Courtesy Dustin Phillips/Alaska SeaLife Center

Maxwell, a seal pup from Nelson Island, was rescued after a hunter killed its mother before realizing she was pregnant. The hunter then delivered Maxwell, and the pup ended up at the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward.

Seward
Orphaned Pup Finds a Home

The Alaska SeaLife Center has taken in an orphaned baby seal that was still in the womb when a hunter killed its mother last spring.

A subsistence hunter killed the pup’s mother in the village of Tununak, on Nelson Island in the Bering Sea. The hunter then realized there was a live pup inside the seal and successfully delivered it, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported.

The hunter’s daughter called the SeaLife Center’s animal rescue hotline and, guided by center staff, a village teacher helped transport the pup to the local airport. The animal was flown to Bethel and then to Anchorage. SeaLife Center vets met the pup—named Maxwell—at the Anchorage airport and transported it to Seward.

Pups that do not receive antibodies from their mother’s milk are at higher risk for infection, so Maxwell was kept in quarantine and monitored closely before a decision on the pup’s future was made.

McGraph
Gas Costs Slam Village Hard

	Alex DeMarban/Alaska Newspapers
	Residents of McGrath saw the price of gas jump from $5.97 to $9.20 per gallon in a single day after low water levels prevented a barge from reaching the village and fuel had to be flown in.

High gas prices got you down? The residents of McGrath could tell you a little something about it. Last spring, the price of gas jumped in a single day from $5.97 to $9.20 a gallon in the Kuskokwim River village.

The fuel distributor and sole vendor, Crowley Petroleum Distribution in Alaska, said low river levels that required the fuel to be flown into town instead of barged there led to a big part of the price leap, the Anchorage Daily News said.

But McGrath residents were overcharged, even accounting for shipping costs, due to an inaccurate price quote from a Crowley employee. The next day, the company reduced the price to $8.48 and reimbursed approximately 20 people who bought fuel at the wrong price, the Daily News reported.

Fuel prices usually rise in spring along the Kuskokwim River when barged-in supplies run out and fuel has to be flown in, but the increase is usually only a dollar a gallon or so.

William Greenlaw,

Anchorage
Ancient Flood Affected Quake

A massive flood that happened about 17,000 years ago could explain some of the catastrophic damage that occurred in the 1964 earthquake in Anchorage.

The event was one of at least four megafloods that happened in prehistoric Alaska when glacial Lake Atna breached ice dams and discharged water. The lake covered more than 3,500 square miles in the Copper River Basin northeast of Anchorage, esciencenews.com reported. The megaflood released as much as 336 cubic miles of water—enough to cover an area the size of Washington, D.C., to a depth of nearly 5 miles. That water volume drained from the lake quickly, forming sand dunes higher than 110 feet, with at least a half-mile between crests, esciencenews.com reported.

Much of Anchorage is built on marine sediment. During the magnitude 9.2 earthquake in 1964, a 3-foot layer of sediment liquefied and collapsed, allowing the layer above to slide toward the sea. Scientists later discovered that layer was infused with fresh water—unexpected in sediments deposited under salt water, the website said. The ancient megaflood could account for the fresh water found there.

The floodwater traveled down what is now the Matanuska River at a flow of about 3 million cubic meters per second. Another suspected Atna megaflood came down the Susitna River at 11 million cubic meters per second. Scientists have also found evidence of two smaller megafloods, down the Tok and Copper rivers.

Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta
Study Links Plumbing to Health

A new study from the Centers for Disease Control shows a strong link between a lack of indoor plumbing and high rates of potentially life-threatening diseases such as pneumonia and meningitis among children in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.

In villages where there is no in-home running water, the rates for disease were about three times higher than those of other villages, according to a report in the Anchorage Daily News.

About 40 percent of households in the region lack running water, so they collect their waste in honey buckets, and haul drinking water in plastic drums from central wells, lakes or rivers. A lack of indoor plumbing makes hand washing to prevent the spread of bacteria more difficult.

The Y-K Delta is home to some of the poorest, most crowded households in the state, the study reported, and Alaska Native children there who are younger than age 5 are five to 10 times more likely to suffer from a bacterial illness called Invasive Pneumococcal Disease than other Alaska kids. The disease can lead to a serious form of pneumonia, meningitis and blood infections, the Daily News reported.

About 15 percent of Yukon-Kuskokwim babies are hospitalized for some form of pneumonia each year and the new study highlights the need for indoor plumbing across Alaska to combat illness.

The study, published in the March edition of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, is a follow-up to a 2008 study that found rural Alaska Natives living in homes without running water suffered higher rates of respiratory-tract and skin infections than Natives in homes where water was readily available.

Courtesy Matanuska-Susitna Borough, bottom photo: Courtesy USFWS

The State’s Newest Ferry, the M/V Susitna, needs a landing dock in Anchorage and will not be taking any passengers until one is built.

Mat-Su Valley
New Ferry Ready, Homeless

The state’s newest ferry, the M/V Susitna, is built and ready to go into service between Anchorage and Point Mackenzie—the route of one of the famous “bridges to nowhere”—but until the city of Anchorage can decide on a location for a landing dock and get it built, the ferry will not be taking any passengers, the Ketchikan Daily News reported.

The ship, which was built in Ketchikan and will be operated by the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, will be able to carry 130 passengers and 20 cars. The ship will likely be put into service this month running back and forth across Knick Arm, but it will ferry only freight for now.

The Susitna was built as a half-scale U.S. Navy prototype and most of the funding for the ship’s cost of about $70 million came from federal sources. The Navy will be testing the ship by having it transport tanks and other equipment and land on beaches. The 195-foot catamaran is the world’s first ship that can operate as both a shallow-draft landing craft and a high-speed, open-water, twin-hull vessel. The Susitna also is the world’s first icebreaker that uses parts of its hull to go under ice and crack it by lifting it up rather than pushing down on it.

The ferry is expected to cut four hours off the roundtrip commute from Anchorage to Point Mackenzie—immediately across Knik Arm and home to state correctional facilities—to shorten the drive to the Mat-Su Valley, and to provide an additional northern access route out of Anchorage, where only one road now exists.

Fares could range from $6 to $10 per person and another $25 per vehicle.