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P E N I N S U L A
MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2014 Soldotna-Kenai, Alaska
Vol. 44, Issue 178
50 cents newsstands daily/$1.00 Sunday
Jury convicts man in Coast Guard killings
Question Do you think the borough assembly should reconsider assembly member compensation? 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.
By RACHEL D’ORO Associated Press
In the news Anchorage fitness club vandalized, suspect inside
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ANCHORAGE — Anchorage police say a vandal caused up to $30,000 in damage to a fitness club — and then was found pretending to be asleep inside. KTUU-TV reports that police responded Sunday morning to a call at the Northern Lights Body Renew Fitness Club. They found office equipment was destroyed on the ground and a water fountain torn off the wall. Officers searched the building and said they found 29-year-old Deepak Chaudhary pretending to be asleep between two exercise mats. Investigators say Chaudhary used a member’s key card to get into the building but inadvertently destroyed the electronic door mechanism, locking himself inside. Police said the man didn’t notice the emergency exits and remained locked inside until police arrived. Chaudhary faces charges of first-degree burglary and second-degree criminal mischief. — The Associated Press
Inside ‘We are not fighters, we are diplomats in uniform.’ ... See page A-7
Photo by Dan Balmer/Peninsula Clarion
Live-Action fun
Cody Whiteley goes for the final blow to defeat his opponent Issac Dutton in a LARPing — Live-Action Role-Playing — bout at Beaver Creek Park in Kenai Sunday. The two are members of the Kenai/Soldotna chapter of Amtgard, a fantasy combat game played around the country, and one of four in Alaska. Nearly 30 people came out for the first outdoor session of the year. The group, known as the Frozen Coast Alliance of Northreach, meets every Sunday at 1 p.m. at the park.
ANCHORAGE — A federal jury in Alaska on Friday convicted a man of murder in the shooting deaths of two of his co-workers at a Coast Guard communications station on Kodiak Island. James Wells, 62, was charged in the 2012 shooting deaths of Coast Guardsmen Petty Officer 1st Class James Hopkins and retired Chief Petty Officer Richard Belisle. Wells, a man with thinning gray hair and a long white beard, did not testify at his trial. Jurors began deliberating Thursday afternoon. A day later, they found Wells guilty of two counts each of firstdegree murder, murder of an officer or employee of the See JURY, page A-10
Plans for elodea eradication move forward By KAYLEE OSOWSKI Peninsula Clarion
While some details still need to be finalized, a team has prepared a plan to eradicate elodea, an invasive aquatic plant, from three Nikiski area lakes. Members of an elodea subcommittee of the Kenai Peninsula Cooperative Weed Management Area presented their plan to landowners along the lakes at a meeting in Nikiski on Thursday. One uncertainty with the plan is exactly how much money the project will receive. In the capital budget passed by lawmakers Friday, they included $400,000 for the Kenai Peninsula Borough elodea eradication project. John Morton, supervisory fish and wildlife biologist with the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, said while Gov. Sean Parnell could veto the allocation, he’s not “too worried about it.” The committee has received $190,000 to date for eradication treatments. The three-year eradication plan for the three lakes
is priced at $597,000. If Parnell scratches the project from the budget, Morton said the plan would be scaled back. Treatment for Beck, Stormy and Daniels lakes is scheduled to begin this summer. If the project doesn’t get the $400,000 from the state, Morton said crews would probably try to complete the full treatment for 2014 in only one lake. Because elodea is prevalent throughout Beck and Stormy lakes, the subcommittee plans to treat the two water bodies in their entireties. It is believed Daniels Lake was infested more recently than the other two lakes because it has less elodea, so the subcommittee has determined a partial treatment should be sufficient, Morton said. “Maybe just maybe we can knock this thing out given that it’s only in the three lakes and it’s not in the rest of the peninsula,” he said. For Beck and Stormy lakes the subcommittee has determined to treat the lakes for the
first time with both a pellet and a liquid form of the herbicide fluridone, which has been used to eradicate elodea in the Lower 48. For the following three treatments — in the fall of 2014 and springs of 2015 and 2016 — the subcommittee plans to treat the lakes with only the pellet form of the herbicide. The subcommittee plans to use fluridone produced by SePRO Corporation called Sonar Aquatic Herbicide. At the meeting, representatives with SePRO said the product has been tested by the company as well as tested and approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. They said the product, which will be applied well below the EPA’s maximum contaminate level, is not harmful to people or animals. However, it may have some effect on native aquatic plants. The herbicide works by restricting the production of the plant pigment carotene, which is involved in photosynthesis — the process of converting light into
Photo by Kaylee Osowski/Peninsula Clarion
John Morton, supervisory fish and wildlife biologist with the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, discusses the elodea eradication project for Beck, Daniels and Stormy lakes in the Nikiski area at a meeting at the Nikiski Community Recreation Center in Nikiski on Thursday.
energy. In Daniels Lake, the subcommittee plans to treat five infected areas using only the pellet form of fluridone and possibly the herbicide diquat as well. According to the subcommittee’s Integrated
Pest Management Plan for Eradicating Elodea from the Kenai Peninsula, diquat is fast-acting and is absorbed by the leaves where it is applied to interfere with cell respiration. Diquat is See ELODEA, page A-10
Fairbanks man builds elaborate model train layout Index Opinion.................. A-4 Nation.................... A-6 World..................... A-7 Sports.....................A-8 Schools...................B-1 Classifieds............. B-3 Comics................... B-4 Check us out online at www.peninsulaclarion.com To subscribe, call 283-3584.
By SAM FRIEDMAN Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
FAIRBANKS — Richard Oehrig spends his lunch hours laying railroad track and carefully gluing pieces of scale-size gravel along the tracks. Sometime he’s so busy with his project that he doesn’t eat. “When you’re modeling there’s always something you can improve on or make better,” he said during a tour of his new Oscale model railway. “The thrill for me is you have to know something about everything from carpentry ... to mechanics.” Oehrig, 59, is a retired Air Force electrical technician who now works in heating and plumbing. He has collected model trains for almost 50 years and describes himself as one of about a dozen serious model train enthusiasts in the Interior. In the past year, he’s been working on an especially ambitious project. In a
AP Photo/Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Eric Engman
In this photo taken on Tuesday afternoon, April 15, Richard Oehrig swaps locomotives on the upper rail line of his model railroad he’s building in a friend’s warehouse in Fairbanks. Oehrig spends his lunch hours laying railroad track and carefully gluing pieces of scale-size gravel along the tracks. Sometime he’s so busy with his project that he doesn’t eat. C
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friend’s warehouse space, he’s building a layout for large “O-scale” trains. It’s probably the largest O-scale layout in the Interior, he said. O-scale is one of the largest scales for model trains. With a 1:48 scale, each inch in the model world scales to four feet in the real world. Oehrig’s setup centers around a crowded railyard. Oehrig owns more than 40 O-scale engines and more than 100 cars, although they don’t all fit on the layout. Around the yard are tracks with bridges, a passenger station, a house with a barbecue scene and an airport. When activated, automated steel loading cranes transfer small metal cylinders off or onto rail cars using magnets. Oehrig likes the entire modeling process from finding deals on eBay to setting up the model building facades. But See TRAIN, page A-10