Southeast Alaska: Fight to Stop Aerial Spraying of Pesticides Moves Forward - On Friday, September 29th, the quest for justice on Long Island moved one step closer to resolution according to Dave Sherman, a grassroots organizer for the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council. The opening brief in the lawsuit contesting the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation's (DEC) approval of Klukwan, Inc.'s plans to spray a cocktail of pesticides on Long Island from helicopter was filed, and the event has sparked concerned citizens to boost efforts to stop aerial spraying.

Top Stories U.S. News U.S. Politics Alaska Ketchikan Ketchikan: Tapping Hemi Memories, Chrysler Flexes Muscle Again By JERRY GARRETT NY Times - NEARLY 20 years ago, Barry Washington stumbled across an unusual used car, a 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A. He didn't know much about it, other than that it had cool racing stripes, wild orange paint and a motor born for racing. - Read this NY Times story... www.nytimes.com

Sherman said it is hoped that the significant concerns about the spraying's impact on areas where the Haida People have hunted, fished, and gathered for generations will prompt the government to revoke the permit and to issue new regulations that do not threaten the health and vitality of the subsistence way of life so many rural Alaskans depend on.

"Everyone knows that the Haida People have strong cultural ties to Long Island. Many of the families in Hydaburg came from Long Island, and we continue to use the beaches for family gatherings, hunting, and berry picking," said Adrian LeCornu, President of the Hydaburg Cooperative Association. "We are unwilling to tolerate the poisoning of our traditional food gathering areas and our rivers, lakes, and oceans. It is great to see other tribes, from Yakutat to Ketchikan, unite in their opposition to this plan to dump chemicals on important traditional hunting and gathering areas."

Klukwan, Inc. plans to use a helicopter to spray approximately 2,000 acres of clearcut land on Long Island, near Prince of Wales Island in southern Southeast Alaska. If Klukwan, Inc. plans go forward, this would be the first time aerial spraying would be allowed under new state regulations. This could set the stage for other operations throughout Alaska said Sherman. It is a quick and dirty attempt at suppressing red alder, a plant that quickly grows after an area is clearcut, to help spruce recolonize faster said Sherman.

Skeptics of the spraying plan say alder adds nitrogen, a nutrient plants need to grow that is scarce in Southeast Alaska, to the soil and may help the health of the forest. Alder also has commercial value as high-quality flooring, furniture, and other wood products.

"It's not possible to say that these chemicals won't get in our foods. How can we trust DEC to make the right decision about our way of life?" said Viola Burgess, a Hydaburg resident. "Tribal communities throughout Southeast Alaska depend on our ability to hunt and gather traditional foods. Not only is this important to us culturally, but these foods are increasingly important to us as the cost of fuel and other goods continues to rise. " - More...
Thursday AM - October 05, 2006

National: How a U.S. attack on Iran might unfold By MATTHEW B. STANNARD - A B-2A Spirit thunders down the aging airstrip of Whiteman Air Force Base and takes off, curving east over the rolling forests of Missouri.

It flies past the empty silos where Minuteman nuclear missiles slumbered through all the long years of the Cold War, past the nation's capital, across the Atlantic Ocean, to where the first of three giant KC-135R Stratotankers it will encounter in the long night waits with fresh fuel.

More than 19 hours later, the bomber slices above the Karkas mountains of central Iran and releases a 4,500-pound "bunker buster" over a complex of buildings guarded by aging missiles and obsolete guns. Explosions echo across the countryside. - More...
Wednesday AM - October 04, 2006

Alaska: Most Alaskans say global warming is happening now By DON HUNTER - Four of every five Alaskans believe the Earth is getting warmer, a new poll suggests, and most of them think global climate change is transforming the landscape as the summer Arctic ice pack shrinks, forests burn and fall storms batter coastal villages.

Could be good for tourism, though.

Those are some of the findings from a lengthy survey of more than 1,000 residents across the state, conducted by pollster and public opinion researcher Jean Craciun between May 9 and June 29 and financed by a grant from the National Science Foundation. The poll, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, was commissioned by an Oregon research group that received the grant to study how people perceive and respond to risks.

According to survey results released this week, concern about climate change in Alaska spans geographic and political divides. - More...
Wednesday - October 04, 2006

National: Deep faith helps Amish make sense of an act defying reason By CAITLIN CLEARY - The idea of forgiveness is at the heart of the Amish culture and belief system. It is also the lens through which many in the Amish community are viewing the tragedy that unfolded Monday inside a one-room schoolhouse in Lancaster County.

Like everyone else, Amish people are struggling to come to grips with the shootings of 10 Amish schoolgirls - five of whom died - by milk-truck driver Charles Carl Roberts IV, who then took his own life. But if the Amish's deep faith in God and strict adherence to biblical principles of pacifism set them apart from the mainstream American culture, they also help the Amish make sense of an act that defies reason. - More...
Wednesday - October 04, 2006

Southeast Alaska: Forest Service Issues Second Decision for the Scott Peak Project Area; Another 8.3 million board feet made available - Southeast Alaska wood products businesses will have another 8.3 million board feet of high-quality Tongass National Forest timber available under the Scott Peak Project Area decision, Petersburg District Ranger Patty Grantham announced today. The Scott Peak Project Area is located on northeast Kupreanof Island. All harvest units are in roaded areas allocated specifically for timber production.

The decision authorizes reconstruction of a mile of existing National Forest System Road and construction of about 2 miles of temporary road to facilitate the harvest. The decision also adjusts the size, location and configuration of the small old-growth habitat reserve within the Scott Peak Project Area so that it meets the criteria specified for such areas in the forest plan. About 565 acres of productive old growth will be added to the reserve; this and other changes will improve its quality significantly. The Forest's system of old-growth reserves is an important component of the forest plan's overall conservation strategy. - More...
Wednesday - October 04, 2006

Viewpoints Opinions/Letters WHITECLIFF NEEDS SO WE CAN VOTE YES By Pete Ellis - Wednesday Proud of the No voters! By Rick Watson - Wednesday Call Dave! By Charlotte Glover - Wednesday Seniors Still need a New Building By Dan McQueen - Wednesday Some words of Thanks By Gregory Vickrey - Wednesday An Uninvited Houseguest By Kim Butler - Wednesday Democrat hypocrisy is a joke in the Mark Folley affair! By Mark Neckameyer - Wednesday One Nation Under Greed by Martha Leftwich - Wednesday Yes on Proposition 1 and Proposition 2 By Dawn Rauwolf - Monday White Cliff -- well-researched, broadly-supported, and timely By Sara Lawson - Monday Yes for White Cliff Center By Rebecca A. Bowlen - Monday White Cliff YES! By Forrest Gibson - Monday White Cliff Worth Saving By Penny Pedersen - Monday White Cliff Center is a great idea! By Margaret Antonsen - Monday Return of the Grand Lady By Judith Green - Monday Vote Ed Plute for Mayor By Don Hoff Jr. - Monday Tribe By Harris Skillie Jr. - Monday Borough Assembly Elections By Brian Stewart - Monday White Cliff Yes By Vernon Keller - Saturday White Cliff By Walt Bolling - Saturday REAL ESTATE -101 By Terry Wanzer - Saturday No to Sales Tax Increase to Fund the White Cliff Renovation By Samuel Bergeron - Saturday Yes for White Cliff Center By Anna Annicelli- Saturday School board candidate "funding" By Penny Marksheffel - Saturday White Cliff Remodel - A poor choice! By Rick Watson - Saturday Elections By Douglas Thompson- Saturday Options By Penny Eubanks- Saturday Is it Still America? By Paul Hovik- Saturday Where is Sarah Today? By Meagan Foster- Saturday Fog on Ward Lake By Karen Hanson Pitcher- Saturday Where is Phase I White Cliff Report? By John Beck- Saturday Vote NO White Cliff By Jackie Williams- Saturday Consolidation & White Cliff: Both are bad for the Ketchikan Taxpayers! By Dan McQueen- Saturday Lost Souls By Don Hoff Jr.- Saturday Own Opinion? By Harris F. Skillie. Jr. - Saturday More Viewpoints/ Letters Publish A Letter Political Cartoonists Political Cartoons Ketchikan City Police Report AK Troopers Daily Dispatch Arts This Week Today's Forecast Ketchikan Weather Data Current AK Weather Map Classifieds Auto-post your ad in the proper category, or email your ad & photos to ads@sitnews.us  Classifieds: Categories Announcements /Services For Sale Garage Sales Homes / Apartments Pets Wanted SitNews Archives October 2006 Click on the date to read the stories published on that day. S M T W T F S 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31         More Front Page Archives

Dave Kiffer: Hear That Lonesome Whistle - Several years ago I was working at KRBD and I got a pretty funny phone call from one of the federal agencies that deal with transportation safety. I can't remember which acronym it used.

On the line was a nice young woman asking me if we had run the public service announcement they had sent a couple of weeks earlier. We usually got somewhere between 20 and 30 different national or statewide PSAs in the mail each week (no internet then) and rarely ran more than a couple of the national ones.

I didn't remember the particular PSA until she started talking about the importance of railroad crossing safety. Then the light bulb went off.

I remembered laughing with the rest of the staff about how idiotic it would be to promote railroad crossing safety in a community that had no railroads or railroads (I was disregarding the small industrial railroad at the pulp mill, I was pretty sure the folks in Ward Cove were promoting safety around that one.).

I tried to explain to her that we just weren't in "railroad country" around these here parts, but she would hear none of it. - More...
Wednesday PM - October 04, 2006

Bonnie Erbe: The tragedy of gun deaths grows - Like most Americans, I've become regrettably inured to the daily reports of gun violence and gun death in this country. Oh, I know, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." But this week's attempted slaughter of 10 Amish schoolgirls (as of this writing, five had died) hit me in a place the National Rifle Association had not yet calloused over with the propaganda it so routinely blares through a well-financed bullhorn of a public relations machine.

Why the gunfire in Nickel Mines, Pa., struck so hard, I'll never know. I guess the visual picture of Charles Carl Roberts segregating out children by gender, binding the girls' feet with wire and plastic ties, then shooting them execution-style, gut-punched me in a place I thought I'd toughened off and hidden away. I thought my emotions were was bullet-proofed by the daily horrors we Americans are forced to stomach in the name of "Second Amendment freedoms."

Perhaps Roberts' psychotic ramblings about being "angry at God" touched off an unexpected reaction. Perhaps it was the laundry list of weaponry he brought into a one-room, unguarded, rural schoolhouse in a bucolic setting - a shotgun, a 9mm semi-automatic pistol and a stun gun - that seemed so insane. According to police, he also had 600 rounds of ammunition, a hammer, a hacksaw, pliers, wire, eyebolts, rolls of tape and various paraphernalia, all of which seemed so beyond the pale. How can a milk-truck driver acquire such an arsenal in a country that's supposedly free? - More...
Wednesday PM - October 04, 2006

John Hall: Democrats' foe could be apathy - Without a doubt, the Capitol page sex scandal is enormously damaging to the Republicans and the House leadership. But for Democrats to take advantage of this mess and win back control of Congress in November, they will have to do more than shout "Had enough?" while waiting for more gifts to fall from the sky.

The negative posture has been an inviting one for the party, made possible by the unusual number of blunders by the Republicans in the last several months. These include the Jack Abramoff lobbying affair, the "Scooter" Libby leak investigation and now this - now-former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., caught brazenly sending sleazy e-mails to underage male pages, which House leaders brushed aside like some secret religious order when the matter was first brought to their attention last summer.

Some Republican members report that anger at the leadership's initial indifference to the pages' treatment is the first thing constituents asked them about when they got home. - More...
Wednesday PM - October 04, 2006

Dale McFeatters: A historic monument in the making - Every generation builds its great monuments, hoping that they will stand testament to history.

The Egyptians had the pyramids; the Romans, their coliseums and great aqueducts; the Europeans, their soaring cathedrals; and in our own country such generational monuments as Mount Rushmore, Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Interstate Highway System.

And now, thanks to Congress, our generation is getting its own monument - the Great U.S.-Mexico Border Fence. And a fine fence it will be, one we can be proud of - a double-layered fence 15 feet high of metal plates and wire mesh with lights, cameras, sensors and microphones to detect the telltale rustle of Latin Americans determined to mow our grass.

The fence will cost $1.2 billion, meaning we can proudly take foreign visitors there, point to our creation baking in the desert heat and say, "See that fence there? It cost $1.2 billion. Bet you don't have anything like it back in Norway."

The fence will cover 700 miles of our 2,000-mile border with Mexico, which is a little like buying a 7-foot ladder to paint a 20-foot ceiling, but I think we can agree we don't want to hear that kind of negative talk. - More...
Wednesday PM - October 04, 2006