Ninilchik

Community response mixed to short harvest opportunity for razor clams

The company is planning to add three wells — two gas development wells and one combination gas development and oil exploration well — to its Ninilchik pad.

A bus station in Ninilchik has the potential to become a small Native reservation — but the state of Alaska is pushing back. A lawsuit playing out in Juneau could impact the Ninilchik tribe’s bid for sovereignty and protection of its bus services.

A large pile of snow blocking access to a road in Ninilchik turned heads and puzzled officials last week. Now, just as mysteriously as it arrived, the pile has disappeared.

Despite small improvements in clam abundance, beaches in Clam Gulch and Ninilchik will be closed to clammers for the ninth year in a row next summer.

On the southern peninsula, where Hilcorp does lots of oil and gas exploration, not all private property owners are content to lease the company their mineral rights. Some of Hilcorp’s neighbors in Ninilchik are rejecting the company’s offers for the gas beneath their land.

Tribal entities in Alaska — including the Kenaitze Indian Tribe and Ninilchik Village — are getting more federal funding to fight opioid misuse in their communities.

Biologists were hopeful when they began surveying the beaches at Clam Gulch and Ninilchik in April. But this May, when they looked at the far ends of the beaches, they were disappointed.

The beaches at Ninilchik and Clam Gulch have been closed to harvesters since 2015. Officials say recovery of razor clams on the east side of Cook Inlet has been slow since a crash a decade ago.

After the state received a complaint about the Ninilchik Harbor being dirty, one Bristol Bay fisherman decided to survey the community to see what users thought about how it was being maintained and what could be done better.