45 Years of TAPS

In this issue, she lends her insights on the Minerals Security Partnership, an international agreement with the goal to catalyze investment from government and the private sector in minerals projects that adhere to high environmental, social, and governance standards. In theory, it should be good for Alaska, which is rich in several critical minerals, has a long record of responsible mining, and is well positioned geographically to deliver minerals around the world. “More Questions Than Answers” provides more information on the Minerals Security Partnership, including why that theory may or may not play out.

o take part in the global economy, communication is key. Yet parts of Alaska still lack access to high-speed internet or to any internet at all.

To help improve access, the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), provides $42.5 billion to expand high-speed internet access by funding planning, infrastructure deployment, and adoption programs in all fifty states, Puerto Rico, and other US territories. The funds will be administered to each location by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) newly established Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth.

irtual reality (VR) was supposed to be the next big thing in the early ‘90s. Then the World Wide Web happened, and VR was sidelined for almost thirty years. Now, the technology to immerse users in a simulated setting is the next, next big thing, rebranded in some quarters as the “metaverse,” which blends innovations in hardware, networking, and artificial intelligence (AI).

VR’s sleeker and more pragmatic sister technology, augmented reality (AR), blends digital elements into the real world; it projects information on top of what the user is already seeing. The most familiar example is the 2016 game Pokémon Go, which superimposed imaginary creatures onto the environment viewed through a smartphone screen. AR, VR, and AI have since graduated beyond their initial uses in gaming and entertainment to much broader business applications.

wo years ago, I was sitting in the tiny room where I had worked for nearly a quarter century. My entire professional radio career was spent in the newsroom at KENI in Anchorage. At that point in 2020, the studios in the Dimond Center were practically empty as a COVID-19 precaution; only essential personnel worked at the station in person. I had a badge that said I, as a news reporter, was essential.

My audience was relatively deserted, too. Radio stations depend so much on drivers listening in their cars that COVID-19 crashed ratings by keeping people at home.

he Three Bears Alaska grocery and retail chain began as an unassuming roadside store and has blossomed over the decades.

“We’re definitely an Alaska company,” says Three Bears’ CEO Dave Weisz. “We started in Alaska. Our employees are all Alaskan. We will be moving up in the next few years in the range of about 1,200 employees to staff all the new locations we have going on.”

conomists consider resource extraction to be a primary activity. Without raw materials, the secondary sector (manufacturing) would twiddle its thumbs in idle mills and factories, and without workers supporting those two, the tertiary sector (services) would pass the same dollars around among themselves until the bills wore out.

n June, the United States and other countries established the Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) to bolster critical mineral supply chains. The goal, according to the announcement made at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention, is to ensure that critical minerals are produced, processed, and recycled in a manner that supports the ability of countries to realize the full economic development benefit of their geological endowments.

ix. The question “How many large mines are operating in Alaska?” can be answered with one hand plus an extra finger. Six large-scale mineral producers collectively employed nearly 2,700 workers in 2019. Alaska’s mines produced nearly $4 billion worth of non-fuel minerals in 2021, from vast quantities of zinc and lead to precious gold and silver. More projects are lined up to join them, aiming to enlarge the statewide mineral portfolio to a second or third handful of mines, extracting copper, cobalt, and rare earth elements (REE). What follows is an overview of Alaska’s mines, those in production and in the advanced exploration or permitting stages.

rganizations around the world are focused on addressing climate change. Most major corporations are rearranging priorities and reallocating capital and personnel to determine the most efficient path to achieve Net Zero (where emissions of carbon dioxide or methane are eliminated or balanced by removal from the atmosphere). The Paris Climate Accord focused the efforts of participating governments to achieve Net Zero by 2050—that’s less than thirty years away. Specifically, the Net Zero objective is driven by achieving two main gargantuan transitions: changing to non-carbon-based fuel for both the transportation and energy sectors. These are virtuous objectives for sure, but where is all the metal going to come from that will allow this galactic shift to occur?

laska is big and remote, so it’s no surprise that it lags the rest of the country in the accuracy and detail of its maps. Mapping can be expensive, but the good news is that mapping in Alaska has taken a huge leap forward over the last decade, benefiting the Alaska public, government, and private sector businesses, such as the resource development industry.

It was just ten years ago that pilots in Alaska were at risk of being forbidden to fly by instrument. The best available elevation data at that time was generated in the ‘60s using older methods which sometimes resulted in mountains being out of place by a half mile or more. This posed serious risks to aviation safety and other industries that require accurate information. The State of Alaska initiated an effort to create an accurate digital basemap of the entire state.

ater lit the muddy streets of Juneau City, as the gold mining town was known in 1893. That was the year Alaska Electric Light & Power (AEL&P) started providing service from a simple water wheel. Two decades later, the utility developed the Annex Creek, Salmon Creek, and Gold Creek hydropower plants, and they remain in service, generating 3.6 MW, 6.7 MW, and 1.6 MW, respectively.

Juneau is awash in hydropower, especially since the federal government build the Snettisham project in 1973. Water tapped from two lakes 28 miles southeast of Juneau drives 70 percent of Juneau’s electricity, with a peak output of 78 MW. Another 20 percent comes from the Lake Dorothy facility on the east bank of Taku Inlet, generating up to 14 MW from the flow of water down a 5-foot diameter penstock. And that’s just Phase 1; AEL&P has plans to double the output from Lake Dorothy, as demand warrants.

ising from the sawdust of its past prime, Alaska’s timber industry is focusing on value-added products made in Alaska with locally grown wood. The 400 jobs the sector currently supports is a pale shadow of the industry in the early ‘90s, when ten times as many Alaskans worked in the business.

In fact, the forest sector was Alaska’s second-largest industry in the ‘70s, but large-scale logging and milling are gone. In its place, smaller operators turn Alaska’s remaining wood harvests into niche products.

laska seafood has so much to offer,” says Ashley Heimbigner. “It’s often a game of choosing which messages are best for the audience.”

Choosing messages is Heimbigner’s job as communications director for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI). The public/private partnership, established by state statute in 1981, marked its 40th anniversary last year by revamping its alaskaseafood.org website to deliver its message more effectively. In addition to becoming more mobile friendly, the redesign streamlined access to ASMI’s recipe library.

nchanged for almost thirty years, Alaska’s highway system has seen no new long-distance roads added to the network since the Dalton Highway was opened to the public in 1994. Even then, the haul road had been completed for more than sixteen years, with no new major highways added to the roster. The westernmost extent on Alaska’s (and North America’s) connected road system remains the bend in the Sterling Highway at Anchor Point. However, two ambitious road projects would claim the title if either of them succeeds in pushing farther west.

ne of Anchorage’s largest construction projects in 2022 was the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities’ (DOT&PF) $43 million reconstruction of the Dowling Road/Seward Highway interchange. Work on the federally funded, multi-phase project will replace and expand the Dowling Road roundabout and the Seward Highway overpass, both of which are nearing the end of their useful life. Construction on the interchange began in May and is expected to be completed in 2023.

Work on the interchange is also the culmination of a decades-long project designed to increase safety and improve the flow of traffic along the Seward Highway from 36th Avenue to Rabbit Creek Road. Traffic along the highway has outpaced growth projections made in the early 2000s.

orty-five years after the first tanker left Valdez carrying North Slope oil to market, many of today’s worries echo past headlines. Inflation was a major concern. Energy costs were skyrocketing. New construction was stalled due to increasing costs, a shortage of available labor, and constraints on the global supply chain. Far-off wars were influencing global energy commodity markets. And, like today, drilling for oil in the Arctic was offered as a solution—albeit today it comes with heightened concerns for the environment.

The Alaska Native regional corporation for Southeast is one of sixteen minority-owned businesses selected by Apple for its Impact Accelerator program. The tech company is providing mentorship to selected businesses, especially toward climate change solutions. Sealaska is recognized for “nature-based solutions,” such as its timber subsidiary transitioning last year from logging to selling carbon offsets. Apple also selected an energy storage company in Hawaii, a recycling company in Las Vegas, and an electric utility in the Navajo Nation.
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mprobably, Connie Yoshimura parlayed an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop into a career finding homes for Alaskans. The owner of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Alaska Realty learned to close a deal before she ever sold a house, beginning as a waitress. “I would try to figure out what was good in the kitchen that night,” Yoshimura recalls, “and then I would try to figure out what the customers might enjoy. If I could put those two together, then I got a larger gratuity.”