The Carnival Spirit departs Juneau on July 31, 2021. The ship is equipped with Exhaust Gas Cleaning Systems allowing it to burn cheaper, dirtier fuels in Alaska waters. (Photo by Jacob Resneck/CoastAlaska)

Cruise ships are now returning to Alaska for the first full-length season since the pandemic. It’s a relief for coastal port economies whose visitor sector has struggled.

But more ships also means more pollution, either to the air, the water or both from these large ships even as the industry says it’s committed to net zero emissions by 2050.

For the past several years there’s been a debate between regulators over what to do about “scrubbers”: a controversial anti-air pollution device that dissolves chemicals from ships’ exhaust into seawater, allowing the shipping industry to burn cheaper, dirtier fuels.

A two-year CoastAlaska investigation uncovered dozens of reports from independent cruise ship monitors alerting state authorities to foamy discharges from the kind of scrubber systems used by ships owned by Carnival Corp. and its subsidiaries, which make up a large portion of the Alaska cruise ship fleet.

State and federal authorities didn’t take steps to curb the emissions. State environmental regulators in Alaska say they don’t regulate scrubber discharges, and a federal law meant to protect the owners of small fishing boats from massive fines has, in practice, prevented state officials on much of the West Coast from clamping down on water pollution from scrubbers aboard cruise ships. Critics say it’s a weakness in environmental regulations that for years has allowed the cruise industry to pollute Alaska’s waters.

‘Air pollution to water pollution’

Technically called Exhaust Gas Cleaning Systems, they’re more commonly known as scrubbers. That’s because they use seawater to “scrub” the sulfur from the engines’ exhaust. They’re required by the International Maritime Organization which has mandated lower sulfur emissions in the atmosphere, which regulators say is harmful to human health, and is a major driver of acid rain. They’re prized by the industry as a way to save money and allow ships to burn the cheapest, dirtiest fuels. But the toxic chemicals removed from smokestack exhaust don’t just disappear.

A video shot from the deck of the Holland America Line cruise ship Amsterdam in the summer of 2019 captured a churning and bubbling of water spewing from the ship’s starboard side. By 7 a.m. — about 1 minute 22 seconds into the video — what appears to be a sea lion swims through the oily water.

Former Ocean Ranger Robert Layko was on a different ship that day. But he says he saw these kinds of oily discharges all the time.

“If they were running their open-loop scrubbers in port, you could see a sheen – black, like soot – on the side of the ship where their discharge was coming out,” Layko said.

The Ocean Rangers were an independent monitoring program unique to Alaska. And for years they tracked all manner of pollution and reported them to the ship’s deck officers and state regulators.

The Ocean Ranger that summer morning in Hoonah logged a report with state regulators. It sat in a file until turned over in a records request to CoastAlaska that included the June 22, 2019 video which said the sheen was likely generated by the Amsterdam’s scrubbers.

Carnival Corp. and its subsidiaries like Holland America first installed these systems in 2014. Dark billowing smoke from the ship’s stacks led to widespread complaints but little action by state regulators.

“We’re supposed to report any pollution incident we see,” Layko said, who spent eight seasons as an Ocean Ranger. “When I was on the ships, I would tell them that I’m going to report those because it’s my job and it’s pollution to me, and they say their scrubbers are all in compliance.”

Some scrubbers run a closed-loop system. Its washwater is heavily filtered, leaving a thick sludge that’s sent to landfills in the Lower 48.

But in the open-loop systems used by Carnival, Holland America and Princess ships, there’s no sludge to be hauled away at the end of a voyage. The seawater used to dissolve sulfur, arsenic and other potentially harmful contaminants goes right back overboard.

Shipping industry critics say scrubbers have allowed the shipping industry to skirt regulations by exchanging one form of pollution for another.

“What would normally be emitted as air pollution and dispersed in the atmosphere is now being concentrated and dumped directly overboard,” said Bryan Comer, a maritime expert with the International Council on Clean Transportation in Washington D.C. who has written about open loop scrubbers.

Congress preempts states from scrubber regulation

Layko reported the oily sheens he saw to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. But there’s little states can do to control discharges from exhaust scrubbers.

That’s because states like Alaska lost much of their authority to regulate scrubber discharge through an act of Congress. Alaska’s delegation were champions of legislation called the Vessel Incidental Discharge Act.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) says it was over concerns for the commercial and charter fishing fleet.

“What we really set out to do with VIDA was to address the incidental discharge off of fishing vessels,” Murkowksi told CoastAlaska in 2019.

She says her office got involved to protect the skippers of fishing boats from fines under the Clean Water Act. When deckhands spray down their boats, sometimes the water that washes overboard includes some oily residue.

A small group of environmental demonstrators gather near the Capitol in downtown Juneau on April 26, 2022 to protest pollution from large cruise ships. (Photo by Paige Sparks/KTOO)

But some state regulators say the 2018 law’s definition of “incidental” goes far beyond small fishing boats and cripples the ability of state water quality monitors to regulate ships the size of office buildings that discharge hundreds of thousands of gallons of scrubber washwater every hour.

Washington State Department of Ecology’s Amy Jankowiak, a supervisor in its water quality section, told CoastAlaska there’s specific language in the law, “that preempts states from regulating quite a few of the different types of discharge types coming off of vessels.”

But the law’s passage was just the first step in a complex process. The EPA now has to write the regulations that say exactly how and when scrubbers can discharge in U.S. waters, which fall to the U.S. Coast Guard to enforce. But today, four years after the law was passed, it has yet to do so as the regulations remain to be finalized.

Jankowiak says Washington’s Ecology Department has done its own research into scrubber discharges. Not only were they acidic — which can harm sea life — state scientists found a host of contaminants.

“Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, were significantly high,” she said, “and toxics including some metals, arsenic, cadmium, copper, nickels, selenium, zinc – all were higher than our water quality criteria.”

Washington state is calling on the EPA to ban scrubbers while more research is done. California has banned heavy fuel oils near its coastlines since 2008, making scrubbers unnecessary.

“We believe that there are enough concerns for the water for water quality, not just in our waters, but in other states’ waters,” Jankowiak said.

Alaska state regulators mum on scrubbers

Alaska state regulators have attended listening sessions on the debate over scrubbers in U.S. waters, EPA records show. But DEC officials have declined to wade into the debate themselves. The state of Alaska’s cruise ship program has a public-facing website that explains the technical aspects and notes that it’s up to the EPA to regulate scrubbers.

“The department has not taken any regulatory action regarding scrubbers,” DEC spokeswoman Laura Achee wrote in an email.

But DEC has a lot of data in its files. Ocean Rangers routinely monitored scrubbers and their performance and passed them on to cruise ship program staffers. Between 2017 and 2019, the marine engineers collectively logged at least 80 oily sheens and referred them to state’s Spill Prevention and Response Division for potential enforcement.

SPAR officials say they logged 24 scrubber discharge reports in 2017, 38 reports in 2018 and 18 reports in 2019. No further action was taken, staffers at the agency confirmed.

DEC is supposed to forward reports of scrubber water pollution to the U.S. Coast Guard.

A records request by CoastAlaska found that of the 18 documented observations by Ocean Rangers in 2019 only one was forwarded to the Coast Guard for potential action. But again, there’s no record of enforcement by either agency.

The pandemic erased the 2020 cruise season. And in 2021, Ocean Rangers were removed from cruise ships after Gov. Mike Dunleavy shut down the program. (He vetoed the money from cruise ship passengers that funded it.)

The Dunleavy administration has been hostile to the program, saying no other industry has that kind of 24/7 scrutiny.

“Most of these Ocean Rangers were not even Alaskans,” DEC Commissioner Jason Brune said during an appearance on a state-sponsored podcast last November. “They were retired marine engineers from the Lower 48 that were getting a free vacation on these cruise ships.”

He reiterated that the Dunleavy administration wants agency staff to inspect vessels and permanently end the program that was created by a 2006 voter initiative and remains popular among coastal communities.

The Legislature is still hearing the governor’s bills that would formally end the program.

Scrubber manufacturers tout systems’ potential

The shipping industry insists scrubbers are both safe and effective. Donald Gregory heads the Exhaust Gas Cleaning Systems Association in the U.K. which represents global manufacturers. He predicts one day that all large ships will be outfitted with the technology.

“But it won’t be fitted to remove the sulfur dioxide, necessarily,” Gregory said. “It’ll be fitted to take out black carbon, and to take out some of these other compounds. And that’s where the real benefits will be.”

That would also allow the shipping industry to delay switching to cleaner, more expensive alternatives to fossil fuels.

Gregory also dismisses concerns about water pollution.

“What’s going overboard is going overboard anyway — through the funnel — if it’s not being scrubbed,” he said in an interview from Greater London.

But without the scrubbers, ships wouldn’t be allowed to burn the dirtier fuels in the first place.

Cruise industry says scrubbers are ‘interim solution’ 

CoastAlaska repeatedly requested interviews from Cruise Lines International Association. The industry group declined.

But the topic does come up when cruise execs attend public forums. During an appearance last summer on Wrangell public radio station KSTK’s Talk on the Rock, CLIA executive Brian Salerno says scrubbers perform well.

“They do meet all the international standards,” he told KSTK interviewer Sage Smiley. “They meet the EPA standards for the U.S., there have been quite a few tests on them, particularly with the washwater.”

CLIA touted last year the fact that 76% of the large cruise ship fleet is equipped with scrubbers.

“I realize not everybody is prepared to look at them in the same way,” Salerno said. “But as an interim solution for now, they’re doing the job. I think long term, though, you know, we need new solutions.”

Scrubbers save Carnival ships in Alaska $150,000 a week

Discharge from the Star Princess was seen by City of Ketchikan port personnel on July 23, 2018 at Berth 4. That follows complaints by the public of an earlier discharge from the Golden Princess. The city has determined the discharge is from exhaust system scrubbers. (City of Ketchikan photo)

In court filings, Carnival Corporation says its brands have spent at least $500 million on installing scrubbers on its fleet. So why the huge investment? It says it’s to cut costs in the long-run by allowing them to burn the dirtiest fuels close to shore.

“The exemption gives us the flexibility to use whatever fuel source we determine. And that’s significant for us because it gives an economic value,” Carnival spokesman Roger Frizzell told CoastAlaska in 2013 when the scrubbers were first being installed ahead of more stringent sulfur limits in marine fuel.

Carnival reported to the EPA that switching its vessels in Alaska to cleaner-burning marine gas oil would be too expensive.

At 2019 prices, it says burning lower-sulfur fuels would increase a ship’s fuel bill by an extra $150,000 a week.

Jim Gamble, the Arctic program director for conservation group Pacific Environment, is pushing for a ban on heavy fuel oil in Alaska waters and by extension, scrubbers that allow bunker oil on board ships in U.S. waters.

His organization is part of the Clean Up Carnival campaign — a coalition of environmental groups urging the Miami-based cruise giant to stop burning heavy fuel oil on its ships.

“A company like Carnival can easily afford to come into Alaskan waters and follow every regulation,” Gamble said.

He says the environmental cost is higher than the money Carnival saves by running scrubbers to burn cheaper fuels.

EPA allows Carnival ships in Alaska to discharge scrubber water that’s two, three times as acidic

Carnival has received special permission for its open loop scrubbers to exceed water pollution rules while in Alaska waters. That’s according to waivers obtained through a Freedom of Information request filed by CoastAlaska. The EPA has green-lit discharging scrubber washwater with a pH more acidic than what’s allowed under its 2013 permits.

“The pH scale is logarithmic,” explained Bryan Comer of the ICCT Marine Program, in an email. “That means that allowing Carnival to emit washwater with a pH of 5.7 instead of 6.0 is really allowing them to emit water that is twice as acidic. And on the occasions where they emit contaminated washwater with a pH of 5.5, that’s 3.2-times more acidic than if it had a pH of 6.0.”

Scrubber discharges aren’t always obvious but critics say the volumes are significant. Some estimates by Washington state say they churn out around 475,000 gallons every hour.

Cruise ships may avoid extra scrutiny by not running them in port where the sheens are more visible. And since last year, there have been no Ocean Rangers on board to watch and record them.

Robert Layko, the retired Ocean Ranger, says he’s worried scrubber water pollution will now go unreported.

“If we’re not watching them, it’s up to the public to watch them and the public — they’re not engineers,” Layko said. “It seems to me like the state kind of dropped the ball a little bit.”

DEC confirmed that in 2021 it received three public complaints about cruise ships, two for air quality and one for water. The agency says none of the complaints resulted in action.

A Carnival spokesperson confirmed that its fleet would continue to operate under its waivers for the 2022 cruise season. The EPA declined to comment on progress of its exhaust gas cleaning system regulations which are expected to be finalized at the end of the year.

In Alaska, the public can report suspected cruise ship pollution to the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s cruise ship program by emailing: DEC.WQ.Cruise@alaska.gov

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Ketchikan’s borough offices are in the White Cliff Building. The draft ordinance is on the agenda for the 5:30 p.m. Monday, April 4 meeting. (KRBD staff photo)

Elected officials in the Ketchikan Gateway Borough are considering a pay increase for themselves. But before that happens the public would have a chance to weigh in later this month.

An online memo from the borough clerk, Kacie Paxton, says the mayor and seven assembly members have had their compensation frozen for more than 20 years.

“Staff originally drafted this ordinance in early 2020 right before the COVID-19 pandemic began,” Paxton wrote. “Because of the economic impacts to the Borough created by the pandemic, this ordinance was not brought forward at that time.”

The proposal would double Borough Mayor Rodney Dial’s $500 monthly stipend to $1,000. Assembly members currently receive $150 a month. That would increase to $500.

Elected officials also receive $75 per meeting. That would remain unchanged, under the draft ordinance to be introduced on Monday (April 4).

A similar proposal was floated in early 2020. But the onset of the coronavirus pandemic led the assembly to shelve the idea.

Borough staff compiled a comparison of other local governments’ compensation in Alaska. It says that since 2007, Ketchikan’s city officials have received $300 per regular meeting, plus an expense allowance. That’s still less than the compensation set by Ketchikan’s borough assembly in 1999.

If adopted, the raises for Ketchikan borough elected officials would cost just shy of $60,000 annually. That’s a little more than the $20,000 that’s in the budgeted. If the ordinance progresses on Monday, it would go to an April 18 public hearing before going to a vote. The raises would go into effect in late October – after the municipal election.

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Southeast Conference (SEC) is eying a roughly 5-acre area on Gravina Island owned by the Ketchikan Gateway Borough to be used as a demonstration project on the economic viability of a small pellet mill that it says could be replicated other rural Alaska communities to supply the local pellet market.

The Southeast Conference is proposing a pilot project using wood pellets as an alternative energy source in Ketchikan. The regional civic and business organization has expressed interest in developing a biofuel plant on Gravina Island, and wants support from the borough which owns a 200,000-square-foot parcel.

The Juneau-based nonprofit recently secured $1 million in federal funding through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Southeast Alaska Sustainability Strategy for its effort.

“We think that this is a model that could be replicated in many other rural communities,” Executive Director Robert Venables told CoastAlaska on Friday. “But we need a test site for some some research and development of how this model would work and under different operating conditions,” he added.

He’ll be making Southeast Conference’s presentation on Monday, April 4 to the Ketchikan borough assembly to consider a long-term lease on the former mill property to produce wood pellets as a sustainable alternative to heating oil.

Specific terms over a lease of the 5-acre site have not been disclosed.

In a memo to the assembly, borough staff have expressed caution noting that wood pellet-fired boilers have not always performed as well as anticipated.

“The request has many unanswered questions and challenges,” wrote Richard Harney, director of Planning and Community Development. “The borough has championed biofuels
over the last 10 years, with numerous resolutions supporting the use of biofuel instead of oil. However, acquiring enough wood waste to produce locally sourced pellets for the boilers has been unsuccessful.”

(A biofuel project at Coast Guard Air Station Sitka more than a decade ago was ultimately unsuccessful.)

But Venables says it’s worth exploring the concept and he’s optimistic that there are untapped biofuel sources that are often discarded.

“What we see in rural Alaska is a lot of one way shipments of pallets and cardboard boxes that often gets just burned in open pits and create an environmental issue and certainly do nothing to lower the cost of energy,” he said.

Ketchikan’s Borough Assembly meets at 5:30 p.m. Monday in the White Cliff building. There’s time for public comment at the beginning of the meeting. The full agenda is available online, and the meeting is broadcast on the borough’s website and local cable channels.

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The state ferry Malaspina sits in layup in Ward Cove near Ketchikan on May 10, 2020. (Eric Stone/KRBD)

The Department of Transportation said Tuesday that four parties have expressed interest in the Malaspina, a mainline ferry that’s been a mainstay of the fleet since the 1960s. It’s the latest twist in the process initiated by the Dunleavy administration to unload an iconic state ferry that’s been idle for more than two years.

The Malaspina ferry hasn’t sailed since December 2019. The Dunleavy administration decided then to tie it up at a private facility near Ketchikan rather than invest at least $16 million into the steel work needed to keep it seaworthy.

But even idle, the state is paying upwards of $75,000 a month in mooring fees and insurance costs at the private Ward Cove facility.

DOT announced on February 18 that an unnamed U.S. buyer who would keep the 450-passenger ship in Alaska was interested. It solicited proposals from other interested parties and got three more prospective buyers by the March 7 deadline.

“Hopefully we’ll have something in there that can allow the Malaspina to remain in Alaska,” DOT spokesperson Sam Dapcevich said Wednesday, “and that preserves the vessel’s historical value and promotes the marine highway system.”

Records request reveals interested parties include Ward Cove Dock Group

John Binkley on Juneau’s downtown waterfront on Sept. 9, 2019. He has a stake in the Ward Cove Dock Group which owns a newly created venture now making a bid for the Malaspina ferry. (Photo by Adelyn Baxter/KTOO)

CoastAlaska put in a public records request to DOT for the letter so interest from prospective buyers.  It was denied by the agency which said it would only release them after the sale was finalized.

But it did release the names of four interested parties. On top of the list is M/V Malaspina, a limited liability company incorporated on the March 7 deadline set by DOT to express interest in the ferry.  Its agent is listed as John Binkley, a prominent Fairbanks Republican.

He also owns half of the Ward Cove Dock Group with the Spokely family of Ketchikan, a partnership with the family firm that’s paid by the state to store the Malaspina and other idled marine highway vessels.

Binkley confirmed he and his partners are interested but said he wasn’t ready to talk about it.

Other interested parties were more forthcoming.

“We like these projects — we like to think big and nothing really scares us,” said Greg Meyer of Cordova. He and his wife own a waterfront restaurant in the Prince William Sound community. He says his family was sad when the ferry Taku was sold for scrap in 2018.

The Malaspina could be redeveloped on tidelands that are part of a former Cordova cannery property they own and make use of the vessel’s staterooms.

A1945 photo of the the Cordova waterfront property now owned by Greg Meyer and Sylvia Lange of Cannery Row LLC. The couple has proposed to beach the Malaspina on tidelands it owns as a restaurant and hotel. (Photo courtesy of Greg Meyer)

“We would be interested in converting the ferry into a floating hotel/restaurant,” Meyer wrote in his pitch letter to the state.

There are other potential uses for the former passenger ferry, he told CoastAlaska.

“Cordova has a housing shortage,” Meyer said by phone. “And we have seasonal workers that can never get housing in the summer. So it would help us to stimulate our economy.”

Another interested party is Meridian Global Consulting, a Mobile, Alabama-based firm that said in its letter that it owns three vessels of similar size.

“Meridian’s intent in purchasing the Malaspina is to use her as a floating hotel and
restaurant in and around Alaska,” wrote the firm’s owner Jonathan McConnell.

But how interested the firm is depends on the terms set by the state agency.

“If they’re going to ask, you know, $4 million for this vessel — then it’s not worth it,” McConnell said by phone from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

This isn’t the first time he’s approached the state to buy the Malaspina. Last year Meridian offered $625,000 for the ship to be repurposed as a floating barracks. It would house security contractors working to protect international shipping off the Horn of Africa.

But now the state says it wants the Malaspina to remain in Alaska. And he says his firm could do that. McConnell says he’s talking to partners in Alaska to turn it into a floating attraction.

“It’s a pretty neat experience to be able to eat a meal on board an old, beautiful vessel,” McConnell added.

The fourth interested party is HighSeas, Ltd which DOT says is registered in India. A BBC investigation last year found the firm had bought a historic British ocean liner at auction saying it would be used as a floating hotel in Dubai. But it was broken up for scrap.

The firm’s chairman didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

State looking to avoid a Taku scenario

DOT’s regional spokesman Sam Dapcevich says his agency acknowledges there has been commercial interest in the ship. But it wants to ensure that the Malaspina comes to a dignified end.

“The state doesn’t want the vessel to end up a derelict somewhere because someone bought it and didn’t have the means to take care of it,” Dapcevich said. “We prefer that it not be cut up for scrap, like what took place with the Taku years ago.”

Other ideas thrown around last year included scuttling the Malaspina in deep water. Gov. Dunleavy had also offered to give it away to the Philippines. But state officials say the government in Manila wasn’t interested.

DOT hasn’t committed to any timeline but says any transfer would have to be approved by the feds because of federal highway dollars used for its upkeep.

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The state ferry Malaspina sits in layup in Ward Cove near Ketchikan on May 10, 2020. It’s been costing the state nearly $75,000 a month to keep it tied up. (Eric Stone/KRBD)

The Dunleavy administration announced Friday that an unnamed U.S. buyer is interested in purchasing one of Alaska’s original mainline state ferries for an undisclosed amount.

It’s the latest twist in the fate of the ferry Malaspina, which hasn’t sailed since December 2019.

Now, the state is asking other interested parties to step forward before March 7. DOT officials say their preference would be for the 59-year-old vessel to remain in Alaska, though that wouldn’t be a requirement.

Last year Gov. Mike Dunleavy offered to give the ship away to the Philippines. But the offer wasn’t accepted due to the amount of work needed to rehab a vessel that had been stripped and suffered storm damage while moored in Ketchikan.

The 450-passenger vessel has been sidelined since the state agency balked at the estimated $16 million in steel work needed to keep the ship seaworthy.

DOT emails detailed spiraling costs of keeping ship in state ownership

A CoastAlaska investigation last year found that the state is paying nearly $75,000 a month to keep it. That includes insurance costs and mooring fees at a private berth in Ketchikan owned by the Ward Cove Group.

Several interested buyers said last year that their inquiries to purchase the ship had been ignored even as agency officials privately expressed concern over the mounting costs of keeping the idled ship in the fleet. That’s according to interviews and review of several hundred emails released to CoastAlaska in a records request.

Alaska Marine Highway System officials last year told lawmakers they were working with the Environmental Protection Agency to prepare to scuttle the Malaspina in deep water. But a notice posted on a state website says: “Letters of interest that propose scuttling the vessel are not being considered at this time.”

In response to CoastAlaska’s questions, DOT says its priority is finding “what is in the best interest of the state in exchange for the vessel,” DOT spokesperson Shannon McCarthy wrote. “While typically, this means top dollar, there is value in preserving the vessel’s historical value for Alaskans.”

She added: “The ship served as a primary mode of transportation for many communities over five decades the public is rightfully nostalgic for the vessel.”

The Malaspina was built in 1963 and was one of the marine highway’s original three mainline ferries. The Taku was sold for scrap in 2018; the Matanuska is still in service.

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The 280-foot Hubbard is an Alaska Class Ferry tied up in Ketchikan on January 29, 2021. It was built for $60 million by Vigor Alaska. It and its sister ship recently received new side doors at a cost of about $4.4 million. It has yet to enter service. (Photo by Eric Stone/KRBD)

An Alaska state ferry collided with another while docking in Ketchikan early Friday morning. But there were no reported injuries and only moderate damage to one of the ferries. The collision happened around 4:25 a.m. Friday morning and the Coast Guard had been notified.

That’s according to a Friday afternoon statement from the Department of Transportation which reported that the 382-foot Kennicott ferry hit the smaller Hubbard. The Kennicott just finished up service in Southeast and is heading in for a scheduled overhaul.

The 280-foot Hubbard is an Alaska Class Ferry that’s in Ketchikan for a $15 million upgrade. The work by Vigor Alaska would add crew quarters to extend the ship’s operational range and versatility before it enters service later this year.

The Kennicott fared worse with damage to the starboard side of the ship. A window was also reportedly damaged.

“AMHS does not anticipate the damage from today’s incident will impact project timelines or return to service dates for either vessel,” the agency said in a statement.

Earlier in the day, DOT had announced that Vigor Alaska had signed a contract for upgrading the Hubbard ferry. The agency also said it had awarded a $9.4 million contract to JAG at the Seward shipyard on Dec. 28 for improvements to the ferry Tustumena, the second oldest vessel in the fleet.

“This work will contribute toward extending the ship’s service life until the Tustumena Replacement Vessel (TRV) can be put into service in approximately five to six years,” the agency said.

This article has been updated.

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An aerial view of KSM’s Camp 9 on July 29, 2021. Crews worked to develop an access road and a mining camp during the summer of 2021. (Photo courtesy of Seabridge Gold)

Regulators in Canada have granted a two-year extension for the Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell mine’s environmental review which will effectively give the project’s owners until July 2026 to find major investors.

Critics of the Canadian mine say it could one day threaten Southeast Alaska salmon. But developers of the KSM haven’t found investors to pay for the project’s construction yet. Its location about 20 miles from the border has made it controversial for those who would live downstream from the metals mine.

KSM promises to be one of the largest open pit mining projects on the continent. But Toronto-based Seabridge Gold which owns the prospect has not found a major backer to build the gold, silver and copper mine.

KSM’s second extension since green light

British Columbia regulators gave tentative approval for KSM back in 2014. But with the caveat that it gets started in the next five years. But as that deadline approached the company applied and received an extension good through 2024.

Seabridge came back again last year saying it needed more time. In filings with provincial regulators, it said the COVID-19 pandemic’s travel restrictions prevented it from bringing potential investors to the remote site.

“COVID did have an impact without a doubt on our project and ultimately, based on our submission, the B.C. government agreed with that,” Seabridge executive Brent Murphy told CoastAlaska in an interview.

Seabridge is what’s known in the industry as a junior. It does exploratory work and pitches investors with the hopes of getting a deep-pocketed global firm as a partner with the wherewithal to develop a prospect into an actual mine.

“There’s still substantial interest in the project,” Murphy said. “Our ultimate goal is for the project to be joint venture with a major mining company.”

And it’s crucial for Seabridge for that to happen before its regulatory approval expires — hence its need for extensions.

Canadian mines built in watersheds that extend into the U.S. are controversial in Southeast Alaska. And KSM is no exception. Seabridge says waste from the mine would be stored in a watershed that drains into Canada. But the mine itself would be in the headwaters of the Unuk River, which flows out near Ketchikan.

Still, Murphy says the company is designing the project to minimize threats to fisheries and other resources.

“If you look at the report prepared by the BC government and the Canadian government, there is no predicted impacts on Alaskan waters,” Murphy said.

B.C. regulators criticized by Southeast Alaska campaigners

Transboundary mine critics in Southeast Alaska complain that B.C. regulators are allowing the permit to stay active based on an environmental review completed seven years ago. They say  Seabridge should have to redo some of its analysis and go back to the drawing board.

“It was kind of a troubling move by Seabridge, I think, to exploit the pandemic,” said Chris Zimmer, who works with Rivers Without Borders, a Juneau-based watchdog. “What’s more concerning to us here is that BC let them get away with it.”

His environmental nonprofit one of a number of campaign groups that says the B.C. government doesn’t do enough to regulate its mining industry.

“What I saw here is yet another part of a kind of a clear and disturbing history of deference to the industry,” Zimmer said.

He points to the Mount Polley Mine Disaster. In 2014, that mine’s tailings dam in B.C. failed, allowing millions of tons of liquid mine waste to escape uncontrolled into a watershed that drains into the Fraser River, which hosts one of Canada’s most treasured salmon runs.

Imperial Metals, the company that owned Mount Polley, was never fined or sanctioned.

But KSM’s developers say the Mount Polley incident caused engineers to give their dam design extra scrutiny.

“We’re very aware of the tailings ponds, concerns, i.e. Mount Polly, and the other unfortunate incidents that happened around the world,” Murphy said. “We are taking these concerns very seriously. And there are concerns held by both Canadian and American citizens and we’re working through those and we’re trying to be fully transparent on our design.”

Alaska regulators silent on extension request

B.C.’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy declined to be interviewed. It referred back to the Environmental Assessment Office’s 27-page report it released granting another extension and its minister’s nine-page report outlining his rationale for the decision.

“I am of the view that an emergency variance that would allow for a certificate extension of two years for KSM would be in the public interest,” B.C.’s Environment and Climate Change Strategy Minister George Heyman wrote in his nine-page decision.

Alaska’s regulatory agencies were involved in KSM’s environmental review a decade ago. But none offered input over Seabridge’s request for more time on its permitting.

“This extension request does not change the project design or affect any potential downstream impacts,” Kyle Moselle, who heads up the Alaska Department of Natural Resource’s office of permitting for mines, wrote in an email to CoastAlaska.

KSM has been compared to the now-stalled Bristol Bay’s Pebble Project in its scale, wealth, job creation potential as well as environmental risk. That’s because like Pebble it would be an open pit design. Its mine waste would be held in a massive tailings pond — created by a dam more than 780 feet high — taller than the Hoover Dam.

But for that to happen Seabridge will need a major investor before its environmental assessment expires in 2026.

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The Tongass is 16.7 million acres and stretches roughly 500 miles northwest from Ketchikan to Yakutat, Alaska. It includes approximately 80 percent of the land area in Southeast Alaska.

The Biden administration on Tuesday formally began the process of restoring ‘Roadless Rule’ protections to millions of acres of Southeast Alaska’s federal forestlands.

It opens up a 60-day comment period to undo action taken by the Trump administration that critics say could lead to more old growth logging in Tongass National Forest.

A notice in the federal register published Tuesday says Southeast’s timber industry is shrinking.

Tongass National Forest-related logging and sawmilling sector fell from just shy of 200 jobs in the early 2000s to around 60 workers in 2018.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture argues restoring the 2001 Roadless Rule reflects the Biden administration’s priorities to build on the region’s tourism and fishing sectors.

The U.S. Forest Service has already frozen old growth timber sales under the current administration.

“…. a policy change for the Tongass can be made without significant adverse impacts to the timber and mining industries, while providing benefits to the recreation, tourism and fishing industries,” the notice reads.

Trout Unlimited’s Austin Williams in Anchorage says Alaska Gov. Bill Walker’s 2018 petition to exempt the Tongass National Forest from Roadless Rule protections put too much emphasis on commercial logging.

“It’s really time that we just move past that,” Williams said Tuesday. “And we recognize that there’s more value on the forest, keeping it and conserving it so that we can have, you know, fish and wildlife so that we can have tourism so that we can have cultural and traditional uses and to help fight climate change.”

The Roadless Rule would apply to about 9 million acres of the Tongass. But in practical terms, it could protect – at most – about 168,000 acres of old growth forest from clear cut.

Alaska elected leaders decry ‘federal overreach’

Gov. Mike Dunleavy and Alaska’s congressional delegation strongly supported the Trump administration’s exemption of Roadless Rule and has called the Biden administration’s posture “federal overreach.”

“We think that discretion for the forest to be managed should continue to be at the local level,” the governor’s chief of staff Randy Ruaro, who grew up in Ketchikan when it was a lumber town, told CoastAlaska. “We don’t need Washington, D.C. with a one-size-fits-all rule for every forest in the nation.”

A lawsuit by the state to block the Biden administration’s moves to bring back Roadless on the Tongass was dismissed last week by a federal appeals court.

A separate lawsuit by a coalition of tribes and ecological groups in favor of Roadless protections remains pending but could be rendered moot by the new change in direction.

Tuesday’s action opens up a two-month comment period required before the agency can move forward.

But even if the Roadless Rule is applied to the Tongass, it could be reversed again by a future administration. It would take an act of Congress for more permanent protections.

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The Tongass National Forest near Wrangell, Alaska, 2016. (Creative Commons photo by Rob Bertholf)

The Biden administration announced Friday the start date of its formal process to reinstate the Roadless Rule which protects about 9 million acres of Tongass National Forest.

“Restoring the Tongass’ roadless protections supports the advancement of economic, ecologic and cultural sustainability in Southeast Alaska in a manner that is guided by local voices,” U.S.  Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement.

Successive Alaska governors have opposed the Roadless Rule since the Clinton administration put it in place in 2001. It’s been an on-again, off-again situation since then, with legal battles and politics coming into play.

The most recent whip-saw came last year when the Trump administration exempted the Tongass from the rule.

Now, Vilsack, who oversees the Forest Service, is again calling a do-over. He says a two-month comment period will be its first step to reinstate the Roadless Rule. And it’s a similar announcement to one made earlier this year that the Trump-era rule would be reversed.

“I don’t know how many times Vilsack can announce the same thing and have it sound like news,” said Juneau attorney Jim Clark who has been coordinating a legal effort with some local governments and resource industries to preserve the Tongass exemption from the Roadless Rule.

He says the rhetoric around the rule’s protections of ancient forests is overblown.

“All this new exemption would do is open up 168,000 acres to timber harvest that wasn’t previously previously open,” he said Friday. “You wouldn’t know that from listening to the news, you think that all of the Tongass is going to be subject to clear cutting.”

And it’s true that while the rule change could affect more than 9 million acres, less than 170,000 acres of that would be old growth timber that could be logged under the current exemption.

Alaska state lawsuit rejected by federal Court of Appeals

Gov. Mike Dunleavy directed the state to join a lawsuit filed by resource industries. But the Court of Appeals dismissed the lawsuit earlier this week saying last year’s Roadless exemption is still in force and the case was moot. But the governor’s office says the fight isn’t over.

“I would anticipate a very big vigorous response to the the efforts to control Alaska out of Washington, D.C.,” said the governor’s chief of staff Randy Ruaro, who hails from the former logging boomtown of Ketchikan. He told CoastAlaska on Friday that the Biden administration’s freeze on old growth timber sales ignores laws on the books that direct the Forest Service to make timber available to industry.

“We dispute the discretion of the Secretary to arbitrarily decide from Washington, D.C., to not follow those federal statutes and impose the Roadless Rule on the Tongass,” Ruaro added.

But opinion polls and the public record from hearings show healthy support for the Roadless Rule both in Alaska and Outside.

In Southeast, it has defenders from growing non-extractive industries like commercial fishing and tourism. And tribes whose traditional homelands are in what’s now Tongass National Forest also railed against the Trump administration’s rollback both at hearings and in court filings.

Commercial logging of Tongass impacts subsistence

That’s because the legacy of clear-cutting and other development conflicted with rural residents’ hunting and fishing traditions.

Don Hernandez chairs the Regional Advisory Council on federal subsistence. It spent hours taking testimony over Roadless.

“It had just become pretty obvious over a long period of time that the areas of the Tongass that were most significantly impacted by past logging, were all suffering harms to subsistence uses,” he said from his home on Point Baker on the northern edge of Prince of Wales Island.

Hernandez is a commercial fisherman living on the Southeast Alaska island that’s almost completely blanketed by federal forestland. He says the council heard loud and clear that people were worried about more old growth logging.

“And to expand that into other areas of the Tongass that people have come to rely on to meet their subsistence needs was just not going to be acceptable,” Hernandez said.

To federal policymakers, the Tongass is seen less from a lens of conserving hunting and fishing grounds and more as a bulwark against climate change.

Tongass National Forest’s value as a carbon sink

The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Ken Rait, who worked on developing the Roadless Rule under the Clinton administration in the 1990s, says there’s a recognition by the Biden administration that forests need to be kept intact to sequester carbon.

“And you know, there’s nowhere in the U.S. where this is more important than the Tongass National Forest,” Rait said from Portland, Oregon. “And so the decision is the right one for the Tongass, but it’s also the right one for the nation as a whole.”

The resource extraction industry and many of Alaska’s elected leaders complain that red tape will further lock up federal lands to energy and mining.

But Rait says there are safeguards in the rule. The Forest Service can — and does — issue waivers for projects in the public interest. More than two dozen to date have been grated, he says.

“The view that this is a blanket rule that will stop any development whatsoever from occurring on the Tongass just has not been borne out by history of this issue,” Rait said.

How exactly the Biden administration plans to reverse the Trump administration policy still isn’t clear, says Clark, who served as chief of staff to former Governor Frank Murkowski, another strident Roadless Rule critic.

“It’s just a situation where we have to wait and see what the administration is actually doing,” he said.

November 23 is when the Biden administration rolls out its plan for bringing back the Roadless Rule. If the last go-around is any indication it’ll be a drawn out affair as it took more than two years to exempt the Tongass from the rule.

During those hearings, the federal government says more than 95% of people nationwide supported keeping the Roadless Rule in place.

The Trump administration overturned it anyway.

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The state ferry Malaspina sits in layup in Ward Cove near Ketchikan on May 10, 2020. DOT now admits it costs around $75,000 a month in moorage, utilities and insurance. (Eric Stone/KRBD)

The cost of keeping an idled Alaska ferry at the dock is nearly twice as much as publicly reported to the public and state lawmakers. That’s according to internal emails obtained by CoastAlaska in October, more than three months after they were first requested under state public records law.

First, the back story: The nearly 60-year-old ferry Malaspina was built the year JFK was assassinated.  It’s part of the marine highway’s original three sister ships designed to connect coastal communities with each other and the Lower 48. But the blue and gold mainline ferry hasn’t carried passengers in almost two years.

Governor Mike Dunleavy’s administration didn’t want to invest in the overhaul of its original engines from 1963. Estimates of fixing the ship run upwards of $70 million for steel work, new engines and restoring its Coast Guard certificate which lapsed while the ship’s been laid up at Ward Cove, a private dock north of Ketchikan. Yet officials have apparently been unable to decide whether it would be best to scuttle, sale or donate the ship.

As recently as August 31, the marine highway’s general manager told CoastAlaska that plans to offload the vessel remain “on a hold.”

A floating barracks on the Horn of Africa, a $625,000 cash offer from UAE

There’s been talk of commercial interest. But for the first time email records show the nature of the inquiries. One firm says it wants the Malaspina for anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia.

“We would be using it as a platform for housing personnel over in the Middle East,” Jonathan McConnell, president of Meridian Global Consulting, a security firm, based in Mobile, Alabama.

The Malaspina has staterooms with more than 230 passenger bunks that he says could be outfitted as sleeping quarters for security contractors that patrol shipping lanes to deter attacks from pirates off coast of Somalia, he said.

He provided recent email chains between his firm and state officials show that more than a year has gone by since he first expressed interest. He last reached out in July 29 with no answer.

“We felt largely stonewalled by them,” McConnell told CoastAlaska this week.  He says his firm is willing to pay fair market value — close to $1 million.

He added: “And our claims were not even entertained, it seemed like.”

Another prospective buyer in the United Arab Emirates, had made a cash offer via email for $625,000 for the Malaspina as-is, emails show.

Several prospective buyers have said the 408-foot ship has cash value. It could be sailed or towed on a temporary Coast Guard certificate to be repurposed or sold as scrap.

“There’s ample opportunities for use for that vessel,” McConnell said. “Laying it up and spending $40 grand a month for a layup is astronomical, frankly.”

Internal emails show surprise at high cost of mooring and insurance

That was the view of many inside DOT as well. Internal emails — some of them completely redacted — show officials were surprised and frustrated with the expense of keeping the ship.

One email from Mary Siroky, a recently retired deputy commissioner, brought to light that the price of insuring the vessel made the true monthly cost of keeping the Malaspina closer to $75,000.

That was nearly twice the figure cited by the agency as the cost of mooring the ship at Ward Cove.

“Its (sic) seems clear to me, even if we give the Mal away, we’re coming out ahead very quickly,” DOT’s deputy commissioner Rob Carpenter wrote in an August 2020 email in response.

That was the apparent view of inside the Dunleavy administration which earlier this year tried to gift the ship to the Philippines.

A May 20 letter to the consul general in San Francisco made it clear it could go either to the foreign government or a private operator in the country.

But talks between Alaska and the Philippines apparently had been going on for some time. Internal emails show that a month before the official offer bearing the governor’s signature was sent, an email from DOT’s Rob Carpenter had inquired whether that deal with Manilla was still on.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s acting Chief of Staff Randy Ruaro replied the same day directing DOT to hold off.

“Do not do anything with the Malaspina,” Ruaro wrote in an email. “The Philippine Consul is interested and working on it on their end. The boat is 60 years old. We don’t need to rush to do something with it this month or possibly next. Please stand down from issuing anything that would dispose of the vessel until you hear from us to go forward. We will let you know.”

Ruaro told CoastAlaska this week that the deal fell through when the Philippine government learned it would cost more than $50 million to rehab as a passenger ship.

“They said that would be out of their price range for wanting the boat,” he said in a phone interview.

Malaspina stored long-term in $400,000 sole-source contract

But even afterward, the emails up to June 23 showed no evidence that efforts to dispose of the ship resumed. Or that further direction was offered from above. And that by that time the state had signed a contract with the Ward Cove Group to store the ship.

“With only a single interested party, the state processed a Single Source Procurement to authorize the award of a new contract to Ward Cove Group for $402,084 annually,” DOT wrote in an email to CoastAlaska in June.

The Dunleavy administration earlier this year the fleet’s newest ships — two fast ferries — were sold to a Spanish firm for service in the Mediterranean. Selling surplus ships had been a key recommendation of the governor’s task force giving advice on the future of the fleet.

Tom Barrett, the retired Coast Guard admiral tasked with chairing the working group, says it’s apparent the Malaspina remains a drain on state coffers.

“Sell it, or scrap it,” Barrett said in an interview. “But you just don’t want to keep holding it there indefinitely. Also you’ve got insurance, but it’s a risk factor, it’s an old ship and it’s tied up at a dock.”

DOT confirmed to CoastAlaska that the cost of insuring the Malaspina ferry was approximately $420,000 a year in fiscal year 2021 and says that figure would go up “slightly” in fiscal year 2022. Add the roughly than $450,000 the state is paying in mooring fees and electricity and the cost is nearly double than it has previously admitted.

Overseers of Alaska Marine Highway System concerned

An April 21, 2021 email from DOT officials seeking guidance from Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s staff on how to proceed with the Malaspina. The governor’s office directed them to stand by while a deal to give away the ship to the Philippines was being worked out.

Those tasked with oversight of the ferry system say that’s a lot more than DOT even disclosed to lawmakers — which is particularly problematic given the marine highway system’s extremely tight budget that’s regularly a target of line-item vetoes.

“I’m very surprised to learn that the marine highway system is able to allocate this, this insurance cost across each vessel and that they never bothered to mention it to the legislature,” Sen. Jesse Kiehl, D-Juneau, told CoastAlaska. He’d been on the Senate Transportation Committee that had quizzed transportation officials on the carrying cost of idled vessels.

“We either need to get a federally funded project going and rehab this vessel to get it moving,” Kiehl said, “or we need to make a decision about disposing of the vessel as Alaskans.”

He added: “If the department’s not coming forward with all the facts, that ties the legislators’ hands of doing the job Alaskans sent us here to do.”

Ruaro, the governor’s chief of staff and a former senate aide to Sitka Republican Senator Bert Stedman, says he’s taken an interest in the Malaspina. He says he’ll be visiting Ketchikan to personally inspect the ship’s condition at Ward Cove.

He says he couldn’t immediately explain why there had been no answer to prospective buyers.

“I will step in and talk to DOT and we’ll make sure that any offers or expressions of interest are all reviewed and vetted for options,” Ruaro said.

Several emails from a DOT contractor reiterates there were several serious commercial offers for the Malaspina on the table, one from a Fiji ferry operator who had purchased similar vessels from B.C. Ferries.

Rob Carpenter, the deputy commissioner, underlined the scrutiny the agency was under as it faced tough decisions over the future of the ship.

“There is significant sentimental value for the vessel, so a public process and an evaluation of alternatives will likely be the best publicly perceived approach,” he wrote on April 21.

Since that email was sent, the idle and vacant Malaspina has cost the state of Alaska more than $400,000 in mooring fees, electricity and insurance to keep.

The post The Malaspina could be enlisted to fight global piracy. Instead the state’s paying $75,000 a month to tie it to a dock. appeared first on KRBD.