September 8, 2008
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Adak can’t wait for Friday.
Last night, the city of Adak, a fishing port in the Aleutian Islands, instituted rolling blackouts and is now only providing 11 hours of power a day to its consumers.
This Friday, all eligible Alaskans will begin receiving a combined payment of $3,269: $2,069 from our annual Permanent Fund Dividends, and a one-time “resource rebate” of $1,200. Those of us signed up for direct deposit will have the money immediately, and paper checks will soon start trickling in for the rest. Our populist Republican governor bucked the conservative Republican legislature to get approval for the “rebate” because increased fuel prices have created an energy crisis throughout Alaska.
This summer, that legislative debate was closely watched by most of us. It was not approved in the form in which Palin originally proposed it. After much wrangling, to save administrative costs, the energy assistance was combined with the PFD, and PFD payouts were pushed forward a month, so that people would have the money to obtain heating fuel before cold weather sets in.
These payments to individuals probably won’t be a great help to the City of Adak, which owes more than half a million dollars to its fuel supplier. Who can blame Aleut Corp., the supplier, for cutting off the city’s credit, with a debt of that magnitude? It is also hard to blame the city. Fish catches are down, fuel prices are up, and a customer in Norway has been very slow about paying Adak Fisheries for the fish they bought. A few jingoistic Alaskans, already disgruntled over Team Norway’s having been the first non-American winners of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, are ready to go to war with Norway over money and fish.
The money that we are expecting in coming weeks will help those consumers in Adak survive the rolling blackouts by buying fuel to run their generators to power freezers, respirators and other appliances. Those who don’t have generators will be able to buy them. This will be a bonanza for the Honda, Homelite and Toro dealers in the Aleutians.
Adak is not alone in its fuel financing crisis. In recent years, many bush villages have had their own problems. Public buildings have gone unheated, causing pipes to burst. Schools have had to close because they could not be kept at livable temperatures for the students. Despite the drowning polar bears and the destruction of roads and buildings as the permafrost they are built upon thaws, some people think climate change isn’t happening fast enough. Others wonder why we’re piping all that oil from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez and shipping it south. The last few years, we are hearing again the old slogan of the Alaskan Independence Party from the ‘seventies: “Let them freeze in the dark.”
I have my own little fuel crisis here. We scrimped and squirreled away enough cash this summer to buy five cords of firewood. Our wood seller doesn’t take credit cards. After delivering three cords, he called one afternoon last week to say he would be here around 8 PM with the fourth, and we have not heard from him since. I hope the problem is mechanical and not medical. I also hope that he either gets back on the road soon with my wood, or that we can find another supplier before we’re snowed in.
Comments (6)
On the property in which I currently reside, I’ve helped to chainsaw through about 90% of a tree trunk, then pull the things down with manpower, gravity and ropes – just gotta make sure they don’t fall onto the house.
We’ve been giving away the firewood to relatives. Personally, being the nature-loving guy I am, I wanted to keep the trees. Nature is like, the ultimate ‘feng shui’; better even than arranging furniture in a certain way.
@Apocatastasis - I’m with you on the love of nature and trees. We have had to cut down a few here that were killed or weakened by insects and were overhanging our roof. We have not yet, since moving here 25 years ago, needed to cut down trees for firewood.
The woodcutters we buy from get their wood from places where land has been cleared for development. For many years, we burned trees that had been cut down during the building of an electric intertie that connected Anchorage in coastal southcentral Alaska with Fairbanks in the interior north, into a single power grid to minimize outages.
I have mixed feelings as I watch the forests disappear and the Target stores and suburban subdivisions being built to accomodate the commuters who work in Anchorage. First, I resent their noisy presence and the pollution they bring, then I feel guilty for not being willing to grant them the liberty to live here as I do. Most of the neighbors who were here when I moved in are dead now or retired to Arizona, so I have inherited the crotchety oldtimer role.
Survival is a whole different animal in your part of the world. I have no clue as to what you must go through to get through the winter. I will never complain about the cold again.
What a mess this world is in and blogging gains you acquaintence in so many parts of the world. As Alaska is a part of the states, I get a feel for more of the reality of things within the union. Scary stuff going on and I know you need the money and the incoming cords of wood and whatever else it takes to keep you fed and dry. I recall “warm” was still a problem this past year. Personally, I keep the environment in mind and hope it survives the pressures of this manipulative politics of all nations. I think we are all in more trouble than we realize. God bless and it probably won’t hurt you to be looking for wood elsewhere in case. Better now than too late.
Ouch. Hoping the woodcutter is okay and you will be too.