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Fairbanks EPA clean energy loans The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has given the Fairbanks North Star Borough a $4 million grant to help local homeowners nance a change out of old wood stoves for more efficient, less-polluting wood furnaces. EPA gave the borough $2.5 million last year for the same purpose. Fairbanks has serious winter air pollution problems aggravated by the local use of wood for home heating. *** Low water slows Southeast hydro A low northern Lynn Canal snowpack and…

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Strong zinc prices drove revenues and profits up for Teck Alaska at the Red Dog Mine north of Kotzebue, according to Teck’s rst quarter nan- cial statistics. Revenues were up to C$336 million (Canadian) for the quarter, compared with revenues of C$246 million in first quarter 2017; pro ts were up to C$181 million in the quarter compared with C$121 million for the same period of 2017, and royalties paid to NANA Regional Corp., the land-owner, were C$84 million compared…

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Legislature takes big step in closing fiscal gap 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. The Legislature adjourned its 2018 session May 12 and took two big steps in resolving the state’s structural scal gap, a problem…

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At the end, it happened fast. The conference committee on SB 26 convened at 9 a.m. May 8, voted and sent the bill out eight minutes later. A few hours later both the House and Senate ratified the conference committee report, sending SB 26 on to the governor. After a year of agony and sniping over the proposal to use some of the Permanent Fund earnings for the budget the quick resolution seemed anticlimactic. But that’s the way these things…

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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…

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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…

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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….

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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…

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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…

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