Rep. Mary Sattler Peltola has submitted Fiscal Year 2025 “Community Project Funding” requests for Alaska, with a list totaling $60.2 million in projects.
Most of the spending she wants would be for coastal communities, and most of the funding proposed is for rural Alaska.
The Senate refers to the funding as “Congressionally Directed Spending.” Others call them “earmarks.” Others know this spending as “pork.”
Earmarks were widely used when Congressman Don Young was in office, but were ended in 2011. In 2021, Democrats ended the decade-long earmark moratorium, against the wishes of many House Republicans.
These pork projects are still just appropriation requests and Peltola, still a newcomer in Congress, does not sit on the House Appropriations Committee and has little power in the House.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski is on the Senate Appropriations Committee as its third most senior Republican. She is the one who will have the most say on these projects, and she is a strong ally of Peltola, endorsing her in 2022. Sen. Dan Sullivan does not do earmarks.
The federal 2025 fiscal year begins Oct. 1.
Here’s the list of projects Peltola will be fighting for in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives:
| Title | Region | Description | Requested $ |
| In-season Genetic Analysis of Chum Salmon Bycatch | Unalaska | To operate a high-throughput, state-of-the-art genetics laboratory in Unalaska/Dutch Harbor, Alaska, to characterize the stock of origin of chum salmon captured in the inshore B-season pollock fishery. The information it provides will be used by industry to better avoid salmon bound for Alaska rivers while still achieving large benefits from the pollock fishery. | $5,000,000 |
| Gary Paxton Industrial Park Marine Haul Out Facility | Sitka | To construct a marine haul-out facility at the Gary Paxton Industrial Park (GPIP) located in Sitka, Alaska. This project is necessary to (1) continue to allow for local vessel haul-out options that have been historically provided in the community, (2) reduce safety risks, costs, and emissions for vessels having to travel to other severely backlogged regional shipyards, and (3) retain and grow local marine service sector jobs. | $5,777,493 |
| Seward Marine Industrial Center Waterfront | Seward | Funding for a 20-acre land expansion for future leases by companies performing marine work; shipyard fill and regrade; energy utility lines; public restroom construction and security fencing and cameras. | $3,700,000 |
| Acquisition of Facilities, Including Housing, Necessary to Establish Alaska State Trooper Posts in Rural Alaska | Statewide | New housing for the Alaska Department of Public Safety (DPS) in new and established remote post locations for troopers and Village Public Safety Officers (VPSOs) is being developed due to the increased need for a public safety presence in rural areas to serve high-poverty communities in Alaska. This will decrease response time that currently involves utilizing aircraft, all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles, and small boats. | $3,300,000 |
| Port MacKenzie Port Infrastructure Development Program | Mat-Su | Purchase of equipment and infrastructure to increase Port MacKenzie’s tonnage and vessel throughput by more than 200%, with a goal of reaching an increase over the current baseline of 300%. This will make the port capable of supporting the establishment of a central critical mineral processing facility that will create the demand signal needed to increase critical mineral production from across Alaska. | $5,000,000 |
| Multipurpose Emergency Shelter Building and Command Center | Kotzebue | To construct an emergency shelter for local community members and neighboring communities when natural disasters require evacuations. The school is currently used as the emergency shelter, which disrupts education | $12,000,000 |
| Cyril George Indigenous Knowledge Center | Juneau | Renovating a portion of the Egan Library at the Cyril George Indigenous Knowledge Center to bring together materials about Alaska Native culture, technology, literature, and art while also supporting Alaska Native language preservation and revitalization. | $1,592,000 |
| One Alaska: Removing and Sustainably Converting Ocean Plastics and Community Waste Plastics to Concrete Aggregate | Gulf of Alaska | To collect and remove toxic coastal plastic debris, coastal village, and urban community plastic debris, and convert it to concrete aggregate, better rehabilitating coastal habitat, removing toxic debris from Native villages, protecting critical subsistence resources, and relieving Alaska landfill facilities all while producing a product needed in the Alaska construction industry. | $7,236,498 |
| Homer Harbor Critical Float Replacement | Homer | Completes design and permitting to bring the Homer Harbor Float System 1 & 4 Replacement Project to construction-ready status. | $1,543,500 |
| Establishing a Network of Alaska Seafood Distribution Hubs | Western AK | To purchase mobile shipping containers where salmon can be frozen whole for distribution or custom-processed for regional markets. Custom processing will support operating costs, creating a sustainable system to uphold culture, address needs, and increase food security. | $565,400 |
| Deploying Imaging Flow Cytobots for the Detection of Harmful Algal Blooms in Coastal Alaska | Statewide | To purchase equipment that automatically and continuously monitors phytoplankton (microscopic marine algae) and detects any harmful algal bloom (HAB) species, which create toxins that are taken up into the marine food web, putting shellfish, fish, birds, marine mammals, and humans at risk. | $310,000 |
| Districtwide HVAC Controls Replacement Project | Northwest Arctic Borough School District | To replace malfunctioning automatic building controls in eight of 12 schools in the Northwest Arctic Borough School District. Current HVAC systems are manually operated due to control failures, resulting in inconsistent temperatures, inadequate ventilation, and increased energy costs. These issues affect 65% of the district’s students, mainly Alaskan Natives. | $9,800,000 |
| Bering Straits Workforce Development & Training Facility | Nome | To construct a 7,000-square-foot combination equipment maintenance and workforce development and training facility in Nome, providing a hands-on training space for jobs in construction, Commercial Driver License, mechanic, and heavy equipment operator fields, building a workforce to fulfill job opportunities created by the Port of Nome Expansion and the Graphite One Project. | $1,750,000 |
| Minto Teacher Housing Duplex Renovation & Addition | Yukon Koyukuk School District | To construct teacher housing in Minto and to renovate and expand an existing duplex on campus, which has been unusable due to mold and age-related decline. Currently, some educators cannot accept positions due to the lack of housing. | $2,075,000 |
| Whittier, AK Community Housing Asbestos Abatement & Removal | Whittier | For urgent ventilation and plumbing updates needed for Begich Towers, which houses a majority of Whittier residents. | $550,000 |
| Total: | $60,199,891 | ||
It’s bribe season, I mean election season, again!
Not much there for Anchorage and the Kenai and the Valley…
The two RCV clowns. We don’t need it!
HOW DARE SHE?!?!?!
Absolutely ZERO por… errr… Congressionally Directed Spending for her liberal base of Anchorage!! The People who sit on confiscated land deserve more than those knuckle draggers in the Mat-Su!!! Well she made sure Juneau and Sitka are taken care of.
Now it’s up to Lee-sa to carry Mary’s water.
Most knuckle staggers in the Mat-Su are vets.
Thank you, Murkowski and Peltola, for bringing home the bacon!
Did you read that list of stuff?
A genetic study of fish for Unalaska. That money is going straight to some lower 48 consultant. No benefit to AK.
$3.7M for a 20 acre expansion of the marine facilities in Seward? Not going to do F-all, $3.7M is a drop in the bucket.
An emergency shelter in Kotz? Because using the school might disrupt education? Exactly how many times a decade do we have to evacuate people to the school? Waste of $12M.
(Added bonus, odds are it will be built by a lower 48 contractor, so no benefit to the AK economy.)
$7M to pick up plastic? (Again, some lower 48 NGO will get that funding. No benefit to AK)
Floating “bots” to monitor alge? How many AK companies will benefit from that? (Hint: Zero)
.
There are one or two things on that list that actually benefit AK, but the rest have little to no benefits to AK.
Cyril George was an amazing man. I’m glad to see him get just recognition.
I just don’t want to pay for it. We have two native corps in town. They should put up the bulk of funding and reach out to other native corps (Huna totem comes to mind) for the rest.
It’s not pork but bait for votes!
More like chum than bait methinks.
Of course!!!!!!! ……Lisa voted for Peltola.
She actually supported Tara Sweeney
A 35 trillion dollar national debt where debt service exceeds defense spending… and we have these morons that want to waste millions more as inflation- due to this massive debt and overspending- makes all Americans poorer.
Begich Towers HOA members should pay for their own upgrades.
Photo taken at the Anchorage airport. Selfie. They couldn’t even find anyone to take their photo together. Losers.
Haha. Even the guy in the background photo looks disgusted by these two idiots.
Be interesting how much of this money actually reaches those communities listed.
How much will get siphoned off to middle men?
Every Alaskan river begins as a snowflake, likewise every increase in the national debt begins with a dollar.
The overwhelming majority of it will end up with Lower 48 contractors or NGOs.
Little to none of it will actually benefit the AK economy at all.
Ah, the smell of taxpayer pork cooking.
If there happens to be a trough, there will be pigs.
I am disappointed in her performance….Its not near as nice as how the Anchorage ASSembly spent the millions of covid relief dollars on when they had the fake self appointed mayor AQD.
She needs to sit in on some of their “woke sessions” and learn from the best that taxpayer dollars can buy.
Nine of these are legit efforts that will promote and/or retain local jobs. A few more (i.e., HVAC replacement) are desperately needed, but perhaps not the responsibility of the federal government (although State government certainly drags their feet on educational infrastructure). I’d say the substance-to-pork ratio is about par with Don Young’s financial requests, and it’s about what I expect Nick Begich would have submitted had he prevailed.
ALERT … Call the Authorities, Now!!!
Two very accomplished “Air Thieves” spotted at the Anchorage Airport. Refer to the selfie-foto within this article for proof and verification.
What else do you expect from the RCV twins? Neither of them would be in office otherwise…….and that’s a fact.
Playing Santa Claus with the public’s money is Politics 001 at the university level. She finally learned it after 22 years in the US Senate. Right up there with the number of attempts at the bar exam. We are so proud.
Her many years of taking the Bar Exam nearly busted OUR bank. I wish we could have found a way to charge it to taxpayers. She couldn’t adequately cover the bills later as an attorney because no one wanted to hire her as their lawyer. The US Senate appointment was the only way to get her out of our hair and quit breaking OUR bank.
Frankie, we’ve heard you broke our bank ……
all on your own.
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