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Kake Tribal Corp. has suspended its foreclosure of Pelican Seafoods, hoping to avoid taking on the old plant's liabilities.

"We're going to hold off on that indefinitely, until the situation with the ammonia is complete," said Steve Malin, CEO of Kake Tribal Corp., referring to the freezer plant's ammonia coolant, which requires special handling to keep safe and contained.

The Chichagof Island plant was purchased from Kake Tribal by Ed Bahrt & Associates LLC of Sitka. When that effort failed, Kake Tribal last summer began foreclosure proceedings. Kake Tribal had hoped to reacquire the plant and sell it to another company to operate.

Bahrt, contacted by e-mail, confirmed Tuesday he still owns the nearly abandoned plant. When operating, it is the largest business in tiny Pelican, but it has only operated intermittently over the last several years.

The freezer plant's potentially hazardous coolant has been a complicating factor in the plant's ownership. To keep the ammonia contained, the plant's freezers must keep running at significant cost in emergency diesel-powered electricity that no one wants to pay.

What made the power issue so critical was the collapse of the city's water flume, which provided hydroelectric power to run the plant. The switch to diesel made the costs exorbitant, Malin said.

If the Pelican Utility District is not paid for power, other city ratepayers will wind up absorbing the cost of the diesel, Phillips said.

The plan now is to remove the ammonia from the system and sequester it on site, under a plan developed by Coast Guard, utility and other experts, said Scot Tiernan of the Department of Environmental Conservation.

"That will buy them some time," he said.

Otherwise, "It's pointless to keep the whole plant refrigerated when there's nothing in it," Malin said.

Nothing of any value, but there are 60,000 pounds of old bait in the plant's freezers that officials are also struggling to dispose of.

Pelican Mayor Patricia Phillips said a load of bait was given to Sitka's Seafood Producers Co-op, but the fish plant told them it was in such poor condition that they did not want more.

"Rotting bait might be more dangerous than the ammonia," in those quantities, Phillips said.

Some is being ground and disposed of in Lisianski Inlet near Pelican, while an Environmental Protection Agency permit is being sought to dump the bulk of it in the ocean, Tiernan said.

A vessel has been contracted to haul it at least 12 miles offshore for disposal, he said.

With the bait problem on the way to being solved, the Pelican Utility District, owned by Kake Tribal, is able to shut off power to the plant.

"We need to do something to kind of mothball it until somebody comes along to operate it," Malin said.

Once the plant is stabilized, Kake Tribal intends to proceed with the foreclosure and then attempt again to sell the plant, Malin said.

"There are some discussions with potential buyers," he said, but most want the situation with the plant's ownership and potential risks stabilized, he said.

• Contact reporter Pat Forgeyat patrick.forgey@juneauempire.com.