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P E N I N S U L A
Tuesday, September 4, 2018 Kenai Peninsula, Alaska
Vol. 48, Issue 289
In the news Australia-based company to gain control of Fairbanks mine FAIRBANKS — Ownership of a large gold mine southeast of Fairbanks is being transferred to an Australia-based gold mining company. Japan-based Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. and Sumitomo Corp. are transferring full ownership of the underground mine in Delta Junction to Northern Star Resources Ltd., receiving $260 million in compensation for the transfer, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported last week. The companies have agreed to the deal that’s expected to go through in October, the companies said in a joint statement. “By investing in exploration and development, we are confident we can grow the inventory, production and mine life for the benefit of the mine’s employees, contractors, the local community and our shareholders,” said Bill Beament, the executive chairman of Northern Star. The mine produces about 300,000 ounces (8,500 kilograms) of gold each year, resulting in more than 3.8 million ounces (108,000 kilograms) mined since opening in 2006. It employs 320 direct workers and about 150 contractors. The mine’s current life expectancy runs through 2020. Northern Star is planning to invest in a “targeted intensive drilling program” to extend the mine’s life, according to company documents.
Juneau plans to replace diesel bus fleet with electric JUNEAU — Juneau officials say the city is planning to replace its fleet of diesel buses with electric buses over the next decade. KTOO Public Media in Juneau reports the city and borough is planning to help fund the purchase of the electric bus and charging equipment through a recently awarded $1.5 million federal grant. An electric bus the city is buying from Proterra is expected to be put into service by late next year. Another electric bus is expected to be into use in 2022. Capital Transit Superintendent Ed Foster says electric buses cost about twice as much as diesel buses, but the cost will be offset with the grant funding. — Associated Press
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As Kachemak Selo school ages, board officials, community discuss solutions By MEGAN PACER Homer News
It’s a problem that’s been slowly growing for decades. It’s a problem that’s not going to be cheap to solve. And it’s a problem the Kenai Peninsula Borough can no longer afford to ignore, according to borough government, school district and legislative representatives. Kachemak Selo needs a new school. Last Thursday during a community meeting, those representatives and local parents and teachers filled one of the larger rooms of Kachemak Selo School’s middle-high school building, situated more or less in the center of the Russian Old Believer village 30 miles east of Homer at the head of Kachemak Bay. The attendees included Borough Mayor Charlie Pierce, Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Superintendent Sean Dusek, the southern peninsula’s two Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly representatives Kelly Cooper and Willy Dunne, School Board member Zen Kelly, a former principal of the school and more. They were all there to talk about the state of a proposed project to build Kachemak Selo a new school, something the community has been working on for years and that the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development approved last year through a state grant program. The next step in the process is getting borough residents from Homer to Nikiski and
The Kachemak Selo Middle-High School building sits against a backdrop of the ridge separating the village from the Kenai Peninsula Borough road system Thursday in Kachemak Selo. Borough representatives met at the school to answer questions and provide information about a proposed project to build a more consolidated school at a new site. Through a state grant program, the borough would kick in up to $5 million while receiving $10 million from the state. (Photo by Megan Pacer/Homer News)
Seward to vote for footing the bill — approximately $5.4 million in general obligation bonds to be paid back by the borough through property taxes. Because the entire borough backs the bond, all borough voters have to be asked for approval. The problem At least one of Kachemak Selo School’s three buildings was repurposed from a residential home. All three of the
buildings were only ever meant to be temporary school facilities, said Borough Assembly member Cooper, but have been in use for decades and are past their useful life, according to representatives of the school district. Feodora Reutov, 47, moved to the village when she was just 7, which means she’s been watching the buildings deteriorate over the last 40 years.
Reutov was there when members of the community physically dragged one of the two elementary school buildings across the village into its current position. She attended Kachemak Selo through high school, then put her five children through school in the same buildings. Now, two of her grandchildren will be educated in the same buildings as she was — buildings that are sub-
ject to periodic flooding, drafts in the winter and shifting with the ground. “It’s been dragging forever,” Reutov said of the process to get a new facility. “I would be so excited if they would start on the school.” Before the meeting last Thursday, elementary teacher Alana Greear gave Pierce and other representatives a short See K-SELO, page A6
Facebook adds Inupiaq language to translation tool By RACHEL D’ORO Associated Press
ANCHORAGE — Britt’Nee Brower grew up in a largely Inupiat Eskimo town in Alaska’s far north, but English was the only language spoken at home. Today, she knows a smattering of Inupiaq from childhood language classes at school in the community of Utqiagvik. Brower even published an Inupiaq coloring book last year featuring the names of common animals of the region. But she hopes to someday speak fluently by practicing her ancestral language in a daily, modern setting. The 29-year-old Anchorage woman has started to do just that with a new Inupiaq lan-
guage option that recently went live on Facebook for those who employ the social media giant’s community translation tool. Launched a decade ago, the tool has allowed users to translate bookmarks, action buttons and other functions in more than 100 languages around the globe. For now, Facebook is being translated into Inupiaq only on its website, not its app. “I was excited,” Brower says of her first time trying the feature, still a work in progress as Inupiaq words are slowly added. “I was thinking, ‘I’m going to have to bring out my Inupiaq dictionary so I can learn.’ So I did.” Facebook users can submit requests to translate the site’s
vast interface workings — the buttons that allow users to like, comment and navigate the site — into any language through crowdsourcing. With the interface tool, it’s the Facebook users who do the translating of words and short phrases. Words are confirmed through crowd up-and-down voting. Besides the Inupiaq option, Cherokee and Canada’s Inuktut are other indigenous languages in the process of being translated, according to Facebook spokeswoman Arielle Argyres. “It’s important to have these indigenous languages on the internet. Oftentimes they’re nowhere to be found,” she said. “So much is carried through language — tradition, culture — and so in the digital world,
US officials open public comment period on Alaska roadless rule JUNEAU (AP) — Trees soon may be cut down in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, and federal officials want the public’s input on the matter. A new rulemaking process for an Alaska—specific version of the Roadless Rule — which prevents timber harvest and the building of roads on 0.01 million square miles of roadless lands in southeast Alaska — is now open for public comment. A notice published last week in the Federal Register, the official journal of the federal government, opens the first official venue for the pub-
lic to voice its opinion on what opening up new land to timber harvest would mean for the region and the state, the Juneau Empire reported . “By working together, we can ensure that this rule helps provide more economic opportunity for Alaskans while sustaining the health, diversity and productivity of the Tongass National Forest,” Tongass Supervisor Earl Stewart said in a prepared statement. About 45 percent of the 0.03-million-square-mile Tongass National Forest isn’t open to timber harvest or the construction or reconstruction
of roads under the Roadless Rule. About 20 percent of that total is Congress-designated wilderness blocked from development even under a modified roadless rule. A new Roadless Rule just for Alaska hasn’t yet been written, but it’s intended to open up some of this land to timber harvest. Forest managers are shopping the idea in a series of seven public meetings. The first public meeting is scheduled for Sept. 13 in Juneau. The specific location has yet to be determined.
This Thursday, Aug. 23 photo shows a computer screen with Facebook’s new Inupiat Eskimo language option, which shows the Inupiaq word for home. (AP Photo/Rachel D’Oro)
being able to translate from that environment is really important.” The Inupiaq language is spoken in northern Alaska and
the Seward Peninsula. According to the University of Alaska Fairbanks, about 13,500 Inupiat live in the state, with about See TOOL, page A6
Sitka wildlife officials work to coax stray Steller sea lion ANCHORAGE (AP) — Wildlife officials came up with a new plan to try and coax a Steller sea lion back to the ocean after it had been shuffling through neighborhoods in Sitka since Friday. Officials were planning Sunday to construct a passageway of tarps and boards to keep the adult male sea lion from seeing people, hoping the blinds would put him at ease and direct him back to sea, the Anchorage Daily News reported . The sea lion was “hiding out in the woods” on Japonski Island on Sunday morning, said Julie Speegle, a spokeswoman with the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration. It was first spotted on a Sitka road Friday morning before waddling to various sites over the weekend. “At this point he’s likely stressed, dehydrated and hungry,” Speegle said. “And scared and frightened because of all the activity around him.” NOAA wildlife officials were working with Sitka police and firefighters to direct the animal away from people and back to the water. Some watched over him Saturday night, Speegle said. Officials have avoided tranquilizing the sea lion because an adult male can weigh up to 1,700 pounds, Speegle said.