Tag Archives: King Cove’s city administrator
How a Risky State Investment in Seafood Cost Alaskans Millions and left a Fishing Town in Crisis
Last summer, an unsettling quiet cloaked the isolated Southwest Alaska community of King Cove as the town’s economic engine — a sprawling seafood processing plant — sat shuttered. Bunkhouses, once filled with hundreds of workers during the peak salmon harvest, were vacant. Four diesel generators that had rumbled day and night were stilled. The plant docks, once lined with boats and circled by fish-scavenging gulls, were empty. The closure resulted from the financial implosion of the plant’s owner, Peter Pan Seafood. Some local fishing boat captains directed their ire at company leaders who accepted their seafood, then failed to pay them. They dwelled far less on a surprising, largely silent, powerhouse investor in the plant: the state of Alaska. Photos, more, >>CLICK TO READ<< 12:41
Alaska fishermen and processing plants are in limbo as a state-backed seafood company teeters
The fishing fleet in the Southwest Alaska town of King Cove would have been harvesting Pacific cod this winter. But they couldn’t: Skippers had nowhere to sell their catch. The enormous plant that usually buys and processes their fish never opened for the winter season. The company that runs the plant, Peter Pan Seafoods, is facing six-figure legal claims from fishermen who say they haven’t been paid for catches they delivered months ago. King Cove’s city administrator says the company is behind on its utility payments. And now, residents fear the plant may stay closed through the summer salmon season, which would leave the village with just half of the revenue that normally funds its yearly budget. “We should be fishing right now,” said Ken Mack, a longtime King Cove fisherman. more, >>click to read<< 09:36
