Clearcuts and old-growth forests are part of the view on Prince of Wales Island. (Nick Bonzey, Flick Creative Commons)

The federal government has agreed to pay $210,000 in legal fees to Alaska environmentalists that last year sued to halt a massive timber sale on the Tongass National Forest.

A coalition of eight conservation groups — including the Juneau-based Southeast Alaska Conservation Council — took the U.S. Forest Service to court in 2019 over its controversial plan to clear cut about 23,000 acres of old growth forest on Prince of Wales Island.

Industry groups and the federal agency argued that the project was key to keeping Southeast’s last mills running over the next decade.

But a federal judge agreed with the plaintiffs who argued that the federal agency didn’t follow the law when it approved the timber sales. That’s because it hadn’t provided site-specific information over areas that could be logged.

The court found that the Prince of Wales Landscape Level Analysis was flawed and ordered the agency to restart its review before bringing the timber to market.

The Department of Justice agreed this week to pay the funds into an account held by Earthjustice’s Alaska office. That’s the environmental law firm that litigated the case. Lead attorney Tom Waldo says the actual costs were about $301,000 in fees and other costs. But the parties settled to avoid bringing the matter back to the judge.

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to clarify that the plaintiffs in the case are a coalition of state and national conservation groups.

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The proposed Twin Mountain II Timber Sale encompasses two areas near Red Bay and Naukati on Prince of Wales Island. (U.S. Forest Service).

The U.S. Forest Service wants a do-over for an old growth timber sale that was halted by a federal court. The Prince of Wales Island areas are being re-analyzed in an effort by the federal agency to bring the timber to market.

The Twin Mountain II Timber Sale would cover two separate areas north and west of Thorne Bay on Prince of Wales Island. Altogether, about 3,000 acres of old growth forest.

It was part of a larger timber sale that environmentalists successfully blocked with a court challenge last year.

A federal judge agreed that the Forest Service had failed to provide site specific information in advance of the timber sale. A judge issued an injunction that prevented the sale from going through.

Tongass National Forest spokesman Paul Robbins Jr. said in a statement the Forest Service is restarting the environmental review process to get some old growth timber to market.

“This project does contain two units that were previously included under the Prince of Wales Landscape Level Analysis project,” Robbins said. “But they are no longer linked to the environmental impact statement from that project.”

It includes nearly 50 miles of new, temporary and reconditioned roads to make the timber sale viable.

“The proposed project aligns with the multiple use mandate for all national forests and provide valuable resources toward preserving a viable timber industry in Southeast Alaska,” Robbins said in prepared remarks.

But critics of old growth logging say the Forest Service’s priorities are wrong.

“(The) Forest Service’s acting as a sore loser,” said Dan Cannon of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, the environmental group that won a court victory earlier this year. (Government lawyers have appealed to the 9th Circuit Court.)

While the timber sales were blocked in court — District Court Judge Sharon L. Gleason’s decision did not hold up other aspects of the Prince of Wales Island land use plan. That includes stream restorations and investment in things like trails and cabins.

Cannon notes that most of those projects haven’t been funded by the Forest Service, yet it continues to invest its staff and resources in this and other old growth timber sales in Tongass National Forest.

“It’s just, it’s disappointing that the Forest Service has decided to merely waste more money, time and staff resources on clear-cutting old growth, rather than focus on the desired recreation activities of Prince of Wales residents,” Cannon said.

He added restoration work is needed to undo decades of damage from a half-century of industrial clear cuts.

And there’s another wrinkle. One area of the proposed timber sale on the western shore of Red Bay on the northern reaches of the island is land sought by Southeast Alaska Natives who claim they were left out of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

“They should talk to us about it,” said Richard Rinehart is a Wrangell member of Alaska Natives Without Land. It’s a five community coalition with financial backing by Sealaska Corporation — seeking federal land for Alaska Natives in Ketchikan, Petersburg, Wrangell, Tenakee Springs and Haines.

He says desirable tracts are becoming scarcer.

“You know the areas that people would want us to go or not go …  is really huge, and places where they think it might be OK for us to claim land is pretty small,” Rinehart said.

He says Congress hasn’t addressed the Southeast Alaska natives’ century-old land claims. And he says he’s wary of the Forest Service auctioning off valuable timberland until that’s addressed.

Southeast Alaska’s timber industry has argued the old growth timber harvests will be necessary to keep the region’s last sawmills operating.

The Alaska Forest Association — a timber industry group — didn’t comment.

The Forest Service is accepting online comments on the Twin Mountain II timber sale now through October 14.

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An aerial shot of Prince of Wales Island (KRBD file photo)

A federal judge will decide whether the U.S. Forest Service will need to start from scratch before resuming work on a massive timber sale in Southeast Alaska. Green groups successfully sued over the plan to allow logging of nearly 24,000 acres of old growth forest as part of the Prince of Wales Island.

Judge Sharon L. Gleason rejected what would’ve been the largest Tongass timber sale in decades. She sided with conservationists and found the agency’s Prince of Wales Landscape Level Analysis was flawed as it lacked site-specific detail on proposed logging in old and new growth forest.

But the judge stopped short of ordering the whole project null and void. And in court filings, the timber industry — and the Forest Service — argued the agency should be able to correct its faults and move forward.

Sending the agency back to square one “would also almost certainly have the effect of further delaying future timber sales on Prince of Wales Island by months or even years,” Department of Justice attorney Erika Norman wrote in a May 5 court filing.

“We’re all gonna run out of wood — and that’s the big concern,” said Eric Nichols, head Alcan Forest Products in Ketchikan. He agrees that the lack of detail in the Forest Service’s Prince of Wales project was a problem. But he says Southeast’s timber industry is struggling due to a lack of access to federal timberland.

“The whole business plan on depending on public timber, just doesn’t work,” he told CoastAlaska. “We’re down to so few acres that we can harvest on the Tongass today.”

Alcan exports raw logs to China. But the Trump administration’s trade war which triggered tariffs had complicated that market. An April filing in the Federal Register by the Forest Service notes that the 20% tariffs caused exports to China to cease last August.

Environmentalists say it’s not red tape that’s hurting the industry that employs around 300 people in the region.

“The troubles that they’re describing are really longer term, more systematic troubles,” Earthjustice Juneau attorney Tom Waldo said in an interview. He’s the lead attorney in the case Southeast Alaska Conservation Council v. U.S. Forest Service. “Really, logging in Southeast Alaska is not very competitive in global markets.”

He says the Forest Service wants to salvage what it can from an environmental impact statement the court rejected as inadequate. 

“It shouldn’t be used as any kind of guiding plan for the island over 15 years,” Waldo added. “And rather, they should be preparing a new, more complete, more thorough analysis on the effects to the communities on the island to subsistence uses and to the environment.”

In a court filing by Viking Lumber, the Prince of Wales Island mill’s owner says the company is constantly running short of timber.

The Department of Justice attorney handling the case didn’t respond to request for comment.

It’s unclear when the judge will rule on the motions.

The post Judge weighs fate of Tongass logging plan on Prince of Wales appeared first on KRBD.

Growing pains at Kensington Gold Mine mean the mine will need to expand its footprint considerably to keep operating for another decade

The modern Kensington Gold Mine began operations in 2010. But its 28 miles of underground tunnels follow veins first explored and blasted more than a century ago.

Today, there are a number of sections underground that carry the names of 19th century and early 20th century operations in a remote area about 45 miles north of downtown Juneau.

“Kensington came from the historic Kensington mine, the Jualin came from the Jualin Mine,” Coeur Alaska’s General Manager Mark Kiessling told CoastAlaska during a recent site tour.

There’s heavy machinery loading ore to be milled into gold concentrate in the Elmira section. That follows the historic Elmira Mine though Coeur Alaska is only now expanding its blasting and drilling here.

The point of showing all this is to demonstrate that 10 years into operations, there’s a lot of ore left to mine. But the mine company faces a challenge: it’s running out of room for the waste rock and tailings it’s generating as it mines ore and mills it into gold concentrate.

“We know that there’s additional veins out there,” Kiessling said.

The company projects it’ll be out of room for waste rock in 2022. And its tailings facility will be at capacity by 2024. Coeur Alaska — a subsidiary of Chicago-based Coeur Mining — has already started the permitting process to expand.

Filings with the U.S. Forest Service envision expanding three existing waste rock storage piles, adding a new one and to expand its footprint by 150 acres of the mine that’s on a patchwork of public and private land.

More controversially, the plan calls for expanding its tailings treatment facility. That’s a body of water that once appeared on maps as Lower Slate Lake.

A U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2009 struck down environmentalists’ legal challenges. And for the first time in the United States, a mine operator was permitted to convert a natural lake into a holding pond for liquid mine waste.

To expand, the mine company wants to raise the lake’s artificial dam by 36 feet and buffer the opposite shoreline with rock.

“It would enable us to contain another 4 million tons of tailings,” Kevin Eppers, the mine’s environmental manager, told CoastAlaska.

And the company proposes a rock causeway to reinforce the lake’s shoreline to prevent the water line from spilling into the adjacent Upper Slate Lake.

Upper Slate Lake is a second natural lake that so far has been untouched by mine waste. Eventually, the company plans to flood Lower Slate Lake so that the two merge into one after the mine closes down for good.

Kiessling says the two lakes would merge only after the lower lake containing submerged mine waste is brought up to state water standards. That would be accomplished by filtering the water at its wastewater treatment plant.

“We would continue to treat until we reach those levels and if we weren’t able to reach those levels we continue to treat and treat and treat,” Kiessling said.

After which the mining company would allow the water to rise in the lower lake, spilling over the man-made causeway and leaving behind a single body of water capable of supporting fish habitat, including dolly varden.

“It’s going to be restored as a high quality lake,” he said.

So far a half dozen people have written to the U.S. Forest Service about the expansion. Two are in support, noting that Kensington Mine is one of the Southeast Alaska’s largest employers with nearly 400 people on its payroll.

Four letters were critical of the mine’s expansion. One in particular noted how in August the Environmental Protection Agency fined the mining company more than a half million dollars for permit violations.

Kensington’s proposed expansion has reigniting debate over the long-term safety of the mine on Lynn Canal and the surrounding watershed.

“Berners Bay is a natural resource that for all intents and purposes as it existed forever,” staff scientist Guy Archibald of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council said in a recent interview.

SEACC unsuccessfully sued to prevent Kensington from opening in the mid-2000s.

“We hope that it will continue to exist forever and not be completely destroyed by a mine that lasted 20 to 30 years,” Archibald said.

One of the EPA violations was for acidic runoff along the tailings dam. Mine engineers have been spraying concrete to try and contain the runoff with mixed results. The EPA has since modified the mine’s permit to allow acid rock runoff into the lake. But only after levying fines this summer.

Kiessling defends the mine’s environmental record and predicts raising the water levels in the tailings pond would address the acid runoff problem.

“By building the higher dam,” he said, “we feel that that’s going to give us an opportunity to kind of put that issue issue to rest.”

Kensington’s proposed expansion will go under a formal environmental review. But first the public has until November 7 to weigh in on how much – or how little – the mine should be allowed to expand its footprint in Tongass National Forest.

Editors’ Note: This story has been corrected to accurately reflect the number of waste rock disposal areas that would be expanded and added under the proposal.

The post Kensington Gold Mine plans major expansion for operations past 2024 appeared first on KRBD.

Seabridge Gold staff stand in a rust-colored valley that’s part of its Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell exploration project in 2014. A federal agency in Canada has rejected a permit appeal from an Alaska conservation group.  (Photo by Ed Schoenfeld/CoastAlaska)

An Alaska environmental group has lost its appeal of a large Canadian mining project planned for just across the border.

The developer said the decision shows it’s behaving responsibly. But the conservation group said project owners, and Canada’s government, didn’t follow their own rules.

About a year ago, the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council tried a new tool to protest plans for the Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell transboundary mining project.

It appealed to a Canadian agency called the National Contact Point. SEACC staff scientist Guy Archibald said it’s supposed to address international business disputes.

“We’re exploring every venue we can to try to protect the transboundary rivers and the communities and fisheries they support from the large-scale development of Canadian mines across the border,” he said.

Guy Archibald of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, left, discusses issues with former Sitka Mayor Mim McConnell, right, during a 2015 transboundary mine meeting in Juneau. (Photo by Ed Schoenfeld/CoastAlaska News)

It tried to convince Canadian authorities that project owners didn’t fully follow guidelines requiring stakeholder engagement and environmental protections.

But last month, that agency rejected that appeal.

“There is no formal requirement for us to engage in Alaska,” said Rudi Fronk, chairman and CEO of Seabridge Gold.

The Toronto-headquartered corporation owns the KSM and another British Columbia mine-exploration project. Both are northeast of Ketchikan.

“The confirmation from the National Contact Point in Canada just clearly reinforces the process we went through during the environmental assessment process, that the engagement we had not only with the Canadian authorities, but also the Alaska authorities, was appropriate and bountiful,” he said.

(Read the National Contact Point report rejecting SEACC’s appeal of the KSM project.)

SEACC acknowledges meetings took place, involving conservation, tribal, fisheries and other Southeast Alaska groups.

But Archibald said the Canadian government failed to look into what happened at those meetings.

“They did not consider at all whether that communication between Seabridge Gold and SEACC was adversarial at all. Or particularly informative at all,” he said. “Just that Seabridge had attended some meetings, presented their PowerPoint and that was adequate.”

Seabridge Gold said it’s listened to concerns and made changes in its plans.

(Watch Seabridge Gold’s Rudi Fronk discuss plans for the KSM Mine.)

For example, it moved its tailings storage site at the request of British Columbia tribal leaders. And Fronk said it added protections to its design for that site, where waste rock is kept after being processed.

The KSM, Red Chris and Galore Creek projects are among several planned for northwest British Columbia, near the Alaska border. (Map courtesy Seabridge Gold)

“There is no requirement, or there was no requirement, in British Columbia to actually line the tailings facility,” he said. “But we agreed that we would line a portion of the tailings facility to deal with material that went through the mill that would actually touch cyanide.”

The company continues drilling at its KSM site to locate valuable concentrations of gold, copper and other metals.

But its biggest challenge is to find investors and partners to turn the exploration project into a mine.

Fronk said the corporation has turned down several offers because they were not the right match.

He said non-disclosure agreements prevent him from identifying those companies.

SEACC, meanwhile, continues to push for high-level talks between U.S. and Canada’s federal governments.

It, other organizations, the Walker-Mallott administration and Alaska’s Congressional delegation want stronger protections for Alaska fisheries.

(Take a tour of the KSM exploration projects during the summer drilling season.)

The post Canada rejects transboundary mine permit protest appeared first on KRBD.

A timber sale sign is posted in the Tongass National Forest on Prince of Wales Island. The state is in court again, trying to end the U.S. Forest Service’s roadless rule, which limits logging and other development in the Tongass. (KRBD file photo)

The state of Alaska is again trying to overturn the U.S. Forest Service’s roadless rule.

Officials on Nov. 6 appealed a September court decision that threw out an earlier state challenge.

The rule mostly blocks logging in undeveloped areas of the Tongass National Forest.

It was established more than 15 years ago, but the Tongass was given an exemption, which was later overturned.

Assistant Attorney General Tom Lenhart said the state continues to challenge the roadless rule because it’s damaging Southeast Alaska’s economy.

“It’s played a key role in the almost complete demise of the timber industry,” he said. “It’s impacted utility companies and rural communities who may have future plans to build additional roads to connect to the outside world.”

The Southeast Alaska Conservation Council is one of the environmental groups that supported the rule in court.

Attorney Buck Lindekugel said the state’s appeal doesn’t make sense.

“They seem stuck in the past. Today’s economy here in Southeast is driven by tourism, recreation and fishing, not old-growth logging,” he said.

State Forester Chris Maisch manages state timberlands near the Tongass National Forest.

He said the timber economy could rebound if the roadless rule is overturned.

“It essentially provides the ability to manage in a much more flexible manner, not only just forest resources, but energy resources as well as mining resources on the forest,” he said.

Among other arguments, the state said the roadless rule violates federal legislation requiring the U.S. Forest Service to meet the demand for Tongass timber.

The state filed this case in 2011 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The appeal was made to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The state’s Lenhart said some earlier rulings have been close, so it’s worth another try.

“We’re relatively optimistic that a three-judge panel at the D.C. Circuit may well come to a different conclusion and may in part or in total invalidate the roadless rule this time,” he said.

SEACC’s Lindekugel said the appeal is a waste of time and money.

A separate challenge has already been rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Instead of working with local communities to change things on the ground for the long-term interests of everybody, they’re focusing on a fraction of the economy by propping up the timber industry at everybody’s expense,” he said.

The post State challenges national forest roadless rule – again appeared first on KRBD.

A Tongass National Forest clearcut is shown in this 2014 aerial view. A new court decision limits logging on roadless areas of the forest. (Photo by Ed Schoenfeld/CoastAlaska News)

The U.S. Supreme Court will not take up a case that could have expanded logging in Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. It’s the final step in one legal battle involving what’s called the Roadless Rule. But there’s another case.

About 15 years ago, the U.S. Forest Service issued a ban on logging, roadbuilding and some other development in many of the wilder lands under its jurisdiction.

Put in place at the end of the Clinton administration, it targeted areas without roads and became known as the Roadless Rule.

A portion of the Tongass National Forest along Peril Strait is seen from the ferry Chenega Sept. 3, 2015. (Photo by Ed Schoenfeld/CoastAlaska News)

It quickly attracted the scrutiny of the first Bush administration, which delayed its implementation. About two years later, that administration announced an exemption for Alaska’s Tongass – and later Chugach – National Forests.

Legal battles ensued and that exemption was upheld, struck down and appealed.

The latest – and final – action in the case came from the U.S. Supreme Court. It decided Monday not to hear a state challenge to a ruling against the exemption by the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Tom Waldo of the Earthjustice environmental law firm said that means roadless areas of the Tongass are protected.

“It just doesn’t make any sense to keep trying to build expensive new roads that no one can afford to maintain into the wild and remote parts of the Tongass,” he said.

Waldo and other Roadless Rule supporters say it protects salmon and wildlife habitat critical to the region’s tourism and fishing industries.

Owen Graham of the Alaska Forest Association trade group said the Supreme Court action delivers a substantial blow to a hard-hit regional economy.

“What the timber industry needs desperately is a timber supply. And this is one of a number of issues that are preventing us from having that timber supply,” he said.

State officials say they’re disappointed, but not surprised.

“Only about 4 percent of all petitions are ever granted review by the Supreme Court. So it’s always something of a long shot,” said Tom Lenhart, a state assistant attorney general involved in the case.

A separate state suit, filed in a District of Columbia court, challenges the whole rule, as well as its Alaska provisions. It claims the rule conflicts with terms of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.

“We think very clearly that the Roadless Rule as applied to Alaska violates that federal law, which makes the rule invalid,” he said.

Southeast Alaska Conservation Council attorney Buck Lindekugel said that argument won’t hold.

“The Roadless Rule has survived many other legal attacks, like the State of Alaska’s, and we expect the Washington D.C. Circuit [Court] to uphold the Roadless Rule, just like the other courts have,” he said.

Even if that happens, the logging industry could try other approaches.

The forest association’s Graham said lawsuits are just one approach to increasing the amount of timber available for harvest. Another would be to seek congressional action.

“And then the other thing is we could just get a … federal administration that’s friendly toward responsible resource development and they can just rescind the rule, because it’s an administrative rule. It’s nothing that Congress passed,” he said.

Tongass logging is a small fraction of what it was 20 or 30 years ago, when the forest service regularly scheduled large timber sales and mills operated in Sitka, Ketchikan and Wrangell.

In recent years, the forest service has changed its focus from old-growth logging to harvesting younger trees.

The post Court: Tongass Roadless Rule remains in place appeared first on KRBD.

Southeast Alaska’s largest environmental organization is advertising for a new executive director. Malena Marvin has led the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council for close to two years.

Outgoing SEACC Executive Director Malena Marvin poses while kayaking in Juneau’s Mendenhall Lake. (Photo courtesy SEACC)

She’s stepping down after being diagnosed with breast cancer. Marvin said her prognosis is good, but she needs time to recover and prevent a recurrence.

Under her leadership, SEACC expanded its opposition to British Columbia mine projects near waterways that flow into Alaska.

It formed a new group, Inside Passage Waterkeeper, and worked with other environmental, fisheries, tourism and tribal groups opposed to transboundary mining.

“We’re a people who survive on fish and seafood and we need clean water for that to continue to be a healthy resource for communities,” Marvin said.

It’s also continued work on climate change, forest preservation and transportation.

Marvin expects the organization to continue its course as promoters of clean water and healthy forests.

“As someone who has cancer and struggles with the seemingly random nature of the disease, it’s just really, really hit me how important it is that we ask the Department of Environmental Conservation to raise our standards,” she said.

That includes state rules listing the acceptable rate of cancer, which she said is too low.

SEACC began in 1970 as a Tongass National Forest preservation group that fought large-scale logging in the courts.

It continues to file timber lawsuits, but it also collaborates with some former foes, such as Sealaska and the Southeast Conference, on food security, sustainability and some other issues.

Board President Clay Frick said that will continue under new leadership.

“Anytime you collaborate with folks, I think you end with up a better outcome. You end up building more power and I think that’s something this region is very much in need of. So when we can we certainly will,” Frick said.

Frick said Marvin moved SEACC in the right direction, citing a new Tongass planning effort and other recent programs.

“She’s laid some really important foundation work for us to continue forward. … We look forward to whoever steps to the plate or whoever we find will have a very solid base to spring off of,” Frick said.

Marvin continues to do some work for SEACC. Her resignation takes effect Jan. 1st. The job was posted online earlier this month.

Marvin said SEACC’s strength is its regional roots.

“It isn’t an outside environmental group. It’s not somebody who lives in Anchorage or Seattle or New York. It’s thousands of people, the members of SEACC, who live here and work here and always have,” she said.

Before taking over at SEACC, Marvin spent five years with Oregon’s Klamath Riverkeeper. It campaigned to remove dams on the salmon-producing river.

SEACC’s prior executive director, Lindsey Ketchel, spent about five years on the job before resigning.

SEACC Development Director Emily Ferry is filling in as acting executive director, but said she is not applying for the permanent job.

The post SEACC executive director resigns for health reasons appeared first on KRBD.

The cruise ship Norwegian Pearl sails south through Chatham Strait on its final voyage of 2013. The ship is one of six permitted to release treated sewage into Alaska harbors this summer. (Ed Schoenfeld/CoastAlaska News)

Did you know some cruise ships are allowed to discharge wastewater while anchored or tied up in port? State officials and industry representatives say it’s safe. But critics fear it’s fouling local harbors.

The Norwegian Pearl pulls up at one of Ketchikan’s cruise-ship berths. Many of its nearly 2,400 passengers head out onto the docks.

Toby Hatcher of Portland, Oregon, is one. He says the ship encourages environmental awareness through recycling, low-flush toilets and other means.

“You have to request for your sheets to be changed or reuse your towel, so I hang up my towels and my washcloth. So you just save one for the whole week,” he says.

A regular Alaska cruiser, he’s aware of other efforts to control pollution.

But he says he hasn’t thought much about how this and other ships discharge what comes out of the floating city’s toilets, sinks and laundries.

Tourists disembark from the Ruby Princess this spring, beginning the 2015 tour season in Ketchikan. It’s permitted to discharge graywater while docked. (KRBD file photo).

“I guess I’d prefer them not to do it in general at all. However, if they are going to do it, I’d prefer them not to do it right here, where they’re dock,” he says.

But, in fact, they do.

The Pearl is one of a dozen large cruise ships allowed to discharge treated wastewater in Ketchikan, Juneau and some other Alaska harbors this year.

Six, including the Pearl, have permits covering treated sewage, called blackwater. Those ships, plus six others, also have permits to discharge kitchen, laundry and shower runoff, also known as graywater.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation issues the permits for “stationary discharges” under new rules that took effect late last summer.

“It has to be treated wastewater through an advanced wastewater treatment system,” says DEC Environmental Program Specialist Ed White.

He says that technology makes it possible to discharge while stationary. Some ships were even allowed to do it under an older, more restrictive permit system. That measured pollutants coming directly out of the ships.

The Volendam cruise ship docks in Ketchikan. It’s allowed to discharge treated sewage while in port. (KRBD file photo)

White says the new system allows samples to be taken after being diluted in what’s called a mixing zone. That was proposed by former Gov. Sean Parnell and approved by the Legislature in 2013, at the urging of the industry.

“We have some additional requirements for those ships that discharge while stationary. They have to take water samples both on board the ship and also in the water (to measure) what happens in that mixing zone,” he says.

The zone for most harbors is 90 yards from the point of discharge. That’s about a third the length of the Norwegian Pearl.

White says the ships may be stationary, but tides and currents mean the water is not.

“We do have some restrictions. For example, in Skagway, there’s a dock where there would be an overlap. So they either can’t discharge there or they’d get a much smaller mixing zone if they can meet those requirements,” he says.

The dozen ships were issued individual permits while a new general permit system is on appeal.

“We feel that this new general permit does do the citizens of Alaska and the clean water of Alaska a big disservice,” says Daven Hafey of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, the region’s largest environmental group.

He says new wastewater treatment systems are an improvement. But they’re not good enough to fully protect fish, shellfish and people.

“Our research shows that Alaska would really be the only place in the entire world that would allow cruise ships of this size to dump those wastes and partially treated waste while tied up to a dock,” he says.

The cruise industry disagrees.

“The water really is virtually drinking water quality when it’s discharged now from the vessels,” says John Binkley, president of the Cruise Lines International Association’s Alaska chapter.

He says releasing treated wastewater in harbors poses no threat.

“It’s a pretty advanced system. The final process in there is sterilization of the water, similar to what they use in hospitals and what-not. And so it’s really pretty pure water that comes out,” he says.

In addition to the 12 ships granted stationary discharge permits, another six are allowed to discharge while underway, which dilutes the waste further.

In all, 18 ships have the OK to release wastewater this summer. White, of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, says another 14 don’t.

Former Gov. Sean Parnell watches as industry leader John Binkley speaks at the signing of a bill lowering Alaska’s cruise ship passenger head tax in 2010. Strict wastewater standards that were part of the 2006 Cruise Ship Initiative have also been changed. (Photo by Ed Schoenfeld/CoastAlaska)

“Typically about half the ships in the last few years hold their wastewater and then treat it in whatever way they have and discharge it offshore,” he says.

That’s beyond Alaska’s regulatory reach.

White says copper and ammonia are among the pollutants measured.

“There’s always going to be impacts of any human activity, so the goal is to minimize those impacts and to restrict any impacts that could cause significant harm,” he says.

Stronger wastewater treatment standards were part of an initiative passed by Alaska voters in 2006. The current permitting system basically replaces those standards.

SEACC appealed the general permit, though the state rejected all but one of its points. Officials say they don’t know when that will be heard. Meanwhile, individual permits allow the same thing.

The post Six cruise ships release treated sewage into harbors appeared first on KRBD.

The Viking Lumber Mill is on Prince of Wales Island. It was just awarded a contract to log part of the Big Thorne timber sale. (Ed Schoenfeld, CoastAlaska News)

The Forest Service awarded a contract Tuesday, Sept. 30, to log two-thirds of a controversial Southeast Alaska timber sale. Officials say it’s the first of several contracts for an area called Big Thorne.

Prince of Wales Island’s Viking Lumber Co. beat out four other bidders for what’s called the Big Thorne Stewardship Integrated Resource Timber Contract.

That name means the Forest Service sells timber to Viking, but reduces its cost in exchange for trail repair, stream restoration and other stewardship work.Tongass Forest Supervisor Forrest Cole oversees such sales.

“Typically, we’ve put up timber-sale contracts and we award them to the highest bidder. This being a stewardship contract, it not only has a timber component, but it also has service work that we expect,” he says.

The Forest Service won’t release the amount Viking will pay, the value of the stewardship work or the contract itself. Cole says that’s because the contract has not yet been signed.

Viking, meanwhile, does not respond to interview requests.

But Cole shared some details.

The contract calls for almost 3,800 acres to be logged between Thorne Bay and Coffman Cove. About half would be clear-cut, the other half selectively logged, including some thinning.

“So they can log and generate credits, do the service work and it gets covered that way. Or they can do the service work and then stumpage will be offset to cover that payment,” he says.

The contract calls for about 85 miles of new or repaired roads. About 15 miles of that will be removed once logging is done.

The full Big Thorne sale includes more than 6,000 acres of old-growth forest, plus around 2,000 acres of second-growth.

Cole says logging won’t start until spring. That’s part of a deal cut with environmental groups challenging the entire Big Thorne sale in court.

“What we have agreed to is a briefing schedule to try to get a decision out of the District Court by April 1. And April 1 is significant because that’s the beginning of operating season,” he says.

Viking was the winner bidder on last year’s version of the Big Thorne sale. Court challenges kept that from happening.

The Juneau-based Southeast Alaska Conservation Council is one of the parties suing to block this year’s sale.

SEACC Communications Director Daven Hayfe says the sale, and those like it, are costing the Forest Service government millions of dollars.

“So, when we’re talking about federally subsidizing a 6,100-acre clear-cut, and exporting half of that overseas to Asia without any local processing, we’re very literally talking about a giveaway,” he says.

Hayfe supports stewardship work. The goal is to restore streams, rivers and other fish and wildlife habitat damaged by past logging.

But he says the contract is the wrong way to do it.

“Repairing bridges, replacing culverts, trail maintenance, thinning, all that is very important work on the Tongass. But it should not be paid for with continued, large-scale, old-growth clear-cut logging,” he says.

The Ketchikan-based Alaska Forest Association, a timber industry organization, isn’t objecting to a combined contract.

But Executive Director Owen Graham says it’s too small.

“The sale’s only two-thirds as big as it’s supposed to be. But at least it exists,” he says.

Graham says Viking could run out of the timber it has before the contract’s spring starting date. And that’s only if the sale makes it through the courts.

He says officials are not making enough of the Tongass available.

“We also need to work with the Forest Service to get a continuous stream of additional timber, so they have some longevity and they don’t have to liquidate that Big Thorne timber sale quicker than planned,” he says.

Tongass officials will soon announce contracts for at least three smaller sales within the Big Thorne area.

Cole says it’s all part of a new direction for forest management in Southeast Alaska.

“The whole intent of this transition is to keep the current industry alive, which would allow them to have sufficient volume to generate revenues to create a retooling effort to get to this young growth timber supply,” he says.

The agency’s Tongass Advisory Committee is meeting to consider how to make that transition. Its report is due out in May.

Read and hear earlier reports:

• Forest Service upholds Big Thorne decision
• Conservation groups file suit over Big Thorne sale
• USFS announces 150 mmbf Big Thorne sale on POW

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