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Graduation Marking the ‘lasts’ in a high school senior year Community/C1
Puck Bears get good support at scrimmage Sports/B1
CLARION P E N I N S U L A
September 9, 2018 Kenai Peninsula, Alaska
Vol. 48, Issue 293
$1 newsstands daily/$1.50 Sunday
Begich comes out for salmon measure By KEVIN GULLUFSEN Juneau Empire
Depending on who’s telling the tale, the Stand for Salmon ballot measure — up for a vote at the Nov. 6 general election — will either kill jobs or protect salmon habitat. Friday favored the measure’s supporters. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Begich announced his support on Friday for Ballot Measure 1, the same day Juneau residents spoke for the measure by a tally of 13-4 at public testimony at the Alaska Capitol.
At testimony, a plea to read Michael O’Brien, owner of O’Brien Gardens and Trees, and his daughter Michelle LaVigueur taste test some apples on their farm on Tuesday in Nikiski. (Photo by Victoria Petersen/Peninsula Clarion)
So much more than apples O’Brien Garden’s annual tasting event features the tastes of fall harvest By VICTORIA PETERSEN Peninsula Clarion
There are more than 7,500 varieties of apples, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Trying a new type of apple a day would take more than 20 years. But, Michael O’Brien has a head start. On his Nikiski farm, O’Brien Garden and Trees, he’s experimented with nearly 500 different varieties of apples. He grows the apples both outside and inside high tunnels. O’Brien doesn’t come from a farming
family, but he said he was born to do it. “I think I was just born into it — not that it’s been in my family for generations — it’s just something I’ve always been interested in, ever since I was really small,” O’Brien said. O’Brien was a master carpenter before he got his hands in the dirt. He started growing fruit trees in the ‘70s but moved to Nikiski shortly after to expand his property. In Nikiski, he built a homestead and a small orchard, which has now expanded to over 10 acres of orchards, fields and high tunnels. While they focus on apples, O’Brien
Garden and Trees grows a hefty list of fruits and vegetables, including pears, rhubarb, raspberries, gooseberries, ornamental trees, strawberries, red and black currants, blueberries, tomato, cucumber, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, beets, turnips, onions, garlic and much more. “We’re so far beyond apples at this point,” O’Brien said. “We haven’t done a very good job promoting that.” As a first-generation farmer, O’Brien said he likes to experiment with new plants and learn along the way. “The mistakes we’ve made are See TREES, page A2
About 20 people showed up for a weekday morning public testimony. Most spoke in support of the Ballot Measure 1, which would add language to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s permitting processes for development on anadromous habitat. Millions have been spent on both sides of the measure. Opposition group Stand for Alaska has raised over $9 million, mostly from mines and the oil and gas industry. Yes for Salmon, the group backing the bill, has raised $1,120,000. Lindsay Bloom, who spoke in support of the measure, advised against listening to the spin on either side. Misleading talking points and advertising campaigns are distracting voters from doing what they should, she said: read the eight-page measure themselves.
“The spin that you’re hearing, the $10 million worth of advertising that’s been purchased on your TVs, your radios, your internet, pretty much everywhere you look — please just remember where that’s coming from, who’s paying for it and use your hearts and your minds to make your careful, soulful, thoughtful decision about what matters to you,” she said. Retired fisheries biologist Roger Harding also spoke for the measure. He addressed the criticism that Ballot Measure 1 treats the entire state as fish habitat. The measure puts the onus on developers to prove that they’re not building on certain anadromous fish habitat (anadromous fish, like salmon, live in both fresh and salt water). Habitat managers in Alaska have to have “two fish in hand,” Harding said, to prove that a water body holds anadromous fish. He called that the “gold standard,” for proving a water body holds anadromous fish. But it’s costly. “As you can imagine, this takes a fair amount of time and effort to send people out in the field and collect, trap fish,” Harding said. Estimates vary, but about 50 percent of anadromous waters have been identified, Harding said. Much of the waters where biologists have two fish in hand are connected to water bodies that haven’t yet been studied. Instead of sending biologists See FISH, page A2
1 rescued from Lower Russian Lake by Fairbanks man’s Alaska Air National Guard in helicopter death goes One person was air-lifted from Lower Russian Lake by the Alaska Air National Guard and taken to Anchorage on Thursday. The Alaska State Troopers contacted the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center to respond to a “distressed” individual near Lower Russian Lake, a lake about 4 miles up the Russian Lakes trail near Cooper Landing. The Alaska Rescue Coordination Center tasked the Alaska Air National Guard with the response, according to a press release from the Alaska National
Guard’s Office of Public Affairs issued Friday. A Guardan Angel team — including a combat rescue officer and pararescueman — took off from Joint Base Elemendorf-Richardson in Anchorage in a HH-60G Hawk helicopter from 210th Rescue Squadron in response. The helicopter reached the person at the lake and flew to Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, according to the release. —Staff report
Today’s Clarion Weather Opinion.......................... A4 Nation............................ A5 World............................. A6 Personal Finance........... A7 Alaska............................ A9 Sports............................ B1 Community.................... C1 Events............................ C1 Dear Abby...................... C2 Crossword...................... C2 Horoscope..................... C2 Classifieds.................... C3 Mini Page....................... C6 Homes........................... D1
Some sun 64/41 More weather on page A10
Inside ‘In short, we are the Church, every bit as much as the cardinals and bishops around you.’ ... See page A5 Check us out online at www.peninsulaclarion.com To subscribe, call 283-3584.
unnoticed for years By MICHELLE THERIAULT BOOTS Anchorage Daily News
This June 2016 photo shows Lower Russian Lake on the Russian Lakes Trail near Cooper Landing. (Clarion file photo)
Recount shows Carpenter wins in District 29; Gillham mounts write-in campaign in District O After Wayne Ogle requested a recount of the House District 29 Republican party primary, candidate Ben Carpenter is confirmed as the winner of the narrow race, a press release from the office of the state’s lieutenant governor said. There was a difference of 11 votes after the State Ballot Counting Review Board and members of the State of Alaska Division of Elections recounted the votes. The original count showed a difference of 12 votes. In a contentious race for the District O seat, Sen. Peter Micciche won over Ron Gillham by 72 votes. Since the official election results were announced earlier this week, Gillham did confirm on Friday that he will launch a formal write-in campaign in the general election. “So many people have come to me to ask me to do a write-in campaign,” Gillham said. “So I decided to go ahead and do it.” —Victoria Petersen
ANCHORAGE — Neighbors figured the house had been abandoned, though some had a creeping feeling that might not be the case. At the end of May, the Fairbanks North Star Borough had taken the deed of a dilapidated cabin on Red Fox Drive, a neighborhood of well-kept homes on big parcels of birch forest near the University of Alaska. The property taxes hadn’t been paid for years. The property was owned by a man named Paul Pesika. Decades ago he had run a pioneering counseling nonprofit and worked for a powerful Fairbanks legislator in Juneau. Back then he was known as a charismatic outdoorsman with a wide circle of friends. They’d helped him build the cabin on his dream property on a hill above Fairbanks’ ice fog. But 30 years ago he had become a hermit. The other residents of Red Fox Drive, mostly professors and other professionals who worked for the university, saw him only in glimpses. The silver-haired man stopped emerging from his house to shovel the snow. A birch tree fell, blocking his driveway. The ancient silver Subaru he sometimes used to make midnight trips to the grocery store sat undisturbed. People wondered, in passing, what had become of Paul Pesika. This month, the truth came out: He hadn’t gone anywhere. Pesika had killed himself years ago in the little cabin, but no one had noticed.
Undiscovered
No one knows quite when Pesika died. Pesika stopped paying his property taxes in July 2014, according to the Fairbanks North Star Borough. The next month, he got his last delivery from the company that supplies water to homes without wells in the neighborhood. His vehicle registration expired around the same time. Roy Corral, an old friend and roommate who now lives in See DEATH, page A2