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P E N I N S U L A
THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 2014 Soldotna-Kenai, Alaska
Vol. 44, Issue 139
A ripple effect
Question Will the EPA’s move to preemptively block the Pebble Mine discourage other industrial development in the state?: n Yes; or n No To place your vote and comment, visit our Web site at www. peninsulaclarion. com. Results and selected comments will be posted each Tuesday in the Clarion, and a new question will be asked. Suggested questions may be submitted online or e-mailed to news@peninsulaclarion.com.
50 cents newsstands daily/$1.00 Sunday
Guides support early run king salmon closure, say it’s hard to stay in business By RASHAH MCCHESNEY Peninsula Clarion
Bruce Ewitt guided on the Kenai River for 11 years before he quit after the 2012 fishing season and shifted his efforts toward king salmon returning to the Columbia River. He joined the ranks of sportfishing guides, nearly 100 since 2007, who have stopped guiding on the Kenai River a trend that other guides say could be indicative of future river use. Ewitt, who primarily guided for king salmon, said the dwindling numbers of king salmon returning to the river made it difficult to make a living. “When you drive up and
you’re going to stay up there for almost four months, by the time you pay your rent and your meals … it’s about 30-40 percent higher than it is back here (in Washington),” he said. “You need to be doing something to generate a cash flow and if you’re not fishing, you ain’t doing anything.” As an out-of-state guide, Ewitt is part of a minority in the guided fishing industry on the Kenai River where about 75 percent of the registered guides are residents, according to Alaska Department of Natural Resources permit data. But, dwindling fishing time has made it increasingly difficult for professional guides
to make a living taking anglers out for a chance at the iconic Kenai River king salmon. “I took another job,” said Ed O’Conner, owner and guide at Sterling-based Advantage Angling. “It’s wiping me out. It’s almost impossible to book June trips.” In June, anglers hoping for a chance at Kenai River king salmon would be targeting the early run of the fish. However, in late February the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, or ADFG, announced a preseason closure of king fishing on the early run — eliminating the already struggling six-week fishery. See KINGS, page A-10
File photo/Peninsula Clarion
In this undated Clarion file photo, guides work the Kenai River. An unusual pre-season closure to early run king salmon fishing, coupled with an ongoing decline in king salmon runs has put pressure on many who make a living guiding on the river.
In the news
Ninilchik beach closed for clams
State announces oil and gas lease sale
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The Alaska Department of Natural Resources Division of Oil and Gas announced its annual Cook Inlet oil and gas lease sales will be held at 9 a.m. on May 7 in Anchorage. The state has about 4 million acres with in the Cook Inlet area divided into 815 tracts ranging in size from 100 to 5,760 acres available for lease sale. The sale area is within the Kenai Peninsula and Matanuska-Susitna Borough and the Municipality of Anchorage. The deadline for bidder qualification is 4 p.m. on May 2 and bids must be received by 4 p.m. on May 5. Lease sale of Alaska Peninsula area tracts ranging in size from 1,280 to 5,760 acres was also announced. A map of tracts is available on the Division of Oil and Gas website, dog.dnr. alaska.gov — Staff report
Clarification In Wednesday’s edition the story entitled, “Man charged in Otto Landing Inn sexual assault case” we reported the man to be from Sterling. Levi T. Mchone resides in Palmer, but was staying at Otto Landing Inn for work, said Otto Landing Inn owner Linda Otto. Aurora Drilling was paying for Mchone’s room, but he has since been fired, she said.
Index Opinion.................. A-4 Nation.................... A-6 World..................... A-7 Sports.....................A-8 Classifieds............. B-4 Comics................... B-8
Check us out online at www.peninsulaclarion.com To subscribe, call 283-3584.
Photo by Kaylee Osowski/Peninsula Clarion
Quizmaster Andy Schaafsma one of the PubQuiz hosts at Odie’s Deli in Soldotna reads trivia questions to a full house on Wednesday night. Trivia topics vary from week to week. Participants pay $5 for teams of up to four people and $10 for teams of five and the winning team takes home the cash prize. PubQuiz starts at 6 p.m. every Wednesday at Odies in Soldotna.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced that the Ninilchik Beaches would be closed to harvest of razor clams beginning Wednesday and running through the end of 2014. Bag and possession limits for razor clams harvested from beaches on the rest of the east side of the Cook Inlet have been reduced to 25 razor clams and 25 in possession. The closure came after interviews with diggers suggested fewer razor clams were being found along the east side of the Cook Inlet, according to the ADFG media release. The beach is to be closed to taking any clams from the north bank of Deep Creek to a marker located about 3.2 miles north of the Ninilchik River, according to the release. Razor clam abundance on the Ninilchik Beach will be reassessed in April and May according to the release.
Low wages an unexpected way of life for many WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, many Americans followed a simple career path: Land an entry-level job. Accept a modest wage. Gain skills. Leave eventually for a betterpaying job. The workers benefited, and so did lower-wage retailers such as Wal-Mart: When its staffers left for better-paying jobs, they could spend more at its stores. And the U.S. economy gained, too, because more consumer spending fueled growth. Not so much anymore. Since the Great Recession began in late 2007, that path has narrowed because many of the next-tier jobs no longer exist. That means more lower-wage workers have to stay put. The resulting bottleneck is helping widen a gap between the richest Americans and everyone else. “Some people took those jobs because they were the only ones available and haven’t been able to figure out how to move out of that,” Bill Simon, CEO of Wal-Mart U.S., acknowledged in an interview with The Associated Press. If Wal-Mart employees “can go to another company and another job and make more
AP Photo/M. Spencer Green
In this Tuesday, March 4, 2014, photo, Wal-Mart employee Richard Wilson, 27, is photographed outside the store where he works in Chicago. Wilson earns $9.25 an hour at that Wal-Mart and lives on the city’s western edge with his grandmother.
money and develop, they’ll be better,” Simon explained. “It’ll be better for the economy. It’ll be better for us as a business, to be quite honest, because they’ll continue to advance in their economic life.” Yet for now, the lower-wage jobs once seen as stepping stones are increasingly being held for longer periods by older, better-educated, more experienced workers.
The trend extends well beyond Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest employer, and is reverberating across the U.S. economy. It’s partly why average inflation-adjusted income has declined 9 percent for the bottom 40 percent of households since 2007, even as incomes for the top 5 percent now slightly exceed where they were when the recession began late that year, according to the Census C
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Bureau. Research shows that occupations that once helped elevate people from the minimum wage into the middle class have disappeared during the past three recessions dating to 1991. One such category includes bookkeepers and executive secretaries, with average wages of $16.54 an hour, according to the Labor Department. Since the mid-1980s, the economy has shed these middle-income jobs — a trend that’s become more pronounced with the recoveries that have followed each subsequent recession, according to research by Henry Siu, an economist at the University of British Columbia, and Duke University economist Nir Jaimovich. That leaves many workers remaining in jobs as cashiers earning an average of $9.79 an hour, or in retail sales at roughly $10.50 — jobs that used to be entry points to higher-paying work. Hourly pay at Wal-Mart averages $8.90, according to the site Glassdoor.com. (WalMart disputes that figure; it says its pay for hourly workers averages $11.83.) Since the Great Recession
began, the share of U.S workers employed by the retail and restaurant sector has risen from 16.5 percent to 17.1 percent. “It really has contributed to this widening of inequality,” Siu said. The shift has injected new pressures into the economy. Older and better-educated retail and fast food workers have become more vocal in pressing for raises. Labor unions helped launch protests last year against such employers as Wal-Mart, McDonald’s and Burger King. Fewer teenagers are staffing cash registers, prepping meals or stocking shelves, according to government data. Replacing them are adults, many of whom are struggling with the burdens of college debt or child rearing. Some are on the verge of what was once envisioned as retirement years. They are people like Richard Wilson, 27, in Chicago. More than 2½ years ago, a Wal-Mart store manager spotted Wilson cleaning the cafeteria at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. A double major in biblical studies and business communications, Wilson had $3,000 in See WAGE, page A-10