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P E N I N S U L A
Wednesday, August 15, 2018 Kenai Peninsula, Alaska
Vol. 48, Issue 272
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In the news Man charged with murder in brother’s shooting death ANCHORAGE (AP) — A 47-year-old Anchorage man has been taken into custody in the shooting death of his brother. Harry Steward was arrested on a second-degree murder warrant in the death Monday of 33-year-old Robert Steward. Harry Steward just before 12:30 p.m. Tuesday turned himself in at the Anchorage jail. Online court records do not list his attorney. Police responding to a report of a shooting early Monday night found Robert Steward dead inside a home on east 20th Avenue. Police earlier said two men in the same family had argued and one shot the other. Police were in phone contact with Harry Steward before he turned himself in.
Biologists survey invasive crawfish in Kodiak Island lake KODIAK (AP) — A team of biologists is surveying a lake on Kodiak Island for crawfish, an invasive species in Alaska that has been observed in higher frequency over past several years. The biologists working for the Sun’aq Tribe of Kodiak began the three-year project this spring, analyzing the distribution, movement and diet of crawfish in Buskin Lake, the Kodiak Daily Mirror reported Monday. Documentation of the crawfish began in 2002. Evidence appeared in 2015 indicating that the population was breeding, said Kelly Krueger, a biologist for the tribe. Since then, the tribe has been making efforts to study if the population is increasing and if crawfish are affecting native wildlife. The previous research was conducted under a grant from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs’ invasive species program and was largely “to test what measures worked best for catching them,” Krueger said. For the new survey, which is being funded through a $200,000 grant from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the team is examining 30 sites in the lake. “It’s repeated sampling, so we’re seeing how many crawfish we catch within this one area and then if it’s being repopulated when we come back to the same spot,” Krueger said. “We’ve found the crawfish in areas where we didn’t think they would be.”
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Premera files to drop rates again, cites lower utilization, reinsurance program By ELIZABETH EARL Peninsula Clarion
U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams listens to a presentation at the Henu’ Community Wellness Court on Thursday in Kenai. Adams visited Dena’ina Wellness Center as part of a statewide tour aimed at better understanding Alaska’s opioid crisis. (Photo by Erin Thompson/Peninsula Clarion)
Getting a closer look Surgeon general tours Dena’ina Wellness Center as part of statewide tour By ERIN THOMPSON Peninsula Clarion
The federal official tasked with providing health advice to the nation last week lauded the Kenaitze Indian Tribe’s holistic approach to health care. In a tour of the tribe’s Dena’ina’s Wellness Center in Old Town Kenai on Thursday, U.S. Surgeon General Vice Admiral Jerome Adams said he hoped to find ways of supporting and scaling up the facility’s integrated approach to providing wellness — which centralizes a number of health services, including medical, behavioral and traditional healing.
“This is just a tremendous asset to the community,” he said. “It’s a model for the rest of the country. Folks hear about the opioid overdose epidemic that’s going on in the country and affecting Kenai — they can hear abut the poverty here, they can hear about the unemployment rates — but it’s equally important that they hear about the great integration and collaboration that’s leading to better health in Kenai.” At the Kenaitze Indian Tribe’s campus, Adams met participants in the Henu’ Community Wellness Court — a joint-jurisdiction court that diverts cases for certain defendants facing charges related to substance abuse.
During a presentation in a packed room, Superior Court Judge Jennifer Wells described the court’s communitybased approach, which brings together criminal justice officials — such as judges, lawyers and probation officers — and health care providers, including medical practitioners and behavioral health counselors to help clients recover from addiction and rebuild relationships with the community. “What we’re doing here has been a dream. We know that locking people up isn’t really the most successful thing,” Wells said. Tribal elder Eli Darien, who used See TOUR, page A10
For the second year in a row, health insurance premiums on the individual market are set to get less expensive. Premera Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alaska, the sole health insurer on the individual Affordable Care Act marketplace — where those not covered by employer-sponsored plans or public insurance like Medicaid can buy health insurance — filed a notice with the state to decrease its rates by an average of 3.9 percent. Similarly, last year, the company filed an application with the state Division of Insurance to lower its premiums by an average of 22.4 percent, bringing down the average premium cost by more than 25 percent since 2017. According to the company, the average monthly cost has fallen from $1,043 in 2017 to $770 in 2019. A news release from Gov. Bill Walker’s office credited the installation of the state’s Reinsurance Program for the decreases. The reinsurance program, authorized by the Legislature in 2016, fundamentally works as insurance for insurers — transferring responsibility for some of the highest-cost individuals in a risk pool to See HEALTH, page A2
Rollout: Central Peninsula Landfill plans ahead with new construction By ELIZABETH EARL Peninsula Clarion
There’s a lot going on at Central Peninsula Landfill. Up the hill from the big blue building where most members of the public drop off their trash, workers with excavators and soil compactors are busy putting together infrastructure to last the landfill into the next decade and beyond. At the center of that activity is an enormous pit that is much more than a pit. Cell 3, which covers approximately 5.4 acres, will serve as the main disposal point for the Kenai Peninsula Borough’s municipal solid waste in the future. The contractors building it should be done by the end of the summer, said Kenai Peninsula Borough Solid Waste Director Jack Maryott. The cell contains a lot of careful engineering, from the slight grade tipping it downhill to the multilayered liner that goes on the bottom and side slopes to the pipes connecting it into the landfill’s multi-cell system. It cost about $3.4 million to build, with $300,000 in design and engineering alone, Maryott said. The liner has a number of components meant to contain the leachate — liquid generated by decomposing trash — and allow the managers to actively treat waste to help it decompose rather than burying it dry. Beneath the layer of soil is a fab-
ric layer, a geotextile meant to transport liquid, a thick plastic layer and a cloth layer that contains clay, meant as a stopper in case any liquid gets through the plastic. That is all required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The new cell should serve the borough for five to seven years, if not longer, he said. Beyond that, the landfill managers are already working on the plans to build cells 4 and 5, the final two in the initial design for the system. And it’s possible that even after the initial capacity in Cell 3 is filled, they may get to go back and fill it in a little more, too. That’s what the landfill workers are doing with Cell 1, the first lined cell, which hasn’t been actively used in several years. Brian Smith, who manages the operations at Central Peninsula Landfill, said the active decomposition of waste beneath the liner due to the treatment they do has given them some capacity back in the cell, which they are actively using. The solid waste department conducts a capacity study each year. “(Each cell) has a design capacity and an actual capacity, and we’ll be able to determine that,” he said. Central Peninsula Landfill is taking the bull by the horns on waste-handling technology. Instead of accepting trash and simply burying it they way landfills once did, Central Pen-
insula Landfill collects leachate and sprays the waste they’re burying with it. The wet garbage compacts better, giving the landfill more capacity out of each cell, and helps the trash decompose faster. That leachate comes out of the cells through the buried pipe systems to a storage tank and lagoon nearby. Some of it is collected by trucks to treat the waste going into the cells; the rest is evaporated either by
the sun or by a specific piece of machinery meant for just that. In July, it was sunny enough that the landfill was able to evaporate the majority of its leachate without having to actually burn gas to do so, Smith said. On a warm day in early August, the leachate lagoon was nearly empty. The extra space essentially acts a buffer in case of a large rain event where they’d need to store a lot of liq-
uid, Maryott said. “I look at that (low level in the lagoon), and that makes me happy,” he said. The leachate evaporator is part of the long-term plan to handle the landfill’s leachate and the gas generated by decaying garbage. Along the edges of the closed Cell 1, which is covered by black tarp, tall black pipes passively vent gas to the atmosphere. The borough is See TRASH, page A10
Senate candidate charged with illegally receiving benefits By BECKY BOHRER Associated Press
JUNEAU — A candidate for the state Senate and her husband have been accused of illegally receiving food stamps. A charging document filed by the state says Rebecca Halat and her husband, Jarek Halat, did not disclose several bank accounts and did not report his employment with a ride-hailing service. Rebecca Halat is running against state Rep. Chris Birch in next week’s Republican primary for a state Senate seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Kevin Meyer of Anchorage. The charging document says she and her husband exceeded the resource limit for food stamps when they received benefits this year. The couple, who have two children, received about $4,700 in food stamps this year, according to the monthly benefit information pro-
vided in the document. The Halats each face a felony charge of second-degree theft and a misdemeanor charge of submitting a false statement. Rebecca Halat’s arraignment is scheduled for Aug. 24. In an emailed statement, she said the last year has been hard on her family. Her husband was laid off from his job at AT&T, and the family lost its health insurance, she said. Halat said “false allegations from those trying to steal this election” do not scare her and said she looks forward to answering the allegations “in the proper venue.” Since becoming a candidate, she said people have learned a lot about her. “But there’s a lot more they have to learn if they think that I’m going to just curl up in a ball and let someone else represent me and my district through attacking my family,” Halat said. On her campaign website, she calls for repealing a criminal justice overhaul that critics See CHARGE, page A2