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Twenty twenty-three wasn’t just a tough legislative year in Washington.
For Alaska’s lone U.S. House member, U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola (Yup’ik/D-AK), it was also a year of loss after she unexpectedly lost her husband in a plane crash this fall.
Matt Laslo reports from Washington on how the Alaska Native congresswoman is overcoming the sorrow.
While Rep. Peltola is serving her second congressional term, she won a special election in 2022, which means she was barely able to get her bearings in Washington before she had to run for reelection.
That’s proved a blessing to Rep. Peltola, especially as dysfunction swirled around her this year, like when former U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was ousted and then Congress shut down for three weeks as Republicans warred over his replacement.
“Everything’s brand new for me, so I don’t know what to compare it to. And then, with so much, having happened in my personal life that has changed it, but that’s made it a different dynamic as well.”
Even though Rep. Peltola’s new to Washington, she’s far from daft.
“Of course, all of us aspire to a different kind of government where we’re making improvements, and not just barely keeping up with the status quo from 15 years ago. So that’s discouraging.”
That said, Rep. Peltola’s an optimist. And even in the hyper-partisan Capitol, she’s been able to forge new relationships with like-minded moderates.
“But I’m also encouraged, because there is a lot of frustration. There’s a lot of shared frustration in both the Republican Conference and the Democratic Caucus. There’s many of us in the middle. Because there’s so much middle ground and there’s so many people in the middle who want to make things work. And we’re just figuring out, I think, how the levers and everything to make, to push the middle forward.”
Rep. Peltola did serve ten years in the state legislature and she’s been leaning on that experience to brush aside all the petty partisan bickering on behalf of her state.
“But it’s such an honor to serve Alaskans, and it’s an honor to represent them in D.C. where there’s so much national history. And to be able to have Alaskans’ voices injected into national conversations is a good thing. I think Alaska has a lot to offer the rest of the nation in terms of how we do politics, and how we get along with each other.”
The seven states that use water from the Colorado River have struggled to agree on plans to significantly cut back on demand. In the meantime, cities in the basin are investing in ways to reuse water they already have. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has proposed a $3.4 billion dollar treatment facility in Carson, Calif. to clean up sewage and make it drinkable. (Photo: Alex Hager / KUNC)
Leaders from around the West recently met in Las Vegas for talks about managing the shrinking Colorado River.
Representatives from tribal communities want a bigger say in its future, as KUNC’s Alex Hager reports.
Thirty tribes use water from the Colorado River, but they’ve long been excluded from decisions about how it’s shared.
Stephen Roe Lewis is governor of the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona.
He said he wants to see formal protections for a tribal role in water talks.
“Not just a seat at the table, we want to build upon that, you know, we want to be able to control the agenda, that, really that that is for the betterment of all of the basin for the entire region.”
Lewis says tribes can be an ally to federal and state governments looking to conserve water.
His community recently accepted hundreds of millions of federal dollars to use less from the river.
Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University recently announced plans to become an Emergency Medical Service Training Center after receiving approval from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
The training center will offer EMS courses.
Program directors say it is part of efforts to address the shortage of EMS personnel in the area.
Courses are expected to start in June.
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