Donlin Gold final EIS due out soon The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it will publish its Final Environmental Impact Statement for the big Donlin Gold project in April, so the FEIS could come out any day. The large gold deposit is near the mid-Kuskokwim River south of McGrath. A federal Record of Decision approving the document will follow the FEIS in about 120 days. The nal step would be for the owners, Barrick Gold and NovaGold Resources, to…
Mat-Su to nalize timber contract The Matanuska-Susitna Borough is finalizing a timber harvesting agreement with Denali Timber Management, a Washington state company, to harvest trees on a 24,000-acre tract of spruce and birch forest on borough land about 30 miles northwest of Willow. The borough assembly approved the plan. Denali Timber would harvest the timber and transport it by truck to Port MacKenzie, the borough’s commodity port, where a partner, TPT Forest Products, Ltd., a New Zealand company, would coordinate…
Fairbanks under the gun on PM 2.5 particulates; emissions control State Dept. of Environmental Conservation officials laid out a tough scenario for Fairbanks in meeting “PM 2.5” harmful particulate air quality standards. It includes a possible $54 million in modi cations to install chimney stack filters in ve power plants in the area along with other requirements like registration of home heating units, sharp limits on wood stoves and a requirement to use ultra-low sulfur (ULS) diesel for home heating….
Chugach Electric Association led a long-anticipated set of “railbelt” grid electrical reliability standards with the Regulatory Commission of Alaska on behalf of itself and other utilities on the grid. The standards are technical and specify how power can be safely and efficiently shared among the utilities. From Northrim Bank’s latest survey More statewide economic data – 2017 small gains over 2016 Small dip in Anchorage home sales; increase in Fairbanks Multiple Listing Service data shows 2,799 single-family homes sold in…
SEARHC, Wrangell Medical Center Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, the regional tribal health consortium, has agreed to take over management including financial responsibility for Wrangell Medical Center, the economically-stressed city hospital in that Southeast community. The city and SEARHC are working toward a purchase of the WMC with a target of June for a deal. The city-owned facility has been hard hit by reduced Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements. SEARHC took over Wrangell’s Alaska Islands Community Services clinic earlier.
More oil discovered on North Slope ConocoPhillips says it found oil in all six test North Slope wells drilled this winter. Three were delineation wells around the company’s Willow discovery in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska which reinforced ConocoPhillips’ estimate that Willow holds 300 million barrels of recoverable oil. The other three were exploration wells, one drilled west of Willow in NPR-A and the other two near the Colville River near where Armstrong Oil and Gas made a discovery. ConocoPhillips now…
2018 will be a low year for salmon State officials are projecting a drop in the 2018 salmon harvest, with 149 million sh compared with 224 million in 2017. Most of the decline is in pink salmon, estimated at a 70 million sh harvest or half of last year. Pinks run in a two-year cycle and 2018 is an off-year. The sockeye salmon harvest is projected at 52 million, down 1.8 million from last year. Sockeyes have a higher value…
Alaska Railroad back in the black Alaska Railroad Corp. earned a $22.4 million pro t in 2017 after a loss in 2016, the state-owned railroad corporation said. Overall revenue was up 13 percent while expenses were trimmed 3 percent. Since 2008 the railroad has cut 300 positions including 47 in 2017 to deal with a decline in freight shipments. Strong passenger growth, was a major factor in the 2017 increase in revenues, with 506,000 passengers riding the trains. This is…
The cost of fiscal uncertainty: Investment losses As the state Legislature moves with agonizing slowness toward a major restructuring of state finances and fiscal policy, business leaders have pointed out that the uncertainty creates a hesitation to invest. Some sectors of the economy are relatively stable but the instability of the state’s finances affects them as well. No one has tallied what this might be, however. Now, Mouhcine Guettabi, economist at the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the…
There seems to be a deal coming together on SB 26, the bill that sets a percent-of-market-draw, or POMV, in statue as a rule for using Permanent Fund earnings to support the state budget. This is the remaining big issue of the 2018 session and if an agreement is made in the next couple of days a rush to adjournment could begin. An adjournment push should happen even if the deal does not come together, too. Word has been circulating in…