Members of the Anadromous Fish Habitat Protection Task Force faced a monumental charge when borough Mayor Mike Navarre asked them to examine the habitat protection expansion ordinance and find ways to make it better.

Finding a way to balance private property rights with resource conservation is never an easy task, especially in a community where people love the land under their feet and want to be as close to the resource as possible.

Students from around the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District this weekend and next will be enjoying an annual event steeped in excitement, tradition and glamour.

We’d like to add another to that list — safety.

Skyview, Soldotna and Kenai Central High School proms are Saturday and Nikiski’s prom is on April 20.

Indeed prom is the time of the school year when students are supposed to celebrate their youth. But things can get out of hand quickly.

It is easy to sit around and mourn the loss of another critical piece of Cook Inlet oil and gas infrastructure, as we are inclined to do with the recent announcement concerning the LNG plant in Nikiski.

But crying about it won’t help anything.

ConocoPhillips’ facility has been good to our area for decades and recent news that the company will let its export license expire due to Cook Inlet gas shortages feels like a swift kick in the rear.

Expected? Yes.

Inevitable? Perhaps.

Devastating? That’s another matter.

As the Kenai Peninsula’s senior population continues to grow, so does the area’s need for services to keep them healthy and living happy.

While many of us could guess that this increasingly aging population will need more health care and assisted living services, those needs have started showing up in Central Peninsula Hospital’s community needs assessment.

Next to cancer care, residents recently surveyed on what health care items they felt were most needed in the area ranked Alzheimer’s, cardiology, dialysis and assisted living services highest.