Alaska News Saturday Night, November 7, 2026

On Friday, the federal government updated its paperwork on an earthquake. The one from November twenty eighteen. From the Last Frontier, this is Alaska News Saturday Night. This was a week of paperwork outlasting everything else: an earthquake still open in the files, a pipeline whose start slid, planning documents nobody can find. Meanwhile it has been warmer than usual all over the state, and wet in Southeast.

0:27Kodiak weighs borrowing up to $10 million more to replace its main sewage pump station

Kodiak has a sewage pump station called Lift Station 5. It is the big one. The city's project manager told the council in September that eighty percent of Kodiak's sewage goes through it on the way to the treatment plant. It was built in the mid-1970s, and the council packet says the pumps and controls have reached the end of their design life. About twenty years ago a pipe from that station broke and sent sewage straight into Mission Lake. So under a state compliance order, Kodiak agreed to replace the station by the end of twenty twenty-seven. The city put the job out to bid. One bid came back. Sixteen point three million dollars, from Brechan Construction, against an engineer's estimate of about seven. And this is the second try. In twenty twenty-three the first round brought a bid of seventeen point seven million, against an estimate of about seven, and the city rejected it, split the project in two, and went again. Two rounds. Both bids more than double. At some point you start to wonder which number is the odd one out. A staff report has a guess, and the guess is about thirty-five feet down. The new station needs a deep hole in a tight spot next to the lake, and the shoring to hold the dirt back, staff wrote, may not have been fully appreciated in the estimate. So on Thursday the council votes on asking the state's clean water fund to raise the loan limit from seven point four million to seventeen point four. The interim city manager, Tim Putney, wrote to the council that the deadline might slide, but, quote, we have no other choice but to complete this project. That is the most honest sentence anyone has ever written about a sewer. The loan gets paid back out of sewer revenue, not the city's taxing power. So Kodiak will pay for the station the same way it uses it. Every day. The city has also already bought a factory-built dry well for the new station, about two million dollars, and it arrived last month. It is in Kodiak now. Waiting for a hole.

2:27Assembly chair drafts ordinance to cut 24 of Anchorage's 51 comprehensive plan documents

In Anchorage, Assembly Chair Anna Brawley went to the Planning and Zoning Commission on Monday with a suitcase. In the suitcase was almost the entire comprehensive plan. And she told the commission, quote, I want to demonstrate it is full of paper. This is not a joke. I believe her. Nobody packs a suitcase of land use plans for a laugh. The comprehensive plan is fifty-one documents. Brawley says every one of them counts the same, so when an old plan and a new plan disagree, the city has to reckon with both. Girdwood has a plan from nineteen ninety-four and a new one adopted in twenty twenty-five, and both are still on the books. Spenard has three. A district plan from twenty twelve, a citywide land use plan from twenty seventeen, and a corridor plan from twenty twenty. If you want to build something in Spenard, you... well, somebody at the city has to read all three and work out which one wins. Brawley called it, quote, an elaborate trap. Then it gets better. Brawley had fifteen of the documents reprinted for the suitcase. Eight more, she said, apparently no longer exist in any copy the city can find. Not on paper. Not on a computer. And she asked the commission, quote, how are we supposed to refer to those if they don't legally exist? So by the Assembly chair's account, part of the rulebook for what gets built where in Anchorage is eight documents nobody can produce. Somewhere in the Planning Department there is an empty spot on a shelf, and it has legal authority. Her answer is a draft ordinance, which she plans to introduce at the Assembly on November seventeenth, to repeal twenty-four of the fifty-one. She looked for documents more than thirty years old that were never amended, or ones a newer plan already covers. The city's long range planning manager told the commission that a neighborhood plan costs about three hundred thousand dollars and takes about five years. Brawley told commissioners this conversation will not be resolved quickly. For a city where one plan takes five years, that is a forecast, not a figure of speech.

4:30Nearly eight years after the quake, FEMA is still funding Anchorage school repairs

On Friday, FEMA updated its funding for an Anchorage School District repair project. The repairs are from the earthquake. The November twenty eighteen earthquake. Nearly eight years ago. According to FEMA's records, the agency has funded thirty-two quake projects for the district and committed forty-one point seven million dollars. Seven of those projects are closed. Twenty-five are still open. A district official told the school board last month that most buildings did really well, except Gruening and Eagle River, and he called the repairs that followed an eight-year process. He is not wrong about the number. The project FEMA touched on Friday is now waiting on closeout, which is FEMA's final accounting. And a disaster is not closed out until every project is. Across Anchorage, Mat-Su and the Kenai Peninsula, eighty-five quake projects are still open. So as far as the federal government is concerned, the 2018 earthquake is still going. It just moved indoors. To a filing cabinet. In fairness, some of the money went to making schools stronger, not just fixing them. FEMA paid for seismic evaluations after the quake and a grant to design structural upgrades at Klatt Elementary. So the district is getting ready for the next one while still closing the books on the last one. FEMA did recently close out quake repairs at two state parks in Mat-Su.

5:56Alaska LNG's first construction work moves to 2027 after a planned April start passes

The parks are over it. Alaska LNG. In February, the company developing the pipeline, 8 Star Alaska, told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that the first construction was, quote, currently expected to be April fifteenth, twenty twenty-six. Not pipe. The early works. Gravel pits, pads for work camps, yards to store pipe along the eight hundred mile route from the North Slope to Nikiski. In June, company president Adam Prestidge told the commission the plan was to start during the 2026 field season. On Thursday the company filed its monthly status report, and the October section says, quote, no onsite construction was performed. For this month it lists planning and field surveys. Meanwhile, in an October letter to the state, the company says civil contractors will mobilize in twenty twenty-seven. The filings do not call that a delay. They do not give a reason. They just have a different year in them now. The gravel has been ready the whole time. The company's latest report to the U.S. Department of Energy still targets finishing the pipeline in twenty twenty-eight and first gas in twenty twenty-nine, and the filings do not say whether a later start changes that. So by the company's own paperwork, the gravel pits start in twenty twenty-seven and the pipeline is done in twenty twenty-eight. I am not saying it can't happen. I'm saying I'd like to see the gravel. The list of early work sites got shorter, too. Seventy-seven access roads dropped out of the company's table, even though the letter still lists access roads among the planned work. So the roads are in the letter and missing from the table. Anchorage has the opposite problem. And the state Department of Natural Resources is proposing to turn the project's conditional pipeline leases into full leases, which would not let construction start. Hearings are November twenty-third online and November twenty-fourth in Anchorage. That is the week. Up next is North of Normal, with Maggie and Bill.

7:59AIDEA board approves up to $10 million stake in Augustine volcano geothermal project

Thanks, Walter. AIDEA's board has approved up to ten million dollars for a stake in a company that wants to make electricity from the heat under Augustine Island, an active volcano in Cook Inlet. The price, and how much of the company the state would own, will be negotiated later. Later. According to the company's own slides, Augustine erupts about once every thirty years. Nothing calms a bond buyer like the phrase active volcano,

8:31Juneau draft resolution would round cash payments to the city to the nearest nickel

terms TBD. Juneau's bank no longer supplies rolled pennies, according to a memo from the city's finance director. Not pennies. Rolled pennies. A draft resolution before the Assembly's finance committee Wednesday would round cash payments to the city to the nearest nickel. Under the draft, pay by card and you still owe every cent. The penny is optional unless you are on plastic.

8:57North Pole raises resident ambulance discount to 25% for calls inside city limits

The North Pole City Council voted seven to nothing to raise the ambulance discount for city residents from ten percent to twenty-five, so last month's fee hike won't reach them. The ordinance was introduced by Council member Santa Claus. Council member Santa Claus. Finally, a politician whose constituent gifts are not just campaign pens.

9:20Juneau planners to decide permit for Guardian Flight hangar already standing

Juneau's Planning Commission decides Tuesday whether to approve a hangar for Guardian Flight's medical jets. Whether. The hangar is already standing, and a note in the city's permit records says the foundation permit was mistakenly issued. The building filed a dissenting opinion by existing.

9:39Bethel parks committee to discuss a $1 fitness center fix projected to save $46,000 a year

An energy audit says Bethel's YK Fitness Center could save nearly forty-six thousand dollars a year by running its ventilation only during the hours the building is open. The audit lists the cost of that change at one dollar, because its software won't accept zero. The committee still has to discuss it. The dollar already did its job.

10:02Juneau's last budget year ended $8.6 million better than forecast, city slides show

Finance Department slides say Juneau ended its last budget year with eight point six million dollars more in savings than the Assembly expected. The figures are projections until the audit is done. According to the same slides, the city still spent thirteen million more than it took in. That is not good news. That is better bad news.

10:26St. Paul Island's new gas station is open 24/7 but no longer takes cash or checks

The city gas station on St. Paul Island is now open around the clock. Up from five hours on weekday afternoons. The new pumps take only debit and credit cards, and cash and checks are no longer accepted. The city lengthened the hours and shortened the list of things that count as money.

10:45Consultant's plan says Eaglecrest should publicly address its canceled gondola

A consultant's plan says Juneau's Eaglecrest Ski Area should explain publicly what happened with its canceled gondola. The plan calls the gondola a twelve point two million dollar write-off, at a ski area with about two million a year in revenue. Twelve point two million. Against two. At that rate the next capital project is a strongly worded brochure.

11:10Alaska sets March exams for big game guide-outfitters, with applications due Nov. 16

Finally, a state application that knows what it wants. To qualify as a registered guide-outfitter, you need eight favorable written recommendations from hunters you personally guided, and a video of yourself caping a big game animal. Applications for the March exams are due November sixteenth. Caping means skinning out the head and neck for a trophy mount. References for the people skills.

11:38Whittier harbor's new meters produced $7,000 bills and its new floats cracked

Video for the part where people skills are over. Whittier's harbor got new concrete floats, and the floats began cracking last winter. It also got new wireless power meters, and the harbormaster told the city council the meters read so badly that some folks had seven thousand dollar power bills. Seven thousand, says the harbormaster. At that rate the shore power is the most expensive thing in the slip.

12:02Self-driving cars are coming to Alaska to practice in the snow

Waymo says it will test its self-driving cars in Alaska's snow this winter. Governor Mike Dunleavy wrote that there is no better proving ground for winter driving than Fairbanks. Fairbanks, which gets three hours and forty-two minutes of daylight on the solstice. The car will need good tires and lower expectations.

12:24Week Ahead

That's the desk. Here's the week ahead. Monday, the federal comment period closes on the proposed rule and draft environmental review for oil and gas permitting in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. North Slope development touches state revenue, jobs and North Slope communities, and anyone in the state can still weigh in. Friday, absentee ballots mailed from inside the U.S. have to arrive to count in the general election. Close races may not settle until they're counted. So a few of Alaska's closest races are, right now, riding in a mail bag. Kodiak's dry well is still waiting for a hole, and this was Alaska News Saturday Night. Join us next weekend, Alaska News dot com.