Alaska: Fish Waste Composting Offers Alternative to Landfill Disposal - In summer 2015 Gabe Dunham, Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory agent in Bristol Bay, established a site at the Dillingham landfill to compost fish waste generated by local subsistence harvesters. The 2,000 pounds of waste he collected last summer, mixed with soil, wood chips, and paper, has produced about 4,000 pounds of finished compost that will be distributed to gardeners in a few months.

Gabe Dunham, Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory agent in Bristol Bay
Photo courtesy Alaska Sea Grant Fisheries

The subsistence harvest of salmon is an intense occupation in Bristol Bay during the fishing season. Harvesters take fish heads, bones, and guts to the Dillingham landfill collection bin, where it attracts bears due to the strong odor. The waste currently is buried at the landfill. The compost project is a “proof of concept” which illustrates that fish waste can produce a usable soil amendment for local gardeners.

Dunham’s first step was to work with the City of Dillingham and state waste officials for approval of layout and use of a donated compost site in the landfill. He constructed compost piles using wood chips and topsoil along with fish waste, then covered the piles with a fleece material to regulate moisture and reduce odor. And he set up a temperature monitoring system at the site. The finished compost site includes a waste collection receptacle, a shelter for equipment, and a tractor for material handling. - More...
Thursday PM - jUly 21, 2016

Alaska: Illegally Dumped Fish Waste Invites Bears, Fines - As salmon surge into Alaska, anglers and dipnetters are reminded to properly dispose of fish waste. Discarding fish waste on public or private property or along roads, pull-offs and trails can attract bears into areas frequented by the public and result in fines ranging from $300 to $1,000.

In Anchorage, where nearly 300,000 people live in close proximity to bears, fish waste is discarded each summer in vacant lots, greenbelts, and along local streams and lakeshores. Anchorage area wildlife biologist Dave Battle believes many people who dump fish waste don’t realize the danger they create for others.

“Fish attract bears,” said Battle, “and bears are likely to defend those food sources.” - More...
Thursday PM - July 21, 2016

No one, in fact, lives at Cos Jacket anymore. There is a cabin-size cache with a tin roof. A few sagging log structures sit on a ledge overhanging the Tanana. One of the cabins has lost its door and front wall to the river. Its fallen ridgepole points like a finger over the Tanana.

With no noise except the whisper of breeze through poplar leaves, Cos Jacket has the Alaska ghost town feel. Across the state, there are dozens of similar places. Some, like Kokrines, Birches, Kallands and Grant Creek, are not far from Cos Jacket, which is about a half mile downstream from where the Cosna River dumps iced-tea water into the Tanana.

In a brief tour of Cos Jacket hastened by terrific mosquito density, Alison Beamer, Jason Clark and I notice the following: treeless areas that may have been gardens, a wooden barrel sealed with tar that probably arrived by steam ship and a nice iron cookstove under a collapsed roof. Jason points out a sign for a survey point on a tree, probably placed by an archeologist who mapped Cos Jacket. - More...
Thursday PM - July 21, 2016

Columns - Commentary

MICHAEL REAGAN: We Can't Elect a Liar in Chief - The stunt Ted Cruz pulled at the GOP convention in Cleveland Wednesday night may someday become known as his "Mistake on the Lake."

By making a point to not endorse Donald Trump in his speech and telling people to vote their "conscience" in the fall Cruz did his own political future and his conservative principles no favors.

He merely made himself look like a political brat and made a few million new enemies in the Republican Party who are unlikely to forgive him when 2020 comes around.

Cruz also broke one of my father's most important rules ---- always support the party's nominee.

My father did that at the bitterly fought Republican convention in 1976 after he narrowly failed to take the nomination away from President Ford.

In his speech before the convention my father didn't come right out and say "I endorse Gerald Ford" but he made it clear that he wanted Republicans to unite behind Ford and win the election, not vote their "conscience."

Cruz, for all his brains and Constitutional principles, didn't do the right thing for himself, his party or the country. - More...
Thursday PM - July 21, 2016

JOHN MICEK: The Reluctant Embrace of Trump - U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc) wanted to talk about a bunch of stuff during his primetime address at the Republican National Convention.

But Donald Trump wasn't high on that list. He barely mentioned him at all.

Instead, the ever-wonkish Ryan focused on the House GOP's legislative agenda.

He hammered home how important "a conservative governing majority" was to its chances and how Republicans needed the win the White House to ensure its success.

"There is a reason people in our country are disappointed and restless," he said. "If opportunity seems like it's been slipping away, that's because it has. And liberal progressive ideas have done exactly nothing to help. It's the latest chapter of an old story: "Progressives deliver everything except progress."

Ryan's embrace of Trump, with whom he has publicly differed even as he supports him, was reluctant at best.

"We Republicans have made a choice," Ryan said, seemingly trying to convince himself that it was a good idea - as much as he was the thousands of delegates crammed onto the floor of the Quicken Loans Arena here.

Ryan, at least, was animated. - More...
Thursday PM - July 21, 2016