Disaster relief: Congress in January appropriated $75 million in disaster aid for various fishery failures around the nation. Of this sum, $20.8 million was allocated to Alaska for poor Chinook salmon returns to the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers and to Cook Inlet.Government Native, and fishing industry representatives have been working on how to spend Alaska's disaster funds.As of press time, at least one significant decision had been made: About $9.7 million will go to the Yukon-Kuskokwim region, and $11.1 million will go to Cook Inlet.Committees for each region are working on spending plans detailing how much money will go as direct aid to fishermen and how much will go toward research projects, said Julie Speegle, spokeswoman for the National Marine Fisheries Service in Juneau.Thesespending plans will feed into a number of other bureaucratic steps that are necessary before any payments or grants go out the door, Speegle said.
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