Tim Ellis
reporter/producerTim has worked in the news business for over three decades as a newspaper reporter and editor and as a radio news reporter/producer. He grew up in a military family and lived in Utah, Hawaii and Kentucky before his family moved to Alaska in 1967, settling in Delta Junction. In 1977, Tim journeyed to the Lower 48 in 1977 to get a college education and see the world. He graduated from Seattle University in 1983 with a degree in journalism and relocated to southern Arizona, where he spent most of the next 25 years working as a print, broadcast and online journalist. He returned to Alaska in 2010 and joined the KUAC news staff, where he has since worked as a reporter and producer covering energy and the environment, agriculture/sustainability, transportation, military affairs and rural Interior communities. He lives in Delta Junction with his wife, Mary, and enjoys reading, hiking, fishing and carpentry.
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The federal Bureau of Land Management is asking for public comment on the Army’s request to keep using 870,000 acres of public land around Fort Wainwright and Fort Greely for military training areas. The BLM has scheduled two public meetings next month to talk about the Army land withdrawals. -
The Alaska-based 11th Airborne Division will host its first large-scale training exercise next week on ranges around Fort Wainwright and Eielson Air Force Base. That means more than 500 Army vehicles that’ll take part in the exercise will be traveling on the Parks Highway and the northernmost stretch of the Richardson Highway over the next couple of weeks.
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Fairbanks-based Golden Valley Electric Association is working with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory on a plan to shut down one of the state’s last coal-fired power plants. The utility will replace Healy Unit 2 with wind power to reduce the co-op’s reliance on price-volatile fossil fuels, which generate 90 percent of its electricity. The goal is to stabilize and reduce rates that are among the highest in the country.
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Three Bears Alaska is now the owner of the Gold Hill liquor store in Ester, a small community near Fairbanks. The Wasilla-based retail chain closed the deal on Wednesday, then began replacing signage and equipment and inventory in time to reopen this morning as the 20th Three Bears store in Alaska.
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The North Pole Chamber of Commerce is trying to raise a million dollars to build a welcome center for visitors, newcomers and local residents. The chamber plans to help local businesses and job-seekers looking for opportunities in a town with next to two growing military installations.
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The state Department of Environmental Conservation is asking for public comments on new regulations for siting small nuclear reactors, like the one the military plans to set up at Eielson Air Force Base to generate electricity.
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Alaska State Troopers have charged a Tanana man with first-degree murder for fatally shooting a family member who lived next door.
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Alaska State Troopers have released more information about an incident last month in which a woman fell from a Richardson Highway bridge over the Tanana River near Delta Junction. She’s still undergoing treatment at a Fairbanks hospital for injuries she sustained.
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The U.S. Army is proposing to replace Fort Wainwright’s coal-fired heat and power plant with natural-gas fired boilers installed around the post. The Army must replace the 65-year-old power plant because it’s unreliable and becoming prohibitively expensive to operate.
