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SOURDOUGH JACK:

“I need to spruce things down — my trees are so overgrown I can barely make it outta the driveway.”

The weather.Today will be partly cloudy.

High today ..............54Low tonight ............ 31

WEATHER » A7

GOODMORNING

H O M E I M P ROV EM ENT

and

FAIRBANKS, ALASKA

FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 2014

Classified » C1 | Comics » D5 | Dear Abby » Latitude 65 | Markets » D4 | Obituaries » A8 | Opinion » A6 | Outdoors » B1 | Weather » A7INSIDE

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At annual convention, NRA to focus on universal concealed weapons laws. » NATION, A3Inside Today

SPRUCE THINGS UPFind tips to enliven your living space in our special Building and Home Improvement section.

INSIDE TODAY

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Aurora forecast.Auroral activity will be moderate. Weather permitting, moderate displays will be visible overhead from Barrow to Talkeetna.

This information is provid-ed by aurora forecasters at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

JOINING FORCESLegendary musicians Chick Corea and Béla Fleck team up for Fairbanks performance.

LATITUDE 65

FLOCKING TO TOWNSpring migration ramping up at Creamer’s Field.

OUTDOORSPage B1

Ice Classic jackpot tops $363,000By Tim MowryTMOWRY@NEWSMINER.COM

The Nenana Ice Classic jack-pot will be a record $363,627 this year.

Organizers of Alaska’s richest guessing game announced the payout for this year’s Ice Clas-sic following a meeting of the board of directors Thursday night.

“I kind of suspected we were going to have a good year,” Ice Classic manager Cherrie For-ness said. “We started getting calls in early March from ven-

dors for more tickets. Then, a week before ticket sales ended (on April 5), we had people run-ning out of tickets.

“When I went to Anchorage to pick up tickets down there, I brought back only maybe 500 tickets,” she said.

The Ice Classic, in its 98th year, is a uniquely Alaskan con-test in which thousands of resi-dents around the state buy tick-ets to guess the exact date and time the Tanana River ice goes out in Nenana, a small town about 50 miles south of Fair-banks on the Parks Highway.

This year’s record payout tops the previous high jackpot of $350,000 set two years ago, and it doesn’t look like it will be

too long before the lucky winner or winners will be decided.

Organizers hooked up the clock that will determine this year’s winning time Mon-day. The clock is connected by a cable to a wooden tripod anchored in the Tanana River ice about 300 feet from shore. When the ice breaks up and the tripod moves or falls, the cable tightens and stops the clock on shore.

The ice surrounding the tri-pod is beginning to resemble Swiss cheese, Forness said.

“There are holes opening up

about three-quarters of a mile upriver and downriver,” she said. “There’s a big hole down-river.”

Also, the Nenana River, which flows into the Tanana River just downstream of where the tripod stands, went out late Monday night or early Tuesday morning, which is a sign the ice in the Tanana will move soon. The Nenana River typically breaks up about five to seven days before the Tanana, Forness said.

BIG JACKPOTSHere’s a list of the biggest jackpots in the history of the 98-year-old Nenana Ice Classic.$363,627 — 2014$350,000 — 2012$338,062 — 2011$335,000 — 2005$330,008 — 1995$318,500 — 2013

Dr. Owen Hanley, center, speaks as Fairbanks residents gather at a press conference to announce a lawsuit filed against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday morning. Local organizations Citizens for Clean Air, Alaska Community Action on Toxics and the Sierra Club Alaska Chapter announced their legal challenge, calling on the EPA to address the air quality situation in Fairbanks. ERIC ENGMAN/NEWS-MINER

JACKPOT » A8

Clean air groups file lawsuit against EPA By Tim MowryTMOWRY@NEWSMINER.COM

Huddled around a podium set up across the street from the coal-fired Aurora Power Plant on First Avenue, a doz-en Fairbanks residents held a press conference Monday to take what one called “the next step” to cleaning up the air in Fairbanks.

“It’s time,” Patrice Lee, from the Fairbanks group Citizens for Clean Air, said into the microphone as members clus-tered around her, including three children who held up pictures showing wintertime scenes of smoke billowing out of the power plant’s smoke-stack. “A plan to remove soot and smoke from the air to improve air quality in Fair-banks is long overdue.”

So overdue, in fact, that Lee announced Monday that a coalition of Fairbanks resi-dents and community groups in Alaska’s two biggest cit-ies have filed a civil lawsuit against the U.S. Environmen-tal Protection Agency calling on the federal agency to force the state to produce an imple-mentation plan addressing particulate pollution in the Fairbanks North Star Borough

“By taking legal action, we hope to compel the EPA to enforce the Clean Air Act,” Lee said.

The suit, which names the EPA’s head administrator,

‘THE NEXT STEP’

AIR » A8

Toll bridge project bill draws mixed response from Interior AlaskansBy Matt BuxtonMBUXTON@NEWSMINER.COM

JUNEAU — On the 94th day of the 28th Alaska Legislature, with a deal struck on the governor’s edu-cation bill and even a bill passed to bring back bear license plates, law-makers could have wrapped it up.

But on Thursday, the capitol looked to continue on to its 95th day for a toll bridge connecting Anchorage and Port Mackenzie.

The night before the House failed to accept changes the Sen-ate made to a bill rewriting the finances of Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority, changing it from a private-public partnership to a state-run project.

That sent the bill to a free confer-ence of the two bodies. Through-out Thursday, with many lawmak-ers’ offices closed and staffs gone home, there were rumors of a deal struck on the bill, but as of press time, nothing had materialized.

So as lawmakers continue work here, what does this project mean for Fairbanks? Estimates are that it’ll only cut 7 minutes off the six-and-a-half-hour drive from Fair-banks to Anchorage and add an estimated toll of $5 each way.

The cost to Fairbanks could be much more, however, said the co-owners of Fairbanks-area con-struction company Great North-west Inc.

On Tuesday, co-owners Tony Johansen and Randy Brand sent a letter to lawmakers urging a no vote. They said the project, which taps $300 million in the federal highway dollars the state receives to pay for the $945 million bridge are dollars that will sink other projects throughout the state.

Johansen, in an interview with the News-Miner on Thursday eve-ning, said he was particularly con-cerned that the project, like many other mega projects, will suffer cost overruns totaling in the hun-

dreds of millions.“The easy money at that point

is the federal funds that come into the state, and that’s what really concerns me,” he said. “It’s an encumbrance on future years’ money.”

He said Great Northwest is the construction company on many of the projects, but said he puts many locals to work.

He also questioned the scope of the benefit of the project. Anchor-age could benefit and land owners in the undeveloped Port McKenzie could also, but even for Wasilla residents, there’s not much of an advantage for the toll road.

“We’re getting a bridge across the Knik Arm for Anchorage’s expan-sion,” he said, “but what does it do to help the Interior?”

So why did Fairbanks-area sen-ators and representatives vote in favor of the project?

Some lawmakers losing patience with session

By Becky BohrerASSOCIATED PRESS

JUNEAU — While lawmakers reached a ten-tative agreement on the education package that sent their session into overtime, anoth-er long-simmering issue re-emerged, further prolonging the situation and causing some lawmakers’ nerves to fray.

The House late Wednesday rejected a Sen-ate-passed plan for financing the proposed Knik Arm bridge to connect Anchorage and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, setting the stage for a conference committee to hash out differences.

Aside from a Senate floor session and edu-cation conference committee meeting earli-er in the day Thursday, the Capitol was odd-ly quiet. A conference committee appointed to tackle the bridge bill never held a formal meeting, but work was under way behind the scenes to draft a rewrite of HB23.

Bridge bill holds things up

SESSION » A7RESPONSE » A8