Anchorage Daily News

Top state officials heard calls for help from village leaders in Western Alaska on Friday as stories of hardship in a single Yukon River village expanded into a talk of ways to get immediate help to the cash-poor region.

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"It's been brought to our attention in a way that can't be ignored. None of us were aware of all the details out here," said Emil Notti, commissioner of Commerce, Community and Economic Development.

Notti joined Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, Attorney General Talis Colberg and other department heads in a roughly two-hour phone conversation with village and regional leaders. They heard stories of $8-a-gallon heating fuel, a village grocery store cutting employee hours because people are buying less food, and airfare so expensive that sick people stay home instead of going to the hospital.

"They stay back in the village until they have to medevaced out," said Gene Peltola, chief executive of the Bethel-based Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp.

A letter from an Emmonak man published earlier this week describing families fighting hunger because of high heating costs, an unusual cold snap and a bad year of fishing prompted the meeting. The letter writer, Nicholas Tucker, along with leaders of other villages in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta phoned in to the conference call.

As she released her state energy plan Friday, Gov. Sarah Palin defended criticism of her team's response to the economic crunch being described by people who live in the region.

"We want to make sure, of course, that no individual is hungry out there. And that nobody is cold out there," she said. "And we want to know if the community itself -- if anything fell between the cracks, between (the power-cost equalization subsidy program), energy rebate checks that were sent to each individual."

Palin said she's looking into a trip to Emmonak, which is one of roughly a dozen Y-K villages that make up the Wade Hampton Census area. The region had the second-highest unemployment rate in the state -- 17 percent -- as of November, according to the state Labor Department.

Speaker after speaker Friday used the term "perfect storm" to describe the local economy.

Many villages buy their fuel by the barge. That means some paid for the heating oil when prices peaked during the summer and fall, before freezeup. Commercial fishing on the lower Yukon River was poor this year, so people made less cash. Then the recent long cold spell brought things to a head.

"Everything comes back to the high cost of fuel," Notti said. "So it's not so much a lack of income -- it's always been low, but they've been able to get along until fuel went out of sight."

Felix Hess, board secretary for Calista Corp., the regional Native corporation, said at the teleconference that it should have come as no surprise that the many factors had combined to create a crisis in some villages this winter.

"Five to 10 years ago, people were anticipating something like this would happen. Now it's here," Hess said.

SALMON DIDN'T COME

In October, a Bethel-based nonprofit asked the state to declare an economic disaster in the Lower Yukon because of a dive in king salmon fishing -- a key source of money for local families. Mountain Village, Kotlik and other communities have made a similar request.

"If we say that chinook salmon stocks is not an issue, or problem, I think we have our heads in the sand," said Myron Naneng, head of the Bethel-based Association of Village Council Presidents, which made the request.

But Notti said the Commerce Department looked into declaring an economic disaster in the area and found that the numbers didn't meet state requirements.

"If we could do it, we certainly would be doing it. We would have done it a long time ago, but the guidelines we have don't allow us to do that," he said.

Notti said he doesn't believe that option is still on the table, but that the state is looking for other ways to get cash into the area.

For example, he said, a program that pays for people to weatherize their homes could be used to create jobs and lower energy costs in the short term.

Though the underlying problems go back for generations, the picture of suffering villagers poses a tough political problem for Palin. Some regional leaders are already saying her administration has been slow to respond to a problem that has been brewing since the end of fishing season.

"Gov. Palin was out on the campaign trail, so why would she have given a damn? She was trying to get elected," said Naneng, the Association of Village Council president.

But Palin couldn't have acted on the association's call to declare an economic disaster in the Wade Hampton area because it didn't meet the legal criteria for a disaster, spokesman Bill McAllister wrote in an e-mail.

"But she certainly does 'give a damn,' when Alaskans face hardships," McAllister wrote.

STATE'S OPTIONS LIMITED

Palin said Friday that any suggestion of inaction from her administration is wrong. "Both the lieutenant governor and I have offered to fly out there and see what we can do personally," she said.

But the state's options on Friday appeared to be few.

Tucker -- who has been fielding offers for food donations all week after his letter rippled across the Internet -- told Parnell he should ask Alaska's major oil companies to send $100,000 each to the Emmonak Tribal Council for use as fuel vouchers.

"I don't have access to these big guys, but you do," Tucker said.

There was also talk at the teleconference of renewing support for a bill drawn up by Sen. Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel, last year that would have capped stove oil at $3 a gallon around the state, for up to 600 gallons per household. The state would have covered any costs above that amount. The "emergency energy relief program" passed the state Senate during last year's special session but was removed by the House.

E-mail the reporters: khopkins@adn.com and tkizzia@adn.com.

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