Platinum develops sustainable economy: Bering Sea fish plant increases prosperity in leanest area of country.

• Author: Bohi, Heidi
• Position: ALASKA NATIVE BUSINESS NEWS

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With the June opening of the $40 million state-of-the-art fish processing plant in Platinum, a community of less than 50 people in the Kuskokwim Delta Region, comes jobs for residents of the 20-community region, along with economic development benefits for the community resulting from the three-year construction activity and increased spending that will forever change the quality of life in one of the poorest areas in the country.

Until this year, Platinum residents and those from surrounding communities were increasingly left with no choice but to leave home to find work, at the same time being forced to abandon their culture and the way of life that comes with living in a small Native village. Completion of the Goodnews Bay Regional Processing Plant means that 127 new jobs are available during the peak May-September fishing season and will result in expanding the market for fishermen throughout the region, both critical cornerstones to developing a sustainable economy.

NO LONGER POOR

"It is a vibrant community," says Neil Rodriguez, community and government affairs manager for the Coastal Villages Region Fund (CVRF), of the ongoing transformation.

CVRF is one of six Western Alaska Community Development Quota (CDQ) groups that is guaranteed a share of the Bering Sea ground fish and is paid a royalty fee for its quota shares by commercial fishing industry partners who harvest the resource. That money is invested to fund economic and human resource development programs such as the new seafood processing facility in Platinum, which is one of the largest in-region projects in the 17-year history of the CDQ program.

The organization represents 20 coastal villages along the west coast of Alaska from Platinum up to Scammon Bay, including three Kuskokwim River villages. CVRF communities are among some of the most economically challenged in the state. The Kuskokwim Delta Region alone ranks as being one of the most impoverished areas in the world, based on globally accepted definitions of poverty. Most residents live a traditional subsistence lifestyle and more than 30 percent have cash incomes well below the federal poverty threshold.

CREATING JOBS

CVRF has responded by focusing on economic development opportunities that produce jobs in its communities and today 98 percent of its plant employees are from Alaska--compared to the state average of 27 percent for seafood processing--and 90 percent come from the region's...