Heating help is going up this winter for remote Aleut communities, after a proposed cut was reversed

Low-income households in 10 Aleutian and Pribilof communities will get more help heating their homes this winter — a roughly 40 percent increase — after the Aleut people's tribal organization won additional state funding and reversed a cut it had proposed just weeks earlier.

The Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association, the federally recognized tribal organization of the Unangan (Aleut) people, administers federal heating assistance across the region. It has raised the value it pays out under the program, meaning a household that received $625 last winter would get $875 this season if its income and size stay the same, and larger awards rise proportionally.

The increase undoes a reduction APIA had floated in mid-July, when it proposed cutting the payout to stretch limited money across all the households expected to apply. At the time, APIA said it would restore the higher amount if more funding came through — and the state has since agreed to increase the region's share of the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, the program that helps low-income families cover winter heating.

Heating fuel in these communities is among the most expensive in the country, and getting more so. Alaska News has reported fuel reaching $7.55 a gallon on St. Paul Island, and the Alaska Municipal League has estimated community energy costs across the region rising 30 to 50 percent.

More federal money may be coming, too. U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan announced an additional $10 million in federal heating-assistance funds for Alaska, on top of the state's existing allocation, to be distributed in September based on applications already on file.

APIA administers the program in Akutan, Atka, False Pass, King Cove, Nelson Lagoon, Nikolski, Sand Point, St. George, St. Paul and Unalaska. It will begin taking applications from elders on Nov. 2 and from all other households on Nov. 16, though both dates depend on federal funding it has not yet received.