On Saturday, the Alaska Beacon will mark the second anniversary of its May 11, 2022, launch. Just like this week, the launch week was the last of the legislative session, and the Beacon connected from Day One with Alaskans thirsty to know more about their state government.

Since then, the four-person staff has made it their business to keep Alaskans informed about what Alaska politicians are doing and why they are doing it. 

There’s been a lot of talk about the future effect of artificial intelligence on news and other industries. The Beacon looks forward to making use of AI tools. 

But AI-driven computers don’t know which public records are most vital to track down. They don’t ask elected officials questions they don’t want asked. And they won’t put in the time getting to know Alaskans across the state. 

The Alaska Beacon does and will continue to do so.

The Beacon journalists aren’t the only Alaskans that make the Beacon happen. The readers who value independent and illuminating state-level journalism support the Beacon’s work through donations.

Reader donations assist in purchasing the equipment the Beacon staff needs to bring readers to the scene of government action, including the photo lens reporter James Brooks uses inside the Capitol in Juneau.

“That’s the lens I use every day to document the Legislature, and without that, I’d be reduced to using my own cell phone to take pictures,” he said. 

In a state where internet connections even in some urban areas can be slow, Beacon supporters have also made a difference. In the past two weeks, a mobile hotspot device allowed Beacon reporters in Juneau to report and file stories quickly. 

“We’ve used it to connect to the internet when cruise ship traffic has made the connection we have in the Capitol too slow to work on our stories,” senior reporter Claire Stremple said.

The support of people inside and outside Alaska make it possible for Beacon reporters to report on this massive state. For example, Claire recently visited Ben Eielson Junior-Senior High School near North Pole to report first-hand about the impact of the school’s impending closure on the community. 

And reporter Yereth Rosen has made multiple trips to Utqiagvik, Fairbanks and Juneau, allowing the Beacon to have three reporters in the Capitol during crucial periods of the legislative session. Experience has taught her how vital it is to report in person. 

“It’s so expensive, but you have to go — there’s no substitute for being there in person and seeing things on the ground. And especially in rural areas,” Yereth said. “You know, you can’t do everything by phone, you have to actually see things. You have to … see permafrost crumbling; to really understand that you have to talk to people in person, and we can’t always expect them to come to you. And Alaska is not like a state where we can just go drive and take a day trip, and see all we need to see and come back home.”

Reader support doesn’t just help inform those who visit the Beacon’s website. Many readers find Beacon content in other news sources they trust, including daily and weekly newspapers, as well as public media and radio stations. When the Beacon staff does its reporting, it helps other news organizations stretch their reporting to accomplish more. 

Undergirding the Alaska Beacon’s service to Alaska is the support of its national parent nonprofit, States Newsroom. The organization recently marked having a presence in all 50 states, including 39 outlets like the Beacon directly operated by States Newsroom and 11 partners that share their content. 

Just next week, Alaska Beacon readers will be able to learn about the last actions of this legislative session. And for the six months after that, the Beacon staff will help readers understand 50 legislative races, two statewide ballot measures and a U.S. House race that’s expected to be hotly contested.

Please consider donating to support the Alaska Beacon. And spread the word about the value of subscribing to The Morning Light, the Beacon’s free daily email newsletter. 

With reader support, the success of the Alaska Beacon’s last two years can continue for the next two years and many more beyond. 

Thank you, 

Andrew Kitchenman, editor-in-chief

Communities along the Lower Kuskokwim River flooded this week as a spring breakup ice jam backed up water to the highest levels reported in nearly 20 years, authorities said.

By Friday, water surrounded homes in low-lying areas of Bethel, which normally sees only minimal flooding. Most of Kwethluk was inundated and floodwaters had cut off access to the airport in Napaskiak.

The ice jam and snowmelt-related flooding prompted Gov. Mike Dunleavy to issue a state disaster declaration for communities along the Lower Kuskokwim on Friday that state officials say will help reimburse communities for emergency protective costs and open up financial assistance to individuals.

Water levels in Bethel this week reached their highest point since 2005, according to hydrologist Dave Streubel, with the Alaska-Pacific River Forecast Center.

People in that hub community generally gather at the edge of the river during spring breakup to watch the ice flow and enjoy the rising temperatures, said city clerk Lori Strickler. But this year, water had spilled over the sea wall by Friday and city officials asked everyone to avoid the riverfront for safety reasons.

About a foot of standing water was reported around a number of houses in two subdivisions Friday, she said. Several gravel and dirt roads were also washed out, cutting off access for some residents.

City officials on Friday were monitoring water and sewer lines for any damage from high water, Strickland said. Officials had not set up an emergency shelter, but they asked residents to check with friends and family if they felt they needed to leave their homes.

In Kwethluk, about 11 miles upriver from Bethel, water levels rose more quickly than they have in recent years and caught the village off guard, acting city manager Samuel Nicori said. By Friday, most of the village was inundated with water, he said. The sewage system was shut down due to flooding and the airstrip access road was underwater, according to a state update.

“We have limited mobility throughout the community,” Nicori said. “So basically people with waders and canoes are going throughout the community.”

A water pump damaged by ice earlier in the week was repaired by Friday, Nicori said. Bottled water was flown into the village, according to Jeremy Zidek, a spokesman for the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

Tuluksak, about 26 miles upriver from Kwethluk, saw floodwater inundate its drinking water source pond earlier in the week and is also dealing with water issues, Bethel public radio station KYUK reported. Floodwaters there have receded.

In Napaskiak, downriver from Bethel by about 6 miles, floodwaters also cut off access to the airport, Streubel said.

Significant amounts of snow and ice on the river this year contributed to the higher waters and flooding, said Zidek.

The situation was worsened by an ice dam that formed near the mouth of the Kuskokwim River, Streubel said.

“There’s some in-place shore ice, ocean ice, so to speak,” he said Friday. “So it’s got to push its way far enough downriver into essentially the Kuskokwim River delta before the water level will drop.”

Streubel said he was hopeful that would happen in the next few days.

The weather service issued a flood warning for the Kuskokwim River, including near Bethel and Kwethluk, until Monday.

Hydrologists and state officials are also monitoring flooding conditions in Interior Alaska along the Yukon River this week, Zidek said.

• • •

What in Alaska counts as a village? When it comes to state money for drinking water improvements, the definition can be fraught.

In a close vote, the Alaska House on Wednesday passed a bill that would add six road-system communities to the list of rural communities that qualify for the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Village Safe Water program.

Technically, the measure, House Bill 114, would expand the definition of “village” as used by the program, to include communities of up to 1,500 people from the current 1,000 threshold. It would also allow unincorporated census-designated places to be added to the list of eligible villages.

If it wins final passage in the Senate, the measure would expand the list of program-eligible villages to include Talkeetna, Sutton-Alpine and Buffalo Soapstone in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Funny River on the Kenai Peninsula, Tok in the Interior and Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope.

The bill’s consideration comes at a time when abundant federal money, much of it made available through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, is flowing into Alaska for rural water and sanitation upgrades. Much of that funding comes to the Village Safe Water program through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Alaska Native Villages and Rural Communities Water Grant Program.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake, said the Village Safe Water program has done much over the years to improve Alaskans’ lives and that more Alaskans should have access to its benefits.

The program “stands as a beacon for our commitment to public health and environmental stewardship providing essential aid to upgrade sanitation and water facilities in rural areas,” McCabe said in floor debate.

Four years after the last federal census, the Village Safe Water program is now due for a revision in the way qualifying villages are defined, McCabe said. The last such revision was in 2011, after the 2010 Census, he noted.

The 22-18 vote followed floor debate that was emotional at times.

Opponents said they worried that adding the six road-accessible communities to the village list would put them in competition for funds with truly needy and remote rural communities.

“There are a number of communities that are struggling – struggling to get basic water infrastructure, that don’t have access to the road system, that don’t have the ability to take an hour and half drive to Fred Meyer’s, that have to deal with a number of insanely high grocery prices, that have to deal with realities that are completely departed  from the rest of the state,” said Rep. CJ McCormick, D-Bethel. His rural district encompasses Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta villages that are poverty-stricken, remote and, in many cases, lacking basic water and sanitation services.

Rep. Alyce Galvin, D-Anchorage, recounted a visit she made to a Tanana Chiefs Conference event where she learned about the dire water and sanitation needs in remote Indigenous communities in Alaska’s Interior. Solutions for those villages could be delayed if new communities compete for program funds, she said.

“We’re looking at making a change that will have a deep effect on many Alaskans who have been waiting a long time for their share of the pie. What I mean by that is, there are a finite number of dollars going to water and sewer projects,” she said. In contrast to the truly rural areas, which are remote, challenged by environmental conditions and high costs, for communities closer to urban areas, “there are boroughs, there are municipalities, there are ways we can put together money,” she said.

Rep. Ashey Carrick, D-Fairbanks, said the six communities that would be added include some connected to very large cities. Talkeetna, for example, is an hour’s drive north of the fastest-growing urban communities and less than two hours’ drive from Anchorage, she said.

“And then there’s Prudhoe Bay. I almost have to laugh at that one because I’m not quite sure how an industrial population technically connected by a haul road used to haul a huge variety of goods and services up the road is technically a village,” she said.

Others criticism focused on what opponents said was a lack of vetting by the public and by rural-serving organizations. Rep. Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, named the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and the Alaska Federation of Natives as organizations that needed to be better consulted.

“If this measure doesn’t make it through this year – and I have my doubts – let’s have this conversation. Let’s do it right. Let’s bring everybody to the table,” he said.

Bill supporters, however, said an expansion of eligibility for the Village Safe Water program is justified and that water and sanitation needs extend beyond rigid geographic boundaries or classifications.

Rep. Mike Cronk, R-Tok/Northway, reeled off a list of villages in his sprawling Interior district that are on the road system but are officially classified as villages and are facing some of the same water and sewer problems that exist off the road system: Northway, Tetlin, Tanacross, Dot Lake, Eagle, Chitina, Tazlina, Copper Center, Gulkana, Mentasta, Gakona, Minto, Circle and Tanana. And he added in larger communities with significant Native populations: Kenny Lake, Nenana, Manley, Central and his hometown of Tok. Tok would be among the six communities added to the list of qualified villages.

He grew up in Northway, he noted, and the first house he bought was a cabin without running water. “I had two kids, and I hauled water, and we used an outhouse. So I know how that feels,” he said.

Rep. Frank Tomaszewski, R-Fairbanks, another bill supporter, said that even in Fairbanks, Alaska’s second-largest city, there are hundreds and possibly thousands of people who live in “dry cabins,” homes without running water.

House Majority Leader Dan Saddler, R-Eagle River, recounted 1990s-era pledges of former Gov. Tony Knowles to “put the honey bucket in the museum,” a slogan that the Democratic governor used to refer to retiring the plastic-bag-lined buckets that rural residents sometimes use as toilets.

“Over the last 30 years we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars and untold hours of labor to do that, using federal money, using state money, using state labor, to the undisputed benefit of Alaskans,” he said. There has been “tremendous progress” over the years through the Village Safe Water program, he said. “This measure, I believe, seeks to extend the benefit of that program simply to more Alaskans,” he said.

McCabe, in his wrap-up pitch for the bill, pointed out that villages getting grants through the state program must pass through a qualification test that assigns scores.

And he defended the idea of Village Safe Water grants for Talkeetna, a community about 60 miles up the highway from his hometown of Big Lake.

“People are stopping alongside the road on the way to Talkeetna to their dry cabin in the middle of the winter in the dark, when it’s icy and cold, to fill up their water jugs,” he said. “I’m wondering why Talkeetna can’t have some part of the pie that we talked about, that the representative from Anchorage talked about.”

The bill is now on track to be considered by the Senate, though it may get a reconsideration vote in the House.

Originally published by the Alaska Beacon, an independent, nonpartisan news organization that covers Alaska state government.