Daily Sitka Sentinel from Sitka, Alaska • Page 6

Page 6, Daily Sitka Sentinel, Sitka, Alaska, Wednesday, August 10,1994 Weather Cited as Factor In Kodiak Airplane Crash ANCHORAGE (AP) Marginal weather may have been at least partially to blame in that fatal floatplane crash on Kodiak Island during the weekend. Five people died in Sunday's crash the pilot and five European tourists. They were on a flightseeing trip to a bear viewing area when the plane went down. The de Havilland Beaver floatplane owned by Uyak Air charter service was cleared for visual flight rules only during the flight, said Tim Borson, the National Transportation Safety Board's investigator into the crash. A pilot maneuvering under visual flight rules cannot fly in foggy conditions and must be at least 500 feet off the ground, while flying in deserted areas, similar to those on Kodiak Island, said Mike Hessler of the Federal Aviation Administration office in Anchorage.

Several people who were in the area at the time of the crash said the weather was foggy and visibility was low, Borson said. The plane crashed and burst into flames on a hillside near the entrance to Uganik Bay. The aircraft had a full panel of instruments that would allow it to fly in poor weather conditions, and the pilot was certified to fly in those conditions. But Butch Tovsen, president of Uyak Air, acknowledged the airplane was flying using visual flight rules. The investigation into the cause of the accident is continuing, Borson said.

It will take two or three months to determine an exact cause. The only survivor, Bernhard Doeoes, 27, of Lucerne, Switzerland, was thrown clear of the plane when it slammed into a hillside near Uganik Bay. Exxon Geologist Says Little Oil Left on Coast 747-3276 321 Lincoln Street Home Heating Oil Delivered Liquid Petroleum Gas Apartment Rentals Available Your Local Distance Mover ANCHORAGE (AP) Exxon opened its defense Tuesday in the $120 million land-damage case in state court with testimony from a geologist who said the oil lingering along Alaska's coast is "the last remnants" of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. "Most of the oil residues that are left are concentrated in a few places where they aren't hurting anything," said David Page, a professor at Bowdoin College hired as an Exxon consultant. The oil company's first witness was aimed at countering testimony from plaintiffs' experts who repeatedly showed photographs and videos of oil persisting along the beaches of Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska.

Page also presented dozens of photos and several videos. But where the plaintiffs emphasized close-up views of individual rocks or small patches of ground, Page's images were dominated by sweeping aerial panoramas showing miles of scenic beaches lapped by crystal water. "We're trying to represent what these shorelines actually look like," he said. He said the sites where plaintiffs had found lingering oil were not typical of the surrounding beaches, either because they were the most heavily oiled areas or were shielded from the scrubbing of wind and waves. HIDDEN FIT PROPORTION DACRON POLYESTER SIZES 8 20 COLORS: KHAKI, GREY, NAVY, BLACK, TEAL, PURPLE In The Bayview Trading Company Manufactured under license by Lev! Strauss San Francisco, CA IN A GOOD CENTS FOR HOMEBUYERS WORKSHOP Presented by First National Bank of Anchorage.

CENTENNIAL BUILDING MAKSOUTOFF ROOM THURSDAY, AUGUST 11 REFRESHMENTS SERVED 6:30 9:00 PM WORKSHOP First National's banking professionals and DeDe Coulter of Alaska Pacific Realty will be on hand to help you learn more about: PREPARING FOR HOME OWNERSHIP SHOPPING FOR A HOME OBTAINING A MORTGAGE CLOSING THE LOAN LIFE AS A HOMEOWNER CALL 747-3272 ToRSVP. Free child care provided by First National Bank at the Sitka Teen Club, 103 Monastery St. MEMBER FDIC EQUAL HOUSING LENDER "Unless you know where to look or what to look for, these beaches are basically free of oil," he said. At a beach on Green Island where plaintiffs had photographed oil beneath rocks, Page staged a video demonstration to show that most of the beach was clean. As the camera panned, Page threw a beach ball behind his back five times.

Wherever the ball landed, he dug beneath the rocks wearing a pair of white gloves. At each spot, he would hold up the unmarked gloves and announce there was no oil. After showing the video, Exxon lawyers entered the white gloves as evidence. Page also testified there are other sources for oil than the Exxon Valdez. He showed videos of oil seeping naturally from streams on the Alaska Peninsula, Cook Inlet and the Copper River delta, all of which empty into areas hit by the spill.

He also found oil spilled during the 1964 earthquake, he said. "When you see a tar ball on a beach, you can't automatically assume it came from some vessel," he said. Six Native corporations and Kodiak Island Borough are seeking $120 million in alleged land damages, claiming the spill "impaired" nearly 600,000 acres. The Native corporations seek $86 million in land damages and $29 million to excavate archaeological sites they say are threatened by the possibility of vandalism by returning spill workers. Several Native leaders also testified that their people are still afraid to eat seafood from the oiled areas, despite assurance from state officials that subsistence foods are safe.

Alaska Assists Lower 48 In Fire Fighting With a lighter-than-usual fire season on the Tongass and Chugach National Forest, the USDA Forest Service, has responded to the call for assistance on forest fires in the Lower 48, Regional Forester Phil Janik said 120 personnel have been sent to fires in the northwest "The Alaska region of the Forest Service is doing its part to respond to the national emergency," Janik said. "Although it impacts our work accomplishments here, fire emergency down is of priority and we are doing what we can to help without jeopardizing our ability to respond to Alaska fires," he said. One hundred of the people dispatched were assigned to 20-person fire crews with the remaining individuals being utilized in fire overhead positions. Inititally, most of the personnel have been dispatched to Washington, Oregon-and Idaho. New Regulations To Affect Sitka Nine coastal cities and communities in Alaska are affected by revised Environmental Protection Agency regulations that amend the conditions by which they can continue to provide less than secondary treatment for their municipal sewage.

The nine commu- nites are Anchorage, Haines, Ketchikan, Pelican, Petersburg, Sitka, Skagway, Whittier and Wrangell. The new regulations revise rules already on the books. The principal changes involve requirements that treatment plants in the nine communities must now achieve a minimum of primary or equivalent treatment to remove at least 30 percent of conventional pollutants. Discharges from the treatment plants must not cause violations of water quality standards. The regulations were signed last month by Carol M.

Browner, EPA administrator in Washington, under authority granted by the Clean Water ACL While the law required all publicly owned treatment works to provide secondary treatment, it also allowed waivers for publicly owned treatment works discharging to coastal waters if they were able to meet cer- fain conditions set by EPA. To have received a waiver, it was necessary to have made an application for one by December 1982. Seminar Planned The University of Alaska Southeast Office of Continuing Education will offer a seminar, "Central Venous Access Systems," 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Sept. 30-Oct 1 at the Centennial Building.

The comprehensive workshop, designed for doctors, nurses and pharmacists, will describe all aspects related to the use of central access devices and ambulatory infusion pumps. The seminar will be presented by a team of healih care professionals and will include demonstrations and hands-on practice. CMEs for physicians and CEUs for nurses are approved. The fee be SI00 on or before Sept. 8 and $129 after Sept.

8. For further information call 7477733. To register call 747-6653. Notes and Comments by Robert N. DeArmond Around About Alaska Lincoln Street made a 90-degree turn to the right around the old Russian sawmill building, the far structure in the mill complex.

The closer buildings were erected later for lumber storage. At the left is the W.P. Mills home, built in 1898. It later became the Erler Hotel, on the site of today's Westmark Shee Atika Lodge. (Photo courtesy Kettleson Memorial Library) The Sawmills of Sitka, 4 -When Theodore Haltem bought the old Russian sawmill in 1884, it had not operated since 1881, according to a later story in The Alaskan.

Apparently, however, there was a stock of lumber still on hand, probably cut by Pilz and Ring. So far as can be determined Haltern never started up or ran the mill himself, but he did sell lumber to fill what slight local demand there was. Haltern, who suffered from rheumatism, left Sitka late in the fall of 1885 to spend the winter in California. Catharine Haltern was to follow as soon as she could find an agent to look after their interests in Sitka, including selling lumber and finding someone to lease the sawmill. Tending to the lumber sales was especially important because competition was on the horizon.

George Hamilton, who had once lived at Sitka, and Oliver Fontaine had built a sawmill at Shakan on Kosciusko Island and were dickering with Vanderbilt and deGroff, Sitka merchants, to handle their lumber here. Mrs. Haltern picked Andrew T. Lewis to be their agent He had come to Sitka in the summer of 1884 as clerk of the first District Court. Of the five officials appointed at that time for the newly created District of Alaska, Lewis was the only one who survived the bloodbath that followed the change of administration in 1885.

Lewis seems to have gotten along well in Sitka. In 1884, soon after he arrived, he helped organize the Sitka Fire Brigade. In 1885 he married Miss Margaret Dauphin who was a teacher at the Presbyte- Mission school. And in 1885; was- elected Recorder 'for' "the; 1 Silka Mining District; itijt No sooner had Lewis signed on with Mrs. Haltern, however, than he ran into a conflict of interest Among his ex-officio dudes, he was the receiver of public money and agent for the U.

S. Land Office. Neither of those offices had required any great time or attention until, late in someone in Washington discovered that there were trees in Alaska and that some people were cutting them down, cutting them lumber and selling the lumber. The February 1886 mail steamer brought three identical letters to Sitka, addressed to the Clerk of the Court, the U. S.

Marshal and the U. S. Attorney. They read: "You are hereby authorized and directed to take all proper measures to promptly discover depredations upon public timber, and to immediately make complaint before a commissioner and cause the summary arrest of all persons engaged in such depredations. You will seize or cause the seizure of all timber cut or removed from lands in the territory of Alaska, whether found upon the land where cut, or in transit, or on or elsewhere." Having pronounced those strictures, the letter went on to disclose a loophole large enough to permit the clearcutting of every acre of Southeastern Alaska: "You will not, however, interfere with bona fide residents who are cutting or removing timber from mineral lands for their own use for building, agriculture, mining and other domestic purposes.

All other cutting or removal of any kind of timber from any lands in Alaska is hereby prohibited, and you will see that the restraining power of the courts and the penalties of the law are invoked and enforced in all such As the Mining Act of 1872 had been extended to Alaska, and since it would be difficult if not impossible to find any part of Southeastern Alaska without some trace of minerals, timber cutting was wide open to residents who wished to stake mining claims. A lode claim was 600 feet'wide and 1500 feet long, and there was no limit to the number of claims an individual, or a company, could stake. There was, however, in the final paragraph of the letter, a prohibition against shipping lumber out of Alaska: "You will particularly guard against the export of any timber or lumber of any character from any portion of the territory whether cut or obtained under pretext of purchase from Indians or otherwise." That prohibition was enforced only a few months later. Marshal Barton Atkins was on his way from Sitka to Portland when he.learned that two schooners loaded with 500,000 feet of yellow cedar lumber had sailed from the Shakan sawmill for San Francisco. When he got to Port Townsend he wired the authorities in San Francisco.

William Thonage was arrested and charged with having cut 500,000 feet of lumber on government land. The case did not go to trial until the spring of 1889. The defense offered by Thonage was that no such- law or-regulation had'been hreffect for Alaska: when he commenced the enterprise, and that he had nev-. er been notified of such a ruling. Nevertheless, a jury found for the government Thonage was given the choice of returning 214,000 feet of lumber to the government or paying $3,145.

It seems a lop-sided penalty. The lumber cargo was valued at $37,000. The cash penalty would be 8 5 A percent of that value; the lumber surrender more than 42 per cent. The sawmill at Shakan continued to produce lumber which was shipped to Sitka, Juneau and the growing number of salmon canneries, but without the export business it never reached the potential for which it had been built. At Sitka the export ban cast a cloud over a program of the Sitka Industrial Training School, federally funded and operated by the Presbyterian Board of Missions.

The school established classes in shoe making, carpentry, mechanics and coopering the making of barrels of Sitka spruce. At that time far. more salmon was salted in barrels than was put in cans, and the demand was great Almost all of the salted salmon" was exported and the sailers feared their product might be seized if packed in barrels made from Alaska timber. The school attempted to get a ruling on the legality of its barrels but the matter dragged on and on in Washington and the program dwindled and eventually died. To be continued Kick up your heels! Learn to dance with the Mt.

Edgecumb Ashkickers Thursday p.m. at Rookies! Learn the Country 2-Step and other partner dancing! Lots of ladies need dance partners! Kick up your heels and have a great time learning to dance! 1617 Sawmill Creek Rd 747-3285.