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P E N I N S U L A
Vol. 50, Issue 74
In the news
Ice jam triggers flooding, road closures An ice jam in the Kenai River caused water to flow in a Soldotna neighborhood Monday afternoon, triggering a flood warning and road closures. The ice jam is causing flooding on the south side of the Kenai River in the Riverside Drive subdivision, the flood warning from the National Weather Service said. As of Monday morning, the water was flowing over Riverside Lane and Eddy Lane near Soldotna. The Kenai Peninsula Borough responded to the flooding Monday morning, which was reported near the Big Eddy State Recreation Site, Dan Nelson, emergency manager for the borough, said. Vehicle access is not possible past Amiyung Court on Eddy Lane, Nelson said, and impassable roads have been barricaded. The borough is encouraging residents to travel safe and to not drive down closed roads. Nelson said residents in affected areas have been checked on and are safe. There are no reports of flooding across the river in the Ciechanski Day Use Area and the Ciechanski Road Subdivision, which the borough surveyed Monday afternoon. Nelson said there isn’t a whole lot the borough can do, but the staff is monitoring the situation. With continued cold temperatures in the forecast, Nelson said he expects the situation to remain static.
New limits set on individual alcohol possession BETHEL — New laws limiting the amount of alcohol that can be legally possessed took effect in a southwest Alaska community. The new rules went into effect Monday, two days after the city’s only liquor store was set to close, KYUK-AM reported. Under the rules, a person of legal drinking age cannot possess more than 10.5 liters of distilled spirits, 6.3 gallons of wine or either 12 gallons of beer or a half keg of beer, which holds 15.5 gallons. Luggage flown into Bethel will need to be See news, Page A2
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Tuesday, January 7, 2020 • Kenai Peninsula, Alaska
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Report: 2020 job trends modest By Victoria Petersen Peninsula Clarion
A new report predicts the state and borough are expected to see small and slow job growth into 2020. The state is anticipating more growth this year than during the recession of the previous three, but at a slower rate of 0.3% — or about 1,100 new jobs, according to Alaska Economic Trends, a January research analysis from the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development. In 2019, Alaska added roughly
1,600 jobs. During the recession of the three prior years, the state lost more than 11,000 jobs. Many of the jobs are expected to be in the military with a wave of new personnel at Eielson Air Force Base in Fairbanks and in the tourism industry, due to expected increases in cruise ship visitors. According to the report, the Kenai Peninsula Borough, the Valdez and Cordova census area and Kodiak Island — categorized by the state as the Gulf Coast Region — saw a 0.7% See trends, Page A3
Beth J. Harpaz / Associated Press file
Royal Caribbean’s “Radiance of the Seas” is docked in Seward on Sept. 7, 2007.
Bolton willing to testify at trial Study sees
value in dead yellow cedar trees By Peter Segall Juneau Empire
Democrats are seeking. Pelosi did not provide any clues about her next steps Monday. But in a tweet she said Trump and McConnell have “run out of excuses” for not calling witnesses or producing documents that Trump has blocked. Trump told Rush Limbaugh on his radio show that the whole process is “sad for our country” and suggested that Pelosi doesn’t want a trial. “She doesn’t want to get a vote because how could anybody possibly — it’s totally partisan,” Trump said. Bolton’s testimony would inject an element of unpredictability to an impeachment trial that is widely expected to end with Trump’s acquittal. He clashed with Trump while working at the White House, and the two men offered differing versions of whether he resigned or was fired when he left office. Should he testify, Bolton would almost certainly be asked about a comment he is said to have made that he did not want to be “part of whatever drug deal” European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland and White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney were “cooking up” as Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Democrats. That pressure, as Trump was withholding security aid to Ukraine, was at the heart of the inquiry in the House, which voted to impeach Trump on Dec. 18.
As warming temperatures in Southeast Alaska continue to kill off more and more yellow cedar, a group of researchers see an opportunity for logging the dead wood. A new study from the Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center and the University of Alaska Southeast looked into the viability of harvesting the growing numbers of dead yellow cedar trees. “We went into this project because we know there were these stands of dead wood,” said Allison Bidlack, director of the ACRC. “If you wait much later, you get past 30, 40 years, the wood properties start to degrade.” Bidlack and her team wanted to look at whether harvesting these dead trees could be a profitable enterprise for small mill operators in Southeast Alaska. The answer, according to the study, is a highly qualified yes. Dead cedar can still be a high enough quality to bring to market, but the main problem is accessing it, the study says. “Yellow-cedar usually represents a small percentage of a timber stand’s total volume, many stands that look promising for salvage at first glance are actually made up of widely scattered trees and are not practical sites for efficient harvesting,” the study says. There are a number of other impediments to harvesting cedar, such as equipment and mill processing, but the researchers believe the wood presents an economic opportunity. Bidlack and her colleagues worked with the U.S. Forest Service and five mill operators in Southeast to determine the viability of dead yellow cedar harvest. “They were or already had been working with dead yellow cedar,” Bidlack said. “They had had varying experience. The longer the tree’s been dead, the more difficult it can be to work with it. Most of them would like to work with it because it’s valuable.” Yellow cedar is an attractive wood for lumber harvest because of its high resilience, according to Wes Tyler, co-owner of Icy Straits Lumber in
See bolton, Page A3
See cedar, Page A3
J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press
Demonstrators gather Monday in the Senate Hart Office Building on Capitol Hill to call for President Donald Trump’s removal from office.
By Zeke Miller, Mary Clare Jalonick and Eric Tucker Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Former White House national security adviser John Bolton said he is “prepared to testify” if he is subpoenaed by the Senate in its impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, a surprise statement that bolstered Democrats in their push for new witnesses. Bolton, who left the White House in September, said Monday that he has weighed the issues of executive privilege and after “careful consideration and study” decided that he would comply with any Senate subpoena. “If the Senate issues a subpoena for my testimony, I am prepared to testify,” he said. If Bolton were to appear, he could provide a first-hand account of events central to the impeachment case against the president. As a senior adviser, he was present for key moments that were investigated in the House’s impeachment inquiry, including meetings with Ukrainian officials. His willingness to comply with a subpoena could complicate the strategy of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has expressed resistance to calling new witnesses. Bolton left a message for McConnell before he issued his statement on Monday morning, a person familiar
Associated Press file
Former National Security Adviser John Bolton
with the matter confirmed to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because he or she wasn’t authorized to speak publicly. McConnell has called for a swift impeachment trial, with a possible final vote after opening arguments. He has repeatedly referred to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, when leaders decided how to proceed after the trial had started. In that case, witnesses gave closed-door depositions and some excerpts of those interviews were played on the Senate floor. “The Senate has a unanimous bipartisan precedent for when to handle mid-trial questions such as witnesses — in the middle of the trial,” McConnell said as he opened the Senate on Monday. First, though, the Senate must receive the articles of impeachment. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has stalled the transmission of Housepassed articles against Trump in a bid for the witness testimony that
Clam digging on east side of Cook Inlet closed By Victoria Petersen Peninsula Clarion
In 2020, clam diggers will once again have to take their buckets and shovels to beaches on the west side of Cook Inlet. All east side Cook Inlet beaches, from the mouth of the Kenai River to the southernmost tip of the Homer Spit, are closed to harvesting clams
of all species, an emergency order issued Jan. 2 by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said. The emergency order is valid for the rest of 2020. This is the eighth consecutive year that Cook Inlet beach razor clam sport fishery has been restricted or closed by emergency order because any clam harvest would likely delay recovery of the population.
In 2019, razor clam studies conducted on sections of beach near Ninilchik and Clam Gulch showed that adult abundance of razor clams did not improve and remained below average at all beaches. Causes of the decline in razor clam abundance remains unknown, but may include a combination of heavy surf, habitat changes, environmental stressors
and predation, the emergency order said. East side Cook Inlet razor clam populations are rebuilding, but it is uncertain if the trend will continue into 2020. More studies on razor clams will take place in the spring. This closure does not affect sport razor clam regulations on west side Cook Inlet beaches.