Ketchikan: On Thursday, March 23rd from 5:00-6:00pm, Representative Dan Ortiz will be holding a teleconferenced constituent meeting. It will be hosted by the District 36 Legislative Information Offices (LIOs), and interested persons should visit their LIO at the designated time to participate. All are welcome to attend. Ketchikan’s LIO is located at 1900 First Ave, Suite 310. Wrangell’s LIO is located at 215 Front Street in the Kadin Building. Photo of the Month Ketchikan: Public Meetings Ketchikan: Upcoming Events Historical Ketchikan June Allen Dave Kiffer Louise B. Harrington Ketchikan Weather Ketchikan's Forecast Ketchikan's Historic Weather Nat Weather Service KTN Ketchikan Tides & Currents Search the News Ketchikan Alaska Sitnews RSS widget

Ketchikan: KETCHIKAN PULP MILL CLOSED 20 YEARS AGO By DAVE KIFFER - Twenty years ago this week, the hammer fell on the community of Ketchikan.

Ketchikan Pulp Mill
Photo courtesy United States Forest Service Photograph Collection

On March 25, 1997, Louisiana Pacific announced the closure of the Ketchikan Pulp Mill, the primary engine of the Ketchikan economy for more than 40 years. The final bale of pulp - which is now on display at the Southeast Alaska Discovery Center - rolled off the production line that same day.

The announcement was not a complete surprise, given the fact that the financial and political realities of operating a large pulp mill in the Tongass National Forest had changed dramatically in the 1980s and 1990s. Louisiana Pacific itself had estimated that it would take more than $200 million in upgrades to bring the nearly half-century-old facility up to current production and environmental standards.

But, for a community that had hummed year round for decades on the strength of the timber industry, the closure announcement was a shock to the system.

The closure immediately cost the community 514 year-round jobs and caused a ripple effect that was estimated at least 500 other direct jobs lost. Untold other job losses occurred as retail sales dropped across the spectrum. One of the local shipping companies estimated its revenues dropped 20 percent in the first month. Ketchikan's housing market flooded and prices dropped accordingly.

When many of the former millworkers, and their families, left the community to find jobs elsewhere the population dipped, from a high of nearly 15,000 in the mid 1990s, to just about 13,000 in 2003. Local schools were hit harder when the number of school children decreased by 25 percent.

But even these drops were not as big as had once been predicted. State surveys taken in the late 1980s had estimated that Ketchikan would lose more than 35 percent of its population and half of its school population if the timber industry collapsed. By the time the end came in 1997, the industry had already been retrenching for nearly a decade and therefore the blow wasn't as hard as it could have been.

In announcing the closure, LP also reached an agreement with the federal government over long-standing timber supply issues. As part of that agreement, the company received $147 million and the right to an additional 300 million board feet of timber for its two remaining sawmills in the region. It was thought, at the time, that the sawmills could keep the timber industry alive long enough for another long term timber harvesting plan to be developed, but by the time that plan - which involved switching from old growth timber to areas that had already been logged and had grown back - was developed, more than 15 years had passed.

There was also another industry, tourism, that was growing rapidly and would quickly replace timber as the town's major industry, although many of the tourism jobs would be seasonal rather than year-round like the pulp mill related jobs. In a sense, although Ketchikan's overall economy eventually rebounded, it was now more seasonal, as in the pre-timber past, when mining and fishing were the major industries. In 1996, slightly more than 300,000 cruise visitors came to Ketchikan between April and October. In 2017, that number will top 1 million.

Although the timing of the mill closure caught some in the community by surprise, there had been local efforts including the ill-fated "2004" effort to get the community talking about what it would look like if Louisiana Pacific didn't get a renewal of its 50 year timber contract and closed the mill. Unfortunately, that "2004" process came to naught when the Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly decided to prematurely end the process before recommendations could be made.

When the Alaska Pulp Corporation closed its pulp mill in Sitka in 1994, it was clear that the clock was ticking against the industry. US. Senator Ted Stevens pushed the US Forest Service to begin work on an extension of the Ketchikan Pulp contract and when that didn't happen, Stevens, then head of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee arranged for a payment of $110 million to go to Alaska to help offset the economic losses in Southeast. Approximately $30 million was to go to specific industry related measures while $70 million would be distributed between the communities most effected by industry closures, Sitka, Wrangell (which hosted a large sawmill) and Ketchikan.

Originally, the federal government - through the Department of Agriculture - planned to set up a grant program that would take requests from the communities and then decide which ones to fund. But the Ketchikan Gateway Borough sued the federal government, demanding that the money be released directly to the communities, as directed by the Steven's legislation. - More...
Wednesday PM - March 22, 2017

Alaska: New Proposal Would Transform Education in Alaska - A bill to transform Alaska’s education system by increasing access to education for Alaska’s students by allowing them to enroll in virtual courses statewide through a virtual education consortium has been proposed. The measure represents the culmination of numerous joint meetings between the Alaska House and Senate aimed at finding new ways to improve academic outcomes for students.

“Every Alaskan student matters and deserves a high quality education,” said Sen. Hughes. “SB 96 will help districts provide that education by giving them the tools to do more with less.”

Teachers would be required to receive professional development training specific to virtual education, which would be offered at no extra cost to the districts.

Senate Bill 96, sponsored by the Senate Education Committee, also offers incentives to districts to pool their resources by providing grants for cooperative agreements with other districts, other government agencies, businesses and non-profit organizations.

“Direct spending in the classroom correlates with better academic results,” said Sen. Hughes. “This bill will help districts reduce administrative overhead costs in order to focus money on the classroom.” - More...
Wednesday PM - March 22, 2017

“This is the first bill I have signed into law from the 30th Alaska Legislature, and I am grateful legislators have joined me in prioritizing such a critical issue,” Governor Walker said. “We are saving lives with this law. If administered in time, naloxone gives overdose victims a chance to survive, ultimately reducing the number of untimely deaths caused by opioid and heroin addiction. While there is still a great deal of work needed to combat this epidemic, this legislation will provide first-responders and community organizations across the state with greater access to naloxone.”

The Alaska House of Representatives unanimously approved Senate Bill 91 to extend the current disaster declaration for the opioid epidemic in Alaska. The bill gives Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer needed statutory authority to proceed with the planned statewide response to the opioid epidemic.

“Opioid abuse is tearing apart families and endangering public safety across Alaska,” said House Health and Social Services Committee Chair Rep. Ivy Spohnholz (D-Anchorage), who carried the bill on the floor of the Alaska House. “Governor Walker took the bold first step to declare a disaster declaration for the ongoing epidemic but he needed our help to continue the coordinated statewide response. The House and Senate recognized the urgency of passing this bill, which is why it went from introduction to final passage in 11 days. I want to thank every member of the House and Senate for recognizing the importance of this bill by helping expedite its consideration.” - More...
Wednesday PM - March 22, 2017

COLUMNS - COMMENTARY

A pencil appears to be a very simple, inexpensive tool. Read, however, explains that its production is incredibly complex.

The standard pencil begins when a cedar tree is cut down. Ropes and gear tug it onto the bed of a truck or a rail car.

But lots of people and skills are needed to mine ore and refine steel to produce the saws, axes and motors that fell that cedar tree.

Lots of people are needed to grow hemp, then transform it, through various stages, into the strong rope that pulls the tree onto a truck.

The logs are shipped to a mill and cut into slats. The slats are kiln-dried, tinted, waxed, then kiln-dried again.

How many skills were needed to produce the tint and the kilns, Read wondered. What about the electric power? What about the belts, motors and other parts at the mill?

The cedar slats are shipped to a factory. A complex machine cuts a groove into each. A second lays the lead into every other slat's groove. Glue is applied. Two slats are sealed together as one, then cut into lengths that form pencils. - More...
Wednesday PM - March 22, 2017

ARTHUR MARTIN: What Ever You Do, Don’t Go to College! - As spring blooms (or in SE rains) into view, high school seniors around the country scramble trying to decide what they will do in the next chapter of their lives after receiving their high school diplomas.

If the Generation Z seniors are a reflection of my own experience, they are currently pushed very strongly by their mothers, school counselors, teachers, pastors, Hollywood, news anchors, magazine ads, and virtually everyone else “to go to college and better yourself.”

If you express any doubts about college and perhaps suggest alternative options like joining the military or just taking a year off from school you are immediately shut down with a myriad of excuses. I know I was. The public pressure and the shaming of not going to college was so strong that I, dear reader, made the single worst decision in my life.

I went to college.

I still have nightmares of the sleepless nights writing essays, failing tests, and filling in multiple-choice bubbles during exams. That is nothing however, to the true nightmare of graduating from college with a worthless degree and tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. - More...
Wednesday PM - March 22, 2017