Changing climate may end traditions
There has been a big amount of berries where I come from for many generations. These past few years, the berries, geese, moose and ducks have been missing because of climate change. Our traditional values are bursting. Our solution is simple. The governor has only one thing to do — decide what we live by. Make sense, make it work, make it right. Climate change won't stop without us.
— Jimmy Wise III, age 16
Crow Village Sam School
Chuathbaluk
Kochs funding attack ads
Comparing George Soros and Warren Buffet to the Koch brothers is like comparing apples and oranges. The Koch brothers have supplanted the Republican Party in Alaska. The Kochs' dark money group, Americans for Prosperity, is meddling in our current municipal election. AFP has a radio ad running that attacks Ethan Berkowitz.
I highly doubt that Soros or Buffet are going to place any ads for or against a mayoral candidate, and for good reason. Why should an out-of-state multibillionaire be interested in Anchorage's municipal election?
— Anita Thorne
Anchorage
Infrastructure would flush tax dollars down drain
Regarding the recent story about the massive water/sewage infrastructure needs of small, remote communities and individuals, I respectfully disagree. I am one of the 12,000 Alaskans who choose to live remotely, making do with a well and an outhouse. No complaints. No subsidies.
It doesn't take a master's degree in business to realize that the high capital costs of urban infrastructure projects are financially suitable only for large and densely packed populations. (The story would have been more informative had it included the number of households and square miles.) Furthermore, if villages cannot keep 80 percent of their teachers, who thinks they are going to keep the skilled plumbers and engineers needed for future maintenance of these complicated systems?
Throughout Alaska (and the rest of the world), rural residents utilize far more cost-effective options.
For water, both suburban and rural homes dig shared or private wells, and install large and small rain barrels and storage cisterns. That is what we do. For human waste, many properties are suitable for a septic system, and for others, retailers (including Amazon) sell toilets that process excrement at the source, by incineration, chemical or biological means. Some require power and some do not. None requires an integrated sewage system.
Many of these toilets cost less than last year's Permanent Fund dividend. Surely the purchase of toilets by an individual or village corporation is an excellent use of state largess, rather than flushing tax dollars down another ill-suited municipal boondoggle.
— Laura Emerson
Trail Lake
Trawler bycatch wastes fish state economy depends on
Many Alaskans don't realize exactly how much bycatch from out-of-state factory trawlers affects our fisheries. Trawlers licensed to harvest low-value ground fish also pick up enormous amounts of halibut and king salmon. They are required to identify these fish and throw them overboard, although this process takes so long that most of the fish are dead before they're returned to the sea.
For example, declining halibut stocks in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea has led to 70 percent reductions over the past decade in the allocation to commercial halibut fishermen. The daily halibut catch available to charter clients in the Gulf has been reduced by 50 percent in some areas. By comparison, halibut bycatch limits for trawl fisheries operating in the Gulf have been reduced by only 15 percent or less over the same time period. In other words, Alaska's local fishermen are getting squeezed out of business, while factory trawlers catch and waste their fish.
Over the past few years, trawl lobby money from Seattle has successfully precluded the North Pacific Fishery Management Council from addressing this enormous problem. This week, Gov. Bill Walker will nominate Alaskans to fill two of the 11 seats on the council. This Alaskan hopes that the governor will nominate people who are willing to stand up for Alaska, and take on trawl bycatch before our halibut and king salmon stocks are completely exhausted.
— Austin Gillespie
Seward
Walker opens up gas deal, Hawker wants it secret
Watching that gas line dustup between Gov. Bill Walker and Rep. Mike Hawker? If there is any question in your mind over who's looking out for the state's interests, just remember, Hawker is the guy who negotiated in secret, then signed the no-bid deal for the new Anchorage legislative office building.
Hawker's secret deal arranged for us Alaskans to make lease payments equaling about twice what a comparable building could have been bought for, and at the end of Hawker's secret deal we vacate the building we paid for so Hawker's pal can re-rent his then debt-free building to someone else.
The governor wants the deal on the table for all to see and Hawker wants you to trust that his secret gas line negotiations will be good for us. Who do you trust?
— Ray Metcalfe
Anchorage
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