellets and chips for heating.

Fairbanks-based The Great Alaskan Bowl Company takes pride in the tradition that using birch bowls represents. The company turns as many as 100 bowls in a standard shift, says Emily Berriochoa, daughter of founder Lewis Bratcher.

“We go for volume,” she says. “We have a kiln that helps us dry a bowl in about a week, so that’s different than someone doing things at home and having to rely on air drying. So that’s kind of our secret sauce, essentially.”

And the northern region is wellstocked with birch.

“Birch isn’t old growth. It’s not going to live 300 years, but starts dying around 70 to 80 years,” says Berriochoa. “We try to look at the older trees at the end of their life span and let the younger ones grow up.”

Now in their 31st year of operation, Berriochoa likes to describe her shop as an Alaskan-made home goods and gourmet food store.

“We’re reminding them of an era of when their grandparents made everything from a wooden bowl,”

Berriochoa says of customers entering their store, “and the reason those bowls are still around is because there wasn’t a dishwasher for somebody to put them in and ruin it.”

That 70- or 80-year-old birch could exist for another 80 years as practical woodcraft.

“We’re trying to produce heirloom items in this disposable economy,” Berriochoa says, “challenging our customers to think differently and to know it’s going to cost a little bit more upfront, but the long-term enjoyment is something you’re not going to get out of a big box store.”

New Life for Scraps

Rob Van Sleet moved to the Glennallen area with his wife Lori and family in 2015 to live off the grid, away from the drama of busy city life. As the story goes, one night after throwing a log on the fire on a -40°F night, Lori mentioned something she had seen about a wooden ring. Up for the challenge, Van Sleet found himself outside the next morning looking for pieces of wood to make his wife a

Whether you operate a remote fishing lodge, resource exploration camp, or any other “off-the-grid” facility in remote Alaska, all levels of management and staff need to be prepared to work together in preplanned, coordinated fashion when responding to any emergency.

At Hoffman Consulting, we specialize in crafting comprehensive response manuals, custom-designed to address the specific infrastructure, location, and characteristics of your company’s operations. From fires to floods, medical emergencies to downed aircraft, we evaluate those scenarios most likely to result in significant business-interruption, crafting plans to guide your immediate response activities, combined with up-to-date appendices listing emergency-contact numbers, regulatory notification requirements, customized form-templates, and other critical resource links.

“In 2021 we brought in Hoffman Consulting to evaluate our operations and draft an updated emergency-management manual for Kulik Lodge. We were so pleased with the wellorganized and comprehensive manual that Daniel produced, we brought him back in 2022 to craft updated operational guides for our lodges at Brooks, Grosvenor, and Mission, as well as for our integrated air-service provider, Katmai Air. Everyone knows that emergencyplans need to be formulated, reviewed, and periodically updated; utilizing Hoffman Consulting as an experienced resource proved to be an outstanding decision for us!”

ring. And Rob’s Alaskan Woodcraft was born.

Van Sleet’s rings start out as a very thin piece of wood collected from aspen, spruce, and willow found on their off-the-grid, solar powered homestead. “I shave off thin pieces with a chainsaw mill and hand sand them down further,” he explains. “The wood is soaked and then handbent around itself to the size needed.

Then I use my mini lathe to create the channel and inlay materials. Each ring takes about three to five days to make.”

Word of his rings has grown far beyond Alaska.

“My rings go all over the world now,” he says, including the United Kingdom, the Philippines, and Australia. “And it all started with that first wooden ring for Lori.”

In addition to rings, Van Sleet also makes pens and bowls, most of them sold online.

In Southcentral Alaska, a carver in Girdwood lets the piece of wood he’s working on speak to him before creating one of his whimsical wood spirits.

Inspired by his father’s wizard carvings, Cody Burns began wood carving following his graduation from college.

“I love the whimsical look and feel of wizards and wood spirits,” says Burns, who works full time as a ski patroller at Alyeska Ski Resort and part time as an artist and wood carver. In 2011 Burns had saved enough gas money to move to Girdwood, where he created his Alaska Wood Wizard.

“I try to let the piece of wood speak to me and I try not to expect anything,” Burns says. “As I’m carving, I’m not really thinking about what I am doing. I just do the next thing that the piece of wood tells me to do.”

Burns also makes items such as relief carving tree scenes, bowls, spoons, hearts, lamps, and coat hangers. He gathers his wood locally, favoring cottonwood bark, spruce knots, or spruce planks he finds leftover at sawmills.

“I carve every free chance that I get, oftentimes with my daughter and golden retriever puppy, who likes to eat the wood chips I make,” he says. “I do all of my work right here in Girdwood. I have a nice cabin in the woods with a back porch so I can carve outside in the fresh air.”

Small-scale wood businesses can’t replace Alaska’s former timber industry, but they keep the porchlight on until the day when logging might return to the Tongass.

“Second growth that is coming isn’t quite there yet. It’s kind of a wait and see,” says Douse, the Fairbanks forester. “Everybody is kinda on edge— what kind of industry will we have down here?”

He explains that commercial use of wood is part of what keeps a forest healthy. “I don’t think a lot of people understand that if we lose this industry or are not able to produce much volume, then we lose the capability to really manage forests,” Douse says. “It’s an important tool from a forestry perspective.”

Alaska Specialty Woods founder Brent Cole Sr. specializes in soundboards for musical instruments. The company also manufactures thousands of guitar tops each year.

Bethany Goodrich | Sitka Conservation Society | Sustainable Southeast Partnership

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Curtis and Lance, Village Outreach Liaisons

“A

Voices of Seafood

A chorus sings the praises of Alaska’s ocean bounty

By Scott Rhode

laska seafood has so much to offer,” says Ashley Heimbigner. “It’s often a game of choosing which messages are best for the audience.”

Choosing messages is Heimbigner's job as communications director for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI). The public/private partnership, established by state statute in 1981, marked its 40th anniversary last year by revamping its alaskaseafood.org website to deliver its message more effectively. In addition to becoming more mobile friendly, the redesign streamlined access to ASMI’s recipe library.

“It was timely with the pandemic because more and more people were looking for information about what they were eating and recipes online, as we were all at home cooking,” Heimbigner says.

Website visitors might see suggestions for products they would not otherwise have bought. For example, potato latkes with Alaska salmon roe can be made with ingredients most home chefs keep in their cupboards, save one (or two, if the latkes are fried in duck fat, as directed). Salmon eggs would send the cook to the supermarket or Asian grocery.

“Based on insight that salmon roe is becoming more popular in the US domestic market, we worked with a chef to create a series of salmon roe recipes,” Heimbigner says. This accomplishes two of ASMI’s immediate goals: building demand for all parts of a fish, thus getting more value out of the catch, and creating a market to absorb the bonanza of Bristol Bay sockeye, which just saw a record harvest.

Processors and harvesters pay a self-assessment to ASMI, and the institute also leverages federal grants for its research and marketing. Those efforts range from designating January as “Wild Alaska Seafood Month” in Europe—starting this year and, with luck, again in 2023—to recommending fish as a replacement for Christmas ham or a fat goose at the center of winter holiday meals. Heimbigner says ASMI began gearing up six months in advance for next spring’s Lent, when Roman Catholics substitute fish for meat on the six Fridays before Easter.

Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute

NATURAL RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT

This month, ASMI observes its own holiday, of sorts, with the return of the All Hands on Deck conference. Meeting in person after two years of virtual alternatives, ASMI is hosting the event at Alyeska Resort in Girdwood on November 9, 10, and 11. The conference lets the wider seafood industry and general public learn how each fishery is performing and how ASMI is coordinating the marketing of Alaska brands.

For all that, All Hands on Deck is merely a tune-up before the major opus the following week.

Symphonic Showcase

The Seahawks aren’t playing a home game the weekend of November 17, yet Seattle’s Lumen Field is drawing a crowd to the adjacent event center for the Pacific Marine Expo. That event is the stage for the annual Symphony of Seafood, presented by the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation (AFDF).

Just as ASMI is a creation of state law, AFDF formed as the result of federal law, the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Act. The nonprofit coalition develops products, equipment, and techniques for the benefit of harvesters, processors, and coastal communities. Marketing is a small part of its charter, and the Symphony of Seafood is its most visible endeavor.

By mounting a competition, AFDF draws attention to products manufactured with Alaska seafood as a key ingredient. Entries include retail brands as well as products aimed at the food service sector.

Ashley Heimbigner Communications Director Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute

“Food service is marketing to hotels and institutions like colleges,” explains Julie Cisco, executive administrator of AFDF. “The packaging, of course, is different: it’s bulk. They need the longevity, and they need it to be simple.”

Entries don’t necessarily have to be food. Last year, the grand prize went to Deep Blue Sea bath soak by Waterbody, which was entered in the “Beyond the Plate” category. Past entries also include pet treats, fish skin jewelry, and chemical derivatives from crustacean shells.

The event began in 1998 as the Symphony of Salmon before expanding to include other species (although shellfish are still largely

absent). Salmon products dominated until 2007, when a cold smoked halibut won the grand prize. Lately, salmon has been shut out of the top spot by hot sauce made with kelp, packaged cod in lemon herb butter, and protein noodles made with Alaska pollock. Outside of the main categories, special prizes honor the best salmon and best whitefish, where halibut, cod, and pollock compete against each other.

“We definitely have some amazing fish in the Alaska whitefish basket, so it makes for great competition,” says Craig Morris, CEO of Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers (GAPP). “It makes Alaska pollock, our industry, more innovative and work even harder.”

Strictly speaking, Alaska pollock (also known as walleye pollock) is a type of cod; the Food and Drug Administration recognized in 2014 that it belongs in the cod genus. The common name remains in use, even for Gadus chalcogrammus caught elsewhere in the North Pacific, outside of Alaska waters. In GAPP’s name, “Alaska” modifies “pollock,” not “producers.” In fact, the nonprofit is not in Alaska at all, but in Seattle.

The Emerald City doesn’t get all the glory of the Symphony of Seafood, though; Alaska reserves the privilege of announcing the winners. After the initial round of judging at the Pacific Marine Expo, the scene will shift to Juneau during the legislative session in February. Another round of judging will name a Juneau’s Choice award, and final scores will be tallied. Winners in the three main categories, as well as the Grand Prize winner and a special sockeye salmon selection by the Bristol

“People want to feel good about the product they’re eating, both in terms of how it’s good for their body and that they’re not making an impact on the environment.”

The Symphony of Seafood raises the profile of products both edible and otherwise, such as 2016 “Beyond the Plate” winner Quyung-Iii anti-aging skin serum from Bethel-based ArXotica.

AFDF

Bay Regional Seafood Development Association, will be flown to Boston in March to display their products at Seafood Expo North America.

At that forum, Cisco says, “hopefully you get the eye of someone you didn’t, or couldn’t, reach before.”

Themes and Motifs

The song of salmon has climbed the charts, growing in popularity over the past decade to surpass canned tuna as the second most consumed seafood in the United States, after shrimp. Alaska pollock is in a struggle for fourth place

“A big part of what we do is connecting the product origin to the point of purchase,” Heimbigner says. “If that’s not there, then it’s difficult for consumers to understand the price point that comes with Alaska seafood.”

Through a nationwide survey followed by focus groups, GAPP has learned which messages make consumers hungry for Alaska pollock.

“This fish has fifty factual attributes, but packages of food or menus can’t be like a NASCAR with fifty stickers on ‘em,” Morris says. “You have to really distill that down to the attributes that are the most impactful.”

That distillation arrived at two attributes of pollock itself—its mild taste and nutritional value—and three related to where the fish is caught: wildness, sustainability, and its point of origin. “That provenance is very important to

Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute

Image by John Gomes.

NATURAL RESOURCE

consumers, and it carries that halo that our partners with the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute work so hard to build,” Morris says.

Although taste and quality drive most purchase decisions, Heimbigner says ASMI has learned that shoppers want to understand where their food comes from and who harvested it. “People want to feel good about the product they’re eating, both in terms of how it’s good for their body and that they’re not making an impact on the environment,” she says.

When ASMI isn’t figuring out what consumers want and then satisfying that need, the institute pushes the other way, finding a place to put whatever

products the industry has. The record run of red salmon in Bristol Bay is a perfect example. Heimbigner explains, “We’re working closely with our industry to identify and build markets for different sockeye products forms.”

Pollock Preconceptions

While sockeye salmon is Alaska’s most valuable fishery, pollock is vastly more voluminous, with more than 3 billion pounds caught each year. Worldwide, Alaska pollock is the most harvested fish, so GAPP is constantly building demand so the catch has a plate to land on.

In 2018, GAPP hired Morris as its CEO based on his experience at the National

Pork Board. During his tenure there, the United States became a net exporter of “the other white meat.” No offense to pigs, but now Morris is fully behind what he calls “the perfect protein.”

He recalls, “When I talked to my family and my kids about switching from pork to wild Alaska pollock, my son was the first to say, ‘Dad, raising hogs isn’t cool, but catching wild Alaska pollock in the Bering Sea is.’”

While he works in Seattle, Morris speaks for harvesters and processors located in Alaska, such as the Coastal Villages Region Fund, the Peter Pan Fleet Cooperative, and Alyeska Seafoods in Unalaska. One of the obstacles he must overcome,

Winning or placing at the Symphony of Seafood comes with the bonus prize of promotional photography to help sell the brand.

ironically, is pollock’s ubiquity as the archetypal filet-o-fish.

“We’re overwhelmingly a fish that’s found in the frozen food aisle, battered and breaded. And we’re overwhelmingly a fish that’s found in quick-service restaurants, battered and breaded,” Morris says. “Although those are two really important channels for us, we do want to break out of that, just to make sure our industry can manage risk.”

Pollock was COVID-19-proof, Morris says, because grocery stores and drivethrough fast food remained open while restaurant fare shut down. However, he has bigger aspirations for pollock—or rather, as Morris is always careful to say, wild Alaska pollock.

To that end, GAPP enlisted influencers to boost the image of wild Alaska pollock on Instagram. They include Angelica Castaneda, a lifestyle blogger in Arizona; Angela Kim, a mommy blogger from Orange County, California; Antonia Lofaso, the executive chef at Dama in Los Angeles; “outdoor chef” Taku, who specializes in sushi; lawyer-turned-spearfisher Valentine Thomas; and chef My Nguyen, whose audience of 1.5 million followers dwarfs the other five combined.

During the campaign, the professional celebrities exhibited meals made mostly with fileted Alaska pollock, whether barbecued, seared, baked, or as ceviche. A couple used surimi fish paste to dress up a Thai salad or ramen noodles.

Each influencer framed the dish with their own perspective. As Morris

The YouTube and Instagram channel My Healthy Dish is one of six influencers contracted by GAPP.

My Nguyen

explains, “If they talk about sustainability, if they talk about nutrition messaging, if they talk about versatility, or if they talk about high-end cuisine—what are those sorts of messages that are resonating the most with the followers?”

GAPP has contracted a public relations firm to analyze how the campaign affected purchase behavior.

Big, Wide World

As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Alaska is a fish basket. Overseas sales of all seafood totaled $1.8 billion in 2020, outpacing all ores. A single subcategory, “frozen fish meat” surpasses all exports except for zinc, lead, gold, and the portion of crude oil that isn’t refined domestically.

Foreigners pump cash into the Alaska economy for seafood that Alaskans might never eat.

“An obvious example is sea cucumber, which is a dive fishery in Southeast Alaska, primarily,” Heimbigner says. “It’s a species that doesn't often find its way to Alaska menus but is a hugely coveted delicacy in many markets outside of the United States, especially in China and Asia.”

Heimbigner adds that Alaskans might not appreciate the state’s bounty of flatfish, including yellowfin sole, rex sole, rock sole, flathead sole, arrowtooth flounder, and Alaska plaice. “They’re all very versatile lean, nutritious whitefish that are found on menus across the United States but not often seen here at home,” she says. “I think many Alaskans are probably unfamiliar

with the product and the fact that it comes from Alaska waters.”

Pollock is, of course, all too familiar, but Heimbigner says ASMI has been working to make its roe as popular domestically as it is overseas. For example: spiced pollock roe in Japan is known as mentaiko. Morris says, “These spiced roe products that you find in everything from pasta to sushi is an amazing product. It’s not uniquely

Japanese, but it’s very much celebrated in Japan.”

Japan is also the top market for surimi blocks, whereas the fish paste is known to Alaskans almost exclusively as imitation crab meat. Throughout East Asia, surimi is a staple ingredient for boiled fish balls, and Morris says Alaska pollock is the ideal raw material. “Wild Alaska pollock surimi comes out of that very cold water that gives that surimi block very high ‘gel strength,’” he explains. “You can put it in that boiling water, which is a very extreme cooking environment, and it doesn’t dissolve like a bullion.”

The problem with selling surimi to Japan is that the market is shrinking. Japan has one of the lowest fertility rates of any country, and its population has been dropping for more than a decade.

“The demographics just aren’t in Japan’s favor,” Morris says, “so if we’re gonna enjoy demand in the future as strong as we enjoy today, we’re gonna have to identify and develop new markets to help pick up the demand.”

Identifying and developing new markets has been the mission of ASMI and AFDF for more than forty years, with no coda in sight.

“It’s a big, wide world out there with a lot of other seafood species, and we are facing a lot of competition,” Heimbigner says. “In order to stay

relevant to our customers and consumers around the globe, it takes a lot.”

“When I talked to my family and my kids about switching from pork to wild Alaska pollock, my son was the first to say, ‘Dad, raising hogs isn’t cool, but catching wild Alaska pollock in the Bering Sea is.’”

Craig Morris CEO Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers

Especially during the pandemic, the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute leaned heavily on social media, such as this Instagram story, to promote recipes for home cooks.

ASMI

Into the West

The promise and process of the Ambler Access Project and West Susitna Access Road

By Tracy Barbour

Unchanged for almost thirty years, Alaska’s highway system has seen no new long-distance roads added to the network since the Dalton Highway was opened to the public in 1994. Even then, the haul road had been completed for more than sixteen years, with no new major highways added to the roster. The westernmost extent on Alaska’s (and North America’s) connected road system remains the bend in the Sterling Highway at Anchor Point. However, two ambitious road projects would claim the title if either of them succeeds in pushing farther west.

The proposed Ambler Access Road and West Susitna Access Road would make their areas more easily accessible for resource development, outdoor recreation, and other purposes. If constructed, the roads would generate well-paying jobs, economic growth for the state, and other opportunities for Alaskans—but they face some challenges and opposition.

The state-owned Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA) is leading efforts to develop the Ambler Access Project (AAP) and West Susitna Access Road (WSAR). The AAP is a proposed 211-mile industrial access road from Milepost 161 on the Dalton Highway to the Ambler Mining District in the southern Brooks Range foothills east of Kotzebue, an area rich with zinc, copper, and other elements.

The Ambler Road also would allow controlled access for approved commercial uses, but public access would not be permitted. As AIDEA’s Ambleraccess.org website puts it, “While commercial transport of goods and services is not a primary purpose, it may be possible under the same rules of the road as mine users. Personal use such as hunting, fishing, and smallscale mining is prohibited. If it is built, this will not be a state road and will not be open to the general public.”

With the WSAR project, AIDEA and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough would

build an all-season road and bridge up to and over the Little Susitna River. The intended road would stretch about 100 miles from the west end of the Ayrshire Road snowmachine trailhead to the confluence of Portage Creek and the Skwentna River, tapping resources in the Fish Creek Natural Resource Management Unit. Currently, there is only limited winter access to the area.

Both road projects continue winding their way through the preliminary stages of development.

Ambling Toward Metals

AIDEA undertook AAP with the goal of forming a public/private partnership to finance, construct, operate, and maintain the road. Earlier this year, AIDEA’s board approved a $30 million field season, splitting the cost with private-sector developer Ambler Metals.

The AAP—expected to cost more than $500 million—would return more than $5 billion in wages paid during the lifetime of Ambler mining,

State Mining Claims

according to the UAA Center for Economic Development. In addition, the project will result in an estimated $193 million in direct payments to local governments. Developing the mines within the Ambler Mining District has the potential to facilitate more than 8,700 direct, indirect, and induced construction and operation jobs as well as nearly $700 million in annual wages. Additionally, it would create 360 direct jobs over the road’s construction period and up to 81 direct annual jobs for road operations and maintenance over the life of the road.

While the AAP has the support of key stakeholders, including the Northwest Arctic Borough, the Native Village of Shungnak, and the Resource Development Council for Alaska, it has also drawn opposition. Various groups have raised concerns and legal challenges over the potential impact on Alaska Native tribes and subsistence. In February, the US Department of Interior filed a motion to remand the final environmental impact statement and suspend the Ambler Road right-of-way permits while the department addresses what it considers “deficiencies” with BLM’s

historic preservation and subsistence analyses. This fall, BLM is seeking public input before preparing a supplemental environmental impact statement.

“Diverse, on-the-ground perspectives are vital in promoting co-stewardship and ensuring resilient landscapes,” says BLM Fairbanks District Manager Geoff Beyersdorf in a statement released on September 16. “We are eager to hear from the public, tribes, and corporations to aid in helping us make an informed, durable decision.”

Despite the federal runaround, AIDEA has begun feasibility field work on the AAP. “It’s all pre-construction activities: normal procedures that parties undertake to understand design elements for a later decision of construction,” says AIDEA CEO and Executive Director Alan Weitzner. “We submitted the plan back in January, and we received approval from the BLM in the middle of August.”

In addition to having a delayed start in September, the AAP field work is limited to cultural survey activities

only, according to Ambler Metals president and CEO Ramzi Fawaz. “In a letter sent to AIDEA in mid-August, BLM gave approval for the 2022 annual field work but made it conditional on numerous restrictions that effectively eliminated the planned engineering and environmental field survey activities this summer,” he says.

Onward to Skwentna

The West Susitna Access Project— deemed a priority in the State of Alaska’s 2014 Road to Resources report—continues to move through predevelopment. In 2019, AIDEA and the Mat-Su Borough agreed to provide a framework for a phased feasibility analysis of the project. Last year, the Alaska Legislature appropriated $8.5 million in capital funding for AIDEA to study the project, toward a final investment decision in 2024.

In April, the Mat-Su Borough completed a stakeholder engagement process after assembly members requested additional public outreach. In May, AIDEA filed a permit application to the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), which initiated the environmental review. USACE asked

Ramzi Fawaz Ambler Metals

Rod Arno

Alaska Outdoor Council

AIDEA several follow-up questions, mainly related to clarifications on graphics, charts, and formatting of data.

“We have been engaging as frequently as we can with the public, with over five meetings with the Mat-Su Borough, over ten meetings with special entities, and ongoing public engagement within the borough itself,” Weitzner says.

The WSAR would support the extraction of minerals, such as gold, silver, copper, and strategic metals; oil and gas development; agricultural production (65,000 acres); and the harvest of timber (701,000 acres), according to AIDEA’s West Susitna Access website. In addition, the road would enable Alaskans—and visitors to the state—to gain easier access to 6 million acres for recreational activities.

Objections to WSAR center on potential damage to fishing streams, yet the Alaska Outdoor Council has endorsed the road. In June, the council’s board of directors unanimously voted to support the project thanks to the promise of greater public access. The multiuse aspect of the road fits well with the council’s mission, which, in part, is to ensure equality in access to the outdoors.

Surface transportation is the most affordable means of travel, according to Rod Arno, a former executive director of the Alaska Outdoor Council, now its policy director. “Currently, Alaska has 16,302 miles of state-maintained highways—which is far less than the third-smallest state in the union, Connecticut, with 21,020 miles of road,” says Arno, who works as a wilderness guide in Palmer. “Adding an additional 100 miles of highway in Alaska will not negatively impact the wilderness characteristics of the state.”

Positive People

The Alaska Outdoor Council intends to makes its voice heard. “By participating in the public process of permitting the West Susitna Access Road, [the council] will assure its place at the table with AIDEA, Department of Natural Resources, the Mat-Su

Alan Weitzner AIDEA

Borough, and other non-governmental organizations during the planning or the roads route, building, maintenance, and funding,” Arno says.

The council’s endorsement of the WSAR was well-received by Friends of West Susitna, an independent grassroots organization whose mission is to advocate for year-round road access to lands and resources west of the Susitna River. “I think that’s phenomenal,” says Friends of West Susitna President Cindi Herman. “It’s just another steppingstone forward for a positive reflection on the project.”

Herman, who owns Skwentna Roadhouse and is a year-round Skwentna resident, is an ardent advocate of enhancing road access into the region. The area is hard to get to, and only a limited number of people have the means to access it by airplane and watercraft, Herman says. “If [WSAR] is approved, it will alleviate the already over-hunted and over-fished roads that we already have,” she says. “It’s a beautiful area that needs to be shared by all Alaskans… God gave us the properties in the ground, and he didn’t give them to us to sit on but for us to use them.”

As a long-time Alaskan, Herman says she has seen many projects get studied

and then nixed due to the influence of well-funded adversaries. However, she is diligently working to ensure a different outcome for the proposed West Susitna Road project. “The main reason I got involved was to prevent negative people—who don’t even live in Alaska—from stopping progress,” she says. “So many things have been stopped because of the negative people who say they want to protect Alaska, but they really just want to protect their private interests.”

Driving By Alaskans

While the Alaska Outdoor Council approves of the WSAR, it has not endorsed the industrial-only AAP because it is not intended for public use. Likewise, Doyon, Limited—an Alaska Native regional corporation that owns about twelve miles of land near Evansville along the proposed right-of-way—does not support the proposed Ambler Road. “Doyon does not support the road to Ambler and has never offered a statement of support; nor have we engaged in a discussion about Doyon lands as rights of way for the project,” Doyon says in a statement on its website. “While we also do not oppose the road

to Ambler, we have offered pointed criticism of both the project and its proponents in public comments.”

When any type of development is being addressed or promoted, there will always be opposition, Weitzner says. “There are people who do not want to see our resources be developed and access be provided— but it is important for our growth,” he says.

From the perspective of Ambler Metals, the access road is a matter of energy security. “The US and the state of Alaska have reached a pivotal point in a shift to a greener economy and energies,” Fawaz says. “Though fossil fuels still play a major role, there is a stronger demand for critical minerals for renewable energies, electric vehicles, and batteries... It is imperative for the US to promote the sourcing of critical minerals in the US for its clean energy policy.”

Weitzner sees both access roads as a first step toward Alaska’s economic sufficiency. “It is critical that we get these projects in place,” he says. “If we are stopped on this, there is a gap on economic development that cannot be filled by the federal government. We are looking to drive this by Alaskans for Alaska for our continued economic development as a state.”

Cindi Herman Friends of West Susitna

“If [WSAR] is approved, it will alleviate the already over-hunted and overfished roads that we already have… It’s a beautiful area that needs to be shared by all Alaskans.”

Cindi Herman,

President, Friends of West Susitna

Cindi Herman’s Skwentna Roadhouse is the only property that would have a close connection to the West Susitna Access Road.

Farther up the route, the owner of Rainy Pass Lodge, Steve Perrins, opposes the project.

Skwentna Roadhouse

Round and Round

Rebuilding the Dowling Road and Seward Highway interchange

By Amy Newman

One of Anchorage’s largest construction projects in 2022 was the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities’ (DOT&PF) $43 million reconstruction of the Dowling Road/Seward Highway interchange. Work on the federally funded, multi-phase project will replace and expand the Dowling Road roundabout and the Seward Highway overpass, both of which are nearing the end of their useful life. Construction on the interchange began in May and is expected to be completed in 2023.

Work on the interchange is also the culmination of a decades-long project designed to increase safety and improve the flow of traffic along the Seward Highway from 36th Avenue to Rabbit Creek Road. Traffic along the highway has outpaced growth projections made in the early 2000s.

“This is as much about connecting the mainlines [as] it is about replacing

the roundabouts, which were constructed in the early 2000s, and taking the opportunity to improve them for the next twenty to thirty years,” says engineer Joseph Taylor with Lounsbury & Associates, which served as the project’s prime consultant.

The DOT&PF put the project out to bid with a two-year construction timeline, says DOT&PF project manager Jacob Gondek. However, a collaboration with general contractor Quality Asphalt Paving (QAP) led to a different approach to the project’s logistics, one Gondek says helped decrease traffic delays and interruptions and created greater consistency and predictability for travelers. The collaborative approach also put the project ahead of schedule, with all major work expected to be completed in October.

“I think the key is to recognize that the highway will be back up before winter,” Gondek says. “We will still have work left

to do in 2023, but it will be drastically less impact to the traveling public under this new partnering approach.”

All About the Roundabout

The Dowling Road crossing under New Seward Highway was the first multi-lane roundabout in Alaska. When it opened in 2004, it replaced a signalized lighting system that controlled traffic at the highway ramps. The roundabout, with two lobes on either side of a section underneath the highway, was designed to improve the flow of traffic and decrease backups on the off-ramps by redistributing traffic along Dowling.

“We were experiencing queuing on the ramps. Vehicles were stacking up on the peak hours, and they were backing up the ramps and spilling out onto the highway,” Taylor explains. “That’s a dangerous situation when you have 70-mile-per-hour free-flow traffic.”

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The original roundabout had an inscribed circle diameter (ICD)—the overall outside diameter from pavement to pavement—of 138 feet, Taylor says. Both lobes were on the smaller side due to right-of-way restrictions along the adjacent frontage. They were designed to accommodate projected traffic growth over the next twenty years and to align with the then-twenty-five years of useful life remaining in the Seward Highway bridge.

“It [the roundabout] did everything that could be asked of it for twenty years, but at the end of twenty years it started to break down and lose its ability to manage vehicles,” Taylor says.

With both the roundabout and the bridge near the end of their lifespan— the bridge was designed to last fifty years—DOT&PF had the opportunity to design a long-term replacement for both. Because land acquisitions along the highway’s frontage over the past twenty years eliminated many of the

right-of-way issues that constrained the original design in 2004, DOT&PF was also able to expand both the bridge and the new roundabout to better accommodate current and projected traffic.

“I grew up back when this was a signalized intersection,” Taylor says. “This is a project that’s been twenty years in the making, and it’s going to be a real improvement.”

Connecting the Mainlines

Work at the Dowling Road/ Seward Highway interchange is the continuation of a larger plan that seeks to improve traffic flow and ease congestion along the Seward Highway from 36th Avenue to Rabbit Creek Road—the last southbound traffic light and the last southbound interchange in the Anchorage Bowl, respectively. In the early 2000s, the DOT&PF commissioned a major study to examine future growth in the

Anchorage bowl, the impact of that growth on the Seward Highway and surrounding east-west corridors, and to identify solutions to accommodate the projections. The study, and an environmental assessment that followed, explored a variety of options, from rapid transit to high occupancy vehicle lanes to expanding the highway.

“The Department of Transportation selected the highway expansion of taking the Seward Highway from a divided, four-lane facility, two in either direction, to a six-lane divided facility, three lanes in either direction,” Taylor says.

A key component of the phased expansion was to construct east-west corridors that took traffic underneath the highway. In 2013, DOT&PF expanded the stretch of highway between the Tudor Road and Dowling Road exits, followed by expansion of the highway from Dowling Road

to

Seward Highway traffic was diverted to allow workers to demolish and rebuild the overpass. DOT&PF officials say minimal diversions will be needed for the final phase in 2023.

Dimond Boulevard in 2017, adding an overpass at 76th Avenue. Work on the Dowling Road/Seward Highway interchange is the final piece of that long-term project.

“Dowling was kind of the interchange that sat in the middle of these two projects,” Taylor explains. “Before, the highway kind of squeezed down over Dowling and pinched down to two lanes over the existing bridge. So, this project is completing that expansion and connecting those two projects.”

As with the Tudor to Dowling and Dowling to Dimond projects, the new bridge at the Dowling Road/Seward Highway interchange expands from two lanes per side to three. This will eliminate the current “pinch” that occurs as vehicles traveling through the interchange merge from three lanes to two, then back out to three, Taylor says. Both roundabout lobes increase from their current ICD of 138 feet to an average ICD of 210

“At the time, nobody really thought it could be done without breaking the system, but we realized how people could flex their time a little bit, change the way they get to work, and spread that out in the mornings. It’s been good to hear that it’s going really well.”

Joseph Taylor, Professional

Engineer, Lounsbury

& Associates

feet for the west and 185 feet for the east. Land acquisitions along the frontage allows the entire overpass to shift 50 feet north. The shift increases the distance between the bridge and a large transmission main near the interchange, which not only made construction easier but will help with long-term maintenance, Taylor says.

The new roundabout also addresses concerns about pedestrian safety with the addition of rectangular rapid flashing beacons (RRFBs), Taylor says. These push-button-activated lights, a relatively new addition to roundabouts nationwide, are the first in Southcentral and will help pedestrians move more safely across the larger, circular roadways.

“RRFBs are definitely an improvement over the existing conditions for trying to manage and move pedestrians across the existing roundabout,” Taylor says.

Beyond those changes, the new interchange won’t look markedly different than what residents are used to.

“It will look very similar to the before condition, where the bridge and the highway come up and over, and the

In addition to the bridge replacement, the entire interchange shifts roughly 50 feet to the north, thanks to right-of-way acquisitions that were not possible twenty years ago.

roundabouts come underneath, kind of like how it always was, except the pinch is being taken out of the mainline, the median’s being built fullwidth, they’re all being moved slightly to the north, and underneath it will be a larger roundabout terminal,” Taylor says.

Mark Johnson of MTJ Engineering, a recognized roundabout expert based

in Wisconsin, helped redesign the first-generation roundabout for the next generation.

“[The roundabouts] allow us to manage speeds and traffic better by geometry,” Taylor explains. “There is lots of curvature to the ramp and the roadway, which is designed to slow and manage traffic through these larger circular roadways. From

the design side, it’s a complicated design.”

A Collaborative Approach

While the physical design of the new interchange was complicated, construction was relatively straightforward. The main challenges came in the form of logistics— specifically, how to best manage

“It will look very similar to the before condition, where the bridge and the highway come up and over, and the roundabouts come underneath, kind of like how it always was, except the pinch is being taken out of the mainline, the median’s being built full-width, they’re all being moved slightly to the north, and underneath it will be a larger roundabout terminal.”

Joseph Taylor Professional Engineer Lounsbury & Associates

traffic delays and interruptions along Dowling Road, the Seward Highway, and the adjacent highway exits and east-west corridors, which would be absorbing diverted traffic.

“When this was advertised, the intention was to have it out for a two-year construction project with Dowling transitioned to two temporary signalized lights,” Gondek says, “so essentially the highway would have had traffic stopping at Dowling.”

In addition to the signalized lights, the project as originally conceived would have required frequent highway closures to demolish the existing bridge, construct the new bridge, install girders, and a host of other parts to the project, Gondek explains. Those closures would have resulted in frequent changes in the traffic pattern— and raised the ire of commuters.

“The number of closures we were seeing the contractor was going to need… was going to have such a drastic impact to the traveling public,” Gondek says. “Every few weeks it would have been a different pattern, and what we’ve seen is this is something the public doesn’t prefer. They can’t depend on it, there’s no consistent traffic pattern.”

After awarding the contract, DOT&PF and QAP devised an alternate solution, one that temporarily closed Dowling Road underneath the highway. Although inconvenient in the shortterm to east-west traffic, the closure retained business access on Dowling Road and, more importantly, meant more consistent traffic patterns.

“We could keep all business access open, but what that allowed for is we could then detour the highway without stopping 50,000 vehicles a day at Dowling, and it could continue to flow freely north and southbound,” Gondek explains. “The downfall was obviously the east-west traffic had to find alternate routes.”

The proposal wasn’t without some concern. Closing Dowling Road meant traffic had to be diverted to the Tudor Road and Dimond Boulevard exits, which affected those corridors as well as some of the other nearby eastwest connectors. Models showed that shutting off Dowling Road would stress the Dimond and Tudor exchanges beyond their ability to maintain

traffic. While the closure hasn’t been completely headache free, clear communication and planning helped it defy the computerized naysayers.

“At the time, nobody really thought it could be done without breaking the system,” Taylor says, “but we realized how people could flex their time a little bit, change the way they get to work, and spread that out in the mornings. It’s been good to hear that it’s going really well, even though all the models say you would be stressing Dimond and you would be stressing Tudor beyond their ability to maintain traffic in the morning.”

Ahead of Schedule

Maintaining a more consistent traffic pattern along the Seward Highway was one positive of the Dowling Road closure. Another is that it reduced overall construction time by 40 percent so that, barring any major setbacks, the interchange will not only open sooner than originally anticipated but cause fewer major traffic disruptions in 2023 as well.

Gondek expects that the new Seward Highway overpass will open to traffic this fall, with no further major impacts while the project is completed. The new roundabout will open over the winter, allowing east-west traffic under the overpass to return to normal.

Work on the interchange will continue in 2023, but road closures and diversions will be minimal compared to 2022, and far less than originally anticipated. The roundabout and on/ off ramps are being temporarily paved this fall, so permanent asphalt in the spring will necessitate closures of both, Gondek says. There will also be traffic restrictions and diversions to perform striping work along Dowling Road and the Seward Highway.

“Ideally, when we go into winter shutdown, the highway should be done. We’ll have to do some striping work with lane restrictions next year, the ramps will have to be closed to dig out some sections and tie them back into the final design, so you’ll see the major impacts to the on and off ramps,” Gondek says. “There will be a few weekends of restrictions or closures, but nothing to the extent that the traveling public has seen this year.”

45 Years of TAPS

800 miles between Alaska as it was and Alaska today

By Tara O’Hanley

Forty-five years after the first tanker left Valdez carrying North Slope oil to market, many of today’s worries echo past headlines. Inflation was a major concern. Energy costs were skyrocketing. New construction was stalled due to increasing costs, a shortage of available labor, and constraints on the global supply chain. Far-off wars were influencing global energy commodity markets. And, like today, drilling for oil in the Arctic was offered as a solution—albeit today it comes with heightened concerns for the environment.

Into this political landscape, the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) was born. Three years of construction—and nine years of political wrangling—culminated with the first oil entering the pipe at 10:06 a.m. on Monday, June 20, 1977. Workers and civilians put their ears to the 48-inchdiameter steel casing to listen to the crude flowing through the 800-mile-long pipe. Six weeks later, on August 1, the tanker ARCO Juneau carried away the first load. Alaska would never be the same.

For this quinquadragennial, celebrations at Alyeska Pipeline Service Company are largely employee-focused, with outward observances held in reserve for the golden jubilee in 2027. The public-facing anniversary takes the form of “Memories and Milestones,” a retrospective on Alyeska’s website, alyeska-pipe.com, with historic photos, news articles, and reminiscences.

“While we celebrate all of the things that the TAPS designers and those who constructed the pipeline anticipated,” says Chief Communications Officer Michelle Egan, “those who’ve come since have continued to do that. The engineering marvel is this constant renewal with the workforce that we have and the minds that we have working on solutions.”

Ahtna, Inc.

Since 1974, Ahtna Construction has conducted maintenance along the entire length of TAPS, including replacements of vertical support members. Crews also train for oil spill response and conduct mainline integrity inspections.

Ahtna, Inc.

Competitors Collaborate

Announcements of the discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay State Well No. 1 in 1968 prompted the most experienced petroleum professionals in the world to team up to bring the oil to market.

Up to then, each company involved in the construction of TAPS had been doing its own studies, such as whether it was even possible to build a pipeline, how much it would cost, and how long it might take to build it. In the fall of 1968, just months after the discovery, each of the owners began assembling all this technical information into an intercompany task force to lead a feasibility study. The task force later incorporated to become Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, the nonprofit contractor that operates TAPS to this day on behalf of ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Hilcorp.

The task force estimated a construction cost of $900 million and anticipated completion around 1970. Neither estimate was close. If only the real world were as simple as the controlled environment where engineers make their plans. TAPS found itself at the crosshairs of one social, political, and environmental issue after another—even in areas which had necessitated little more than a rubber stamp for projects before it. Congress wouldn’t cut through the Gordian Knot of land claims and environmental challenges until 1973, passing legislation to restrict federal and state regulation of TAPS construction—less than a month after OPEC announced an oil embargo, not too coincidentally.

Land rights weren’t the only impediment to progress along the pipeline’s route. Laborers were looking to expand worker protections, as well.

At a time when construction was slumping across the United States, workers, unions, and contractors were eager for a bite of the massive project.

In April 1974, Alyeska arrived at a broad project labor agreement that has been credited as a driving factor in the on-time completion of the project, with labor costs that remained within estimates. In exchange for a 100 percent union workforce, the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Department (now known as North America’s Building Trades Unions) and the heads of sixteen

Ahtna Construction & Primary Products Corporation laid the first section of TAPS at Tonsina River in 1975, and the contractor continues to provide services all along the pipeline.

Ahtna, Inc.

traditional craft unions agreed not to strike, picket, or stop work for the duration of the project. This kind of treaty between labor and management had been used previously by the federal government for the Apollo program of the ‘60s and by the contractor that built Disney World in Florida—but at that point it was considered somewhat unique for an owner to make an agreement of this sort.

Alyeska’s manager of labor relations during construction of the pipeline, Gayle Sheridan, considered this pact to be the “most effective and enforceable agreement ever arrived at” and credited to it the fact that the project never experienced system-wide stoppages, and any skirmishes were extinguished within a few days.

Continuous Flow

A handful of Alyeska Pipeline workers are still around from 1977. Egan notes that audit manager Mel Jessee is one 45-year veteran of the company, and there are a couple of others.

Amid that continuity, though, some things inevitably change. “There are

a bunch of things that we’ve learned about operating it that they didn’t really need to think about,” says

Thomas Marchesani, Alyeska’s vice president of risk and engineering, of his predecessors. For example, “If you’re running a million barrels a day, cooling as you move down the line is irrelevant.”

TAPS is no longer pumping a million barrels per day. Throughput is half of that, with ramifications for operations all along the pipe. The lower volume flows more slowly, taking almost three weeks to travel from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez, which used to be a three-day trip. Oil used to arrive at the terminal at 85°F, melting snow off of storage tanks. Alyeska has since added heaters, burning diesel fuel to keep the crude oil above 35°F in winter, or else the mixedin water will freeze.

“The crossover point was really in the 700,000 to 600,000-ish [barrel per day] range, where we started to have to add heat to the line to manage wax and ice risk,” Marchesani explains. “We spent a bunch of time a few years ago taking a really hard look at the design boundaries of operation for the pipeline and how low could we go. With some minor tweaks we figured we could get down below 300,000 [barrels] per

“It wasn’t really anticipated that TAPS would be operating for fortyfive years, but we are, and we’re doing quite well, thank you very much.”

Michelle Egan Chief Communications Officer Alyeska Pipeline Service Company

day.” Throughput is still well above that minimum, and projections for the next decade anticipate no significant decline.

While the steel pipe is still the same, equipment along the 800-mile line has been upgraded through the years. In addition to heaters, Alyeska

Pipeline replaced jet-turbine pumps with electric drives, and the number of sensors has increased tenfold, aided by wireless connections. Each of the sixtytwo remote gate valves has instruments to monitor temperature, pressure, and flow. “As we continue to grow in understanding every day about the risks

Declaration of Friendship

This summer, Alyeska Pipeline’s Interim President Danika Yeager and other Alyeska leadership gathered at the Glennallen Response Base for an anniversary luncheon with officials from Ahtna, Incorporated. Nearly onequarter of the pipeline right-of-way crosses Ahtna traditional lands in the Copper River valley, and Ahtna has been among Alyeska’s most important partners, going all the way back to construction and startup.

In July 1974, Alyeska and Ahtna entered a partnership that led to the creation of Ahtna Construction & Primary Products Corporation (AC&PPC). AC&PPC laid the first section of pipe on March 27, 1975, at Tonsina River.

Today, AC&PPC performs work all along the 800 miles of TAPS, from civil construction to pipeline maintenance to emergency preparedness and

oil spill response. Specialized work has included supporting mainline integrity investigations, high-point vent investigations, and cathodic protection improvements. In 2021, AC&PPC was awarded a new Alyeska contract to perform line-wide survey services.

The significance of Ahtna’s role is honored with a special signing of a renewed declaration of friendship any time there is a major leadership transition at either company. Several generations of Ahtna shareholders have been able to stay in the Ahtna region for careers, receive training or scholarships, and follow in the footsteps of previous generations that decided to work on TAPS.

Pipeline Perspective

In 2022 dollars, the $8 billion construction cost of TAPS equates to just over $39 billion. That’s the same ballpark as the most recent price estimates for building a liquified natural gas pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Nikiski.

TAPS moved its first billion barrels of crude oil within three years of start-

up in 1977. At that rate, it would’ve moved 15 billion by this anniversary— except that the early throughput ramped up during the ‘80s. In 1988, the pipeline averaged more than 2 million barrels per day, and the total volume surpassed 18 billion barrels in 2019. However, that year saw throughput dip below half-a-million barrels per day for the first time, and it’s hovered at that level ever since. The last three years have added only half-a-billion barrels to the lifetime total.

Perhaps a more encouraging perspective concerns how much oil remains in reserve on the North Slope. These figures are in the billions, as well.

When the field was discovered, total held reserves in Prudhoe Bay were initially estimated at approximately 2 billion barrels, which itself far exceeded any other oil discoveries to that point. To date, more than 17 billion barrels have already been extracted from Prudhoe Bay and its smaller neighbors, and tens of billions more barrels are known or suspected to remain underground.

Even with 18 billion barrels of production, the US Geological Survey estimates that Alaska may still hold 27 percent of global unexplored reserves. With 75 percent of the exploration portfolio undrilled, significant opportunities for oil and gas development on the North Slope are alive today. In an atmosphere of heightened global tensions, TAPS’ best days may not yet be in the past.

How many more anniversaries are ahead? It has already functioned 50 percent longer than its original thirty-year design lifetime. “It wasn’t really anticipated that TAPS would be operating for forty-five years, but we are, and we’re doing quite well, thank you very much,” says Egan.

Low throughput is not expected to be a serious problem for at least another decade. Marchesani says life-extending upgrades are on the drawing board, but it’s very early in that process. Those systemwide facility upgrades could extend TAPS’ lifespan to nearly a century.

At forty-five years old, TAPS is comfortably middle-aged.

Sealaska

The Alaska Native regional corporation for Southeast is one of sixteen minority-owned businesses selected by Apple for its Impact Accelerator program. The tech company is providing mentorship to selected businesses, especially toward climate change solutions. Sealaska is recognized for “naturebased solutions,” such as its timber subsidiary transitioning last year from logging to selling carbon offsets. Apple also selected an energy storage company in Hawaii, a recycling company in Las Vegas, and an electric utility in the Navajo Nation. sealaska.com

iHeartMedia

An Alaska radio executive now oversees the Hawaii market as well. Andy Lohman has been Area President for iHeartMedia’s ten Alaska stations for decades, since the company was known as Clear Channel. Those include KASH, KBFX, KENI, KGOT, KTZN, and KYMG in Anchorage and four sister stations in Fairbanks: KAKQ, KFBX, KIAK, and KKED. In August, his portfolio grew to include four FM stations and two AM stations in Honolulu. “The Alaska/ Hawaii Area comprises not only the two states separate from the Lower 48 but also two of the most beautiful places to live in America. We will be strong partners,” Lohman says. iheartmedia.com

Alaska Airlines

Travelers flying from Anchorage to the Seattle area have a new airport option, as of the end of this month. Alaska Airlines is adding daily roundtrip service from Anchorage to

Everett, Washington on sister carrier Horizon Air. Flights connecting at Paine Field-Snohomish County Airport include Horizon routes to Spokane, Boise, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and four destinations in California. The airport just north of Seattle is better known as part of Boeing’s assembly plant. Attempts to bring commercial flights there weren’t successful until 2019, when a passenger terminal opened. alaskaair.com

Renewable IPP

Anchorage-based Renewable Independent Power Producers is partnering with New York investment firm CleanCapital to build an 8.5 MW solar power facility in Houston— the largest in Alaska. When fully operational by next summer, the solar array will supply enough power to Matanuska Electric Association for approximately 1,400 homes per year (nearly three times more than the number of households in Houston proper). Renewable IPP already operates a 1.2 MW solar farm in Willow, with plans for another in Sterling. CleanCapital will serve as the long-term owner-operator of the Houston solar facility. renewableipp.com

Northern Dynasty Minerals

An unnamed private asset management company is investing in the Pebble Mine. Northern Dynasty Minerals, which is developing the gold and copper prospect in the Bristol Bay watershed, announced an agreement for up to $47 million over two years from the new investor, with $9.4 million handed over up front. In exchange, the investor would receive

6 percent of the gold and 5 percent of silver produced by the mine. The US Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing a determination to prohibit waste discharge, and the Pebble Partnership is appealing the US Army Corps of Engineers’ denial of a permit. pebblepartnership.com

Alaska Maritime Education Consortium

Yamaha Motor Company is supplying engines, tools, and training materials at or below cost to the Alaska Maritime Education Consortium, a collaboration between UAA, UAF, UAS, and the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development's Alaska Vocational Technical Center in Seward. An agreement with the Japanese corporation signed in August by University President Pat Pitney and Labor Commissioner Tamika Ledbetter is meant to expand training in marine engine repair. alaskasafetyalliance.org/amec

Alaska Business Publishing

The design of this magazine earned recognition from Trade, Association, and Business Publications International at the 2022 Tabbie Awards. Art Director Monica SterchiLowman earned bronze medals in two categories: Front Cover, Digital Imagery for the May 2021 issue and Opening Page or Spread for the April 2021 article “Favoring Fresh Eats.” The October 2021 issue containing the annual Top 49ers special section is also a Top 25 selection for Best Single Issue. A year earlier, Sterchi-Lowman won a gold medal at the 2021 Tabbies in the Opening Page or Spread category. akbizmag.com

Credit Union 1

Credit Union 1 (CU1) solidified its top executive team with a couple of promotions.

 Mark Burgess is now President and CEO, after serving in both roles on an interim basis for the last six months. Burgess moved to Alaska from New Hampshire in 2018 to serve as CU1’s chief technology officer. CU1 Board Chairman Steve Cavin says, “After interviewing several talented nationwide applicants, we determined that Mark has exactly what Credit Union 1 needs to lead this organization into the future.”

 The credit union also promoted Chief Financial Officer Chad Bostick to Executive Vice President.

Bostick is a born and raised Alaskan who joined the credit union movement in 2008 and has been CU1’s CFO since 2018. Cavin says, “Chad is a phenomenal team player and has helped make Credit Union 1 an incredible place to work. His ability to solve big problems and manage projects has continued to impress and inspire those around him.”

Northrim Bank

Northrim Bank recently hired two executive officers and also promoted three management employees.

 Stefan Saldanha joined Northrim in July as Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary. Saldanha most recently served as a Senior Assistant Attorney General at the Alaska Department of Law in Anchorage. He also worked for Russell Investments. Saldanha earned his

JD and MBA from Georgetown University.

 Dana Cherry started working at Northrim this summer as Vice President, Lending Branch Manager at the Ketchikan Financial Center. Cherry has eighteen years of lending experience in Alaska, Montana, and Oregon. She graduated summa cum laude from Northern Arizona University with a bachelor’s degree in education.

 Deborah Bolton, a Northrim employee since 2009, is now Associate Vice President, Branch Manager at the Eastside Community branch. Bolton has nineteen years of experience in the financial industry and holds an associate degree from Weber State University.

 Samrie Canales is promoted to Assistant Branch Manager, Float Pool. Canales started at Northrim in 2021 and has more than ten years of customer service and management experience.

 Nikki Tandy is now Assistant Branch Manager at Midtown Financial Center. Tandy joined Northrim in 2014 and has worked with the float pool and at the Wasilla Financial Center before transferring to the Midtown Financial Center in Anchorage.

Arbor Capital Management

Two new Financial Advisors join the team at Arbor Capital Management’s Anchorage headquarters in the Dimond Center.

 Matt Knell, a certified financial planner, has more than eighteen years of experience in retirement plan consulting and investment management. Knell earned his bachelor’s degree from Liberty University and his MBA from Indiana

Wesleyan University. He serves as a board member for the Alaska Zoo and is an active member of the Anchorage Estate Planning Council.

 Paul Hurley joins Arbor Capital with more than nineteen years of banking, investment management, and ERISA plan consulting experience, specializing in Alaska Native corporations. Raised in Bristol Bay, Hurley earned the Accredited Asset Management Specialist designation, which helps him guide clients through complex financial planning conversations.

Hurley

Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center

The Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center in Fairbanks named Tania Clucas as Executive Director, responsible for managing the building, promoting its use, and raising funds. The center, named for the former Doyon CEO, hosts Explore Fairbanks and the Alaska Public Lands Information Center. Clucas earned degrees in geography and science management at UAF and most recently worked as legislative staff.

National Park Service

The National Park Service selected David Alberg as Deputy Regional Director for Alaska. Prior to beginning the assignment in October, Alberg was the head of the resource management and compliance division at Lake Mead National Recreation

Burgess

Bostick

Knell

Clucas Alberg

Area in Nevada and Arizona. He had served as Alaska’s acting deputy regional director over the summer. Alberg grew up in Colorado and Washington and received his bachelor’s degree from George Mason University and a master’s degree in education from the college of William and Mary in Virginia. He first visited Alaska in 1986 working on commercial fishing boats out of Dutch Harbor.

Corps of Engineers

The deputy legal counsel for the US Army Corps of Engineers – Alaska District took over the top spot earlier this year. As District Counsel, Matthew Prieksat serves as the chief legal advisor to the district commander, as well as other senior leaders and staff, while operating as a member of the organization’s corporate board. In 2007, Prieksat obtained a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and political science from Fort Hays State University in Kansas, where he was a member of the 2003 Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference champion baseball team.

R&M Consultants

Engineering firm R&M Consultants expanded its team, including the first person hired at a new branch office in Juneau.

 Amy Rodman joined R&M Consultants as an Environmental Geologist in the firm’s Earth Sciences Department in Juneau. In that role, Rodman supports contaminated site and geotechnical investigation work. Rodman has a bachelor’s degree in geology from UAF. She has conducted fieldwork from the

North Slope to Southeast Alaska and managed contaminated sites as a regulator for the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

 Peter Smith joined R&M Consultants as an Engineering Associate in the firm’s Construction Services Department, performing field inspections and materials testing. He also supports R&M’s Anchorage Materials Laboratory staff. Smith has a bachelor’s degree in the German language from UAA and a master’s degree in German languages and literature from Johannes Gutenberg Universität in Mainz, Germany. Prior to joining R&M, Smith was a materials lab technician for the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities Central Region.

Municipality of Anchorage

The new Airport Manager at Merrill Field in Anchorage is Rich Sewell. Mayor Dave Bronson selected Sewell to run the city-owned airport. Sewell spent the last eighteen years as an aviation policy planner for the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. Sewell previously worked for the municipality during the administration of George M. Sullivan after graduating from Kalamazoo College in 1979 with a bachelor’s degree in economics. He earned an MBA from UAA in 1997.

Coffman Engineers

Tija Baker, at the Anchorage office of Coffman Engineers, earned her Alaska Professional Engineering license in mechanical engineering. Baker graduated from UAA with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and joined

Coffman in 2011. She specializes in cathodic protection and facility piping corrosion inspection for oil and gas companies.

Great Alaskan Holidays

Great Alaskan Holidays added three RV Technicians to its motor home sales and rental technical support team.

 Adam Moody worked previously as a mechanic at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport for the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities.

Jordan Rhoades, who was born and raised in Wasilla, comes to Great Alaskan Holidays from Calista Corporation, where he worked as a rig hand on a drill floor in the North Slope oil and gas sector.

 Robert Shomler also worked previously on the North Slope. A lifelong Alaskan himself, Shomler worked as a mechanic on facility maintenance with the oil field supply company Coville.

MTA

MTA promoted Jenna Deason to Sales Trainer, coaching the sales team on product updates. Deason has been in MTA’s marketing department for three years, focusing on brand consistency and customer communications. Deason earned a bachelor’s degree in mass communications and new media from Colorado State University Pueblo and a master’s degree in digital audience strategy from Arizona State University.

Baker

Prieksat

Rhoades

Moody

Rodman

Smith

Shomler Deason

ALASKA TRENDS

Mining , like most other industries, bounced back in 2021 compared to the year before. According to the annual Economic Benefits of Alaska’s Mining Industry report compiled for the Alaska Miners Association (AMA) by McKinley Research Group, employment averaged 5,400 workers throughout the year, up by 700 compared to 2020. That’s the equivalent of adding an entire Pogo or Red Dog mine except, of course, the number of major mines remained steady.

Projects in the permitting or development stage, years in the works, are nearly a reality. When, for instance, Donlin Gold begins operations, the open pit mine would employ an estimated 1,000 workers. That would be like plopping a brand-new Alaska Railroad or Alyeska Resort into the state’s economic landscape. Smaller prospects, like Graphite Creek

ALASKA HOLDS:

12% of the world's coal (2nd globally)

3% of the world's zinc (8th globally)

3.5% of the world's gold (10th globally)

1.6% of the world's lead (10th globally)

or Livengood, are each on the scale of adding a Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport or every Subway restaurant in the state, in terms of workforce.

Projects closest to production are the top of a much bigger untapped mineral resource. For example, the US Geological Survey (USGS) estimated in 2004 that Alaska has 40 percent more coal (measured, indicated, inferred, and hypothetical) than the Lower 48. The North Slope alone may be richer in coal than in oil or natural gas, with up to one-third of the US reserve of high quality bituminous and sub-bituminous coal thought to lie beneath the region.

This installment of Alaska Trends picks and polishes data from the AMA report. Let’s dig in.

$2.1B in Exports

In 2021, mineral & ore exports totaled $2.1B.

$985M in Wages

In 2021, the mining industry paid $985M in direct, indirect, and induced wages.

$393M in Capital

Nine mining projects in Alaska invested $393M in sustaining capital.

$170M in Exploration

Spending on mineral exploration totaled $170M in 2021. Since 1981, spending totaled $4.2B.

Top 5 Minerals

Zinc is 51% of mineral production value in Alaska, followed by gold (37%), silver (7%), lead (3%), and coal (2%).

Critical Masses

Of 50 significant exploration projects in Alaska, 7 involve minerals are listed as “critical” by the USGS for domestic manufacturing.

Source: 2022 Economic Benefits of Alaska’s Mining Industry report prepared by McKinley Group

6 lbs zinc to make paint, rubber, skin creams, rust resistant metals, and for use in nutrition and healthcare annually

AT A GLANCE

What book is currently on your nightstand?

I don’t have time for books, but I do subscribe to The New Yorker, and I like to read the poetry first.

What charity or cause are you passionate about?

I am always concerned about shelter, especially shelter for abused women.

What’s the first thing you do when you get home after a long day at work?

Unfortunately, I head for the refrigerator [she laughs]

What vacation spot is on your bucket list?

Nagasaki… the home of Puccini where he wrote Madame Butterfly, which is of course one of my favorite operas.

If you could domesticate a wild animal, what animal would it be?

Hmm. I guess I should probably say, because I live in Alaska, a moose, a bear, or a caribou—but that probably wouldn’t be my first choice.

Photo Arts by Janna

Connie Yoshimura

Improbably, Connie Yoshimura parlayed an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop into a career finding homes for Alaskans. The owner of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Alaska Realty learned to close a deal before she ever sold a house, beginning as a waitress. “I would try to figure out what was good in the kitchen that night,” Yoshimura recalls, “and then I would try to figure out what the customers might enjoy. If I could put those two together, then I got a larger gratuity.”

As the daughter of a Japanese-American father, she grew up with her Caucasian mother and stepfather, always feeling out of place. “When you feel different, you work harder,” she says. “You try to make a place for yourself.”

Yoshimura came to Alaska to earn enough money to live as a poet, yet she ended up becoming a prominent local realtor. “I have found that real estate is every bit as creative as writing a poem,” she says. After brokering home sales in the ‘80s, by the ‘90s she started developing properties through her CY Investments, creating subdivisions like Sandhill Reserve in Sand Lake.

By making places for others, she's made a place for herself.

Alaska Business: What do you do in your free time?

Connie Yoshimura: I have a group of friends that I walk with. I like to do, on the weekends, at least 10,000 steps... And I have a neighborhood bridge group.

AB: What’s the most daring thing you’ve ever done?

Yoshimura: Lost 100 pounds. Twice… It’s scary to lose

weight because it changes others’ perception of you.

AB: What’s your favorite local restaurant?

Yoshimura: Peter’s Sushi Spot. I think they have the freshest fish, and if you’re going to eat sushi or sashimi, you want to make sure it’s fresh.

AB: Dead or alive, who would you like to see perform live in concert?

Yoshimura: Elvis in Las Vegas.

AB: What’s your best attribute and worst attribute?

Yoshimura: I would say I have a good quotient of emotional intelligence… [but] I consider myself an adequate manager. I’ve had to learn more about management. I consider myself now at a C+… I’m an only child and I’ve never raised children and I never participated in team sports, so I sort of lack the learning experiences you have when you have to relate as a mother or with siblings or on team sports… Management is a learned skill; it’s not intuitive for me because of my background.

AB: What’s your greatest extravagance?

Yoshimura: I like fashion, but I buy everything on sale.

AB: Is there a skill you’re currently developing or have always wanted to learn?

Yoshimura: I’ve had a couple of ideas for new poems, so I’m probably going to think about spending a little more time doing that.

Afognak Leasing, LLC ........ 119, 121 afognakleasing.com

Airport Equipment Rentals ........ 131 airportequipmentrentals.com

Alaska Communications Systems 3 acsalaska.com

Alaska Dreams Inc 110

Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA) 71 aidea.org

Alaska Railroad 55 akrr.com

Alaska School Activities Association 53 asaa.org

Alaska Traffic Company 101 alaskatraffic.com

Altman, Rogers & Co. 31 altrogco.com

Anchorage Chrysler Dodge 43 accak.com

Anchorage Sand & Gravel 42 anchsand.com

Arctic Information Technology .................................. 25 arcticit.com

ASRC Construction ..................... 95 asrcconstruction.com

AT&T ............................................... 9 att.com

Carlile Transportation Systems ........................................ 47 carlile.biz

Central Environmental Inc .......... 88 cei-alaska.com

Coffman Engineers ..................... 55 coffman.com

Conam Construction Co .......... 103 conamco.com

ConocoPhillips ............................ 91 alaska.conocophillips.com

Conrad-Houston Insurance Agency 57 chialaska.com

Construction Machinery Industrial 2 cmiak.com

Cook Inlet Tug & Barge Inc ......... 95 cookinlettug.com

Credit Union 1 21 cu1.org

Crowley Fuels .............................. 29 crowley.com

Cruz Companies 67 cruzconstruct.com

Delta Industrial Services Fairbanks, LLC .............................. 53 deltaindustrial.com

Dewberry 73 dewberry.com

Donlin Gold ................................. 72 donlingold.com

Dorsey & Whitney LLP 63 dorsey.com

Equipment Source, Inc .............. 113 esialaska.com

First National Bank Alaska ............. 5 fnbalaska.com

Fountainhead Development 51 fountainheadhotels.com

GCI ............................................... 49 gci.com

Hecla Greens Creek Mining Company 77 hecla-mining.com

Hoffman Consulting.................... 89 hoffmanready.com

Holmes Weddle & Barcott 31 hwb-law.com

Kiewit Infrastructure West Co. .. 109 kiewit.com

Lynden 132 lynden.com

Material Flow & Conveyor Systems, Inc. 111 materialflow.com

Matson Inc. .................................. 99 matson.com

MT Housing Inc. ........................ 117 mthousing.net

Nenana Heating Services, Inc ..... 77 nenanaheatingservicesinc.com

New Horizons Telecom, Inc. ...... 83 nhtiusa.com

Nortech Environmental & Engineering 62 nortechengr.com

Northern Air Cargo 124, 125 nac.aero

Northrim Bank 35 northrim.com

NorthStar Supply LLC 64 nssalaska.com

NOVAGOLD 61 novagold.com

Nu Flow Alaska 120 nuflowalaska.com

Oxford Assaying & Refining Inc 105 oxfordmetals.com

Pacific Dataport 23 pacificdataport.com/oneweb

Pacific Pile & Marine 123 pacificpile.com

Pacific Seafood Processors Association .................................. 97 pspafish.net

Parker, Smith & Feek .................... 45 psfinc.com

Personnel Plus Employment Agency ......................................... 87 perplus.com

Petro Marine Services.................. 79 petromarineservices.com

PND Engineers Inc. ..................... 41 pendengineers.com

Providence Health & Services Alaska ........................................... 85 providence.org

Quintillion 27 quintillionglobal.com

R & M Consultants Inc. 81 rmconsult.com

Resolve Marine ............................ 66 resolvemarine.com

Resource Development Council......................................... 15 akrdc.org

RESPEC 65 respec.com

Samson Tug & Barge ................... 97 samsontug.com

SES Government Solutions 37 ses-gs.com

SmithCo Side Dump Trailers 17 sidedump.com

Stellar Designs Inc ....................... 87 stellar-designs.com Subway of Alaska 11 subwayak.com

T. Rowe Price 7 alaska529plan.com

Teamsters Local 959 ................... 33 akteamsters.com

Teck Alaska Incorporated 69 teck.com

The Plans Room 81 theplansroom.com

Tutka, LLC .................................... 13 tutkallc.com

UA Local 375 Plumbers & Pipefitters 75 ualocal375.org

UAF eCampus .............................. 12 ecampus.uaf.edu

United Way of Anchorage ........... 39 liveunitedanc.org

University of Alaska 18, 19 alaska.edu

Usibelli Coal Mine ........................ 59 usibelli.com

West-Mark Service Center ........ 103 west-mark.com

Yukon Equipment Inc 107 yukoneq.com

Thank You Alaska!

Thank you to our friends, neighbors, and valued customers for your ongoing support and partnership, and special thanks to each of our dedicated employees for their continued care, expertise, and ingenuity as we all work together to keep Alaska moving. We look forward to continuing to serve our communities by providing multi-modal transportation and logistics solutions across the entire state!