But Department of Corrections officials say Kotzebue is getting enough money to operate the facility.
Caught in between are the Alaska State Troopers, who are scrambling to find a place to lock up prisoners temporarily and to find money for a transportation budget expected to double or triple as they fly more prisoners to Nome.
It's a game of chicken, said Kotzebue city attorney Joe Evans.
Kotzebue operates one of 15 community jails. From Barrow to Unalaska to Craig, the communities own and operate the jails using state funds.
Kotzebue Police Chief Ed Weibl says the state subsidy has not kept pace with community operating costs since the contract system started in the mid-1980s.
The Associated Press
Over six days in early April, a team spent about 40 hours flying survey tracks almost two miles above the sea near St. Lawrence and Nunivak islands. They were looking for the thermal signature of the fat brown mammals.
As the plane hurtled along at 230 mph, the infrared scanner would record the total warmth generated in 1,500 living-room-size squares spread in a strip across 3.7 miles of ocean. Burn likened the high-altitude, high-tech scan to "mowing the lawn."
"The autopilot will keep us on down the line at a constant speed," he said. "Actually it's pretty boring up there."
What the thermal surveying lost in thrills, it gained in accuracy and volume. Groups of 10 walruses or more would show up immediately, with exact locations and heat recorded on the computer. Every hour the scientists would cover about 850 square miles, four times the area they could have scrutinized by watching for walrus through airplane windows.
At least once a day, the team flew lower and took digital photographs to get an exact count of animals in certain sample groups. By comparing the number of walruses in the pictures with the amount of heat they generated, scientists hope to produce a sort of walrus heat index that could be applied to the entire area.
The walrus study was originally funded in 2002 with a $208,000 grant from NASA, along with other remote-sensing projects.
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