Chuitna coal debate heats up — Gov. Parnell’s administration charged with violating rules

By Naomi Klouda

Homer Tribune

A lawsuit against the Gov. Sean Parnell administration will be the next step if a legal process for protesting the Chuitna coal development continues to go unanswered.

Under hard-rock mining laws, Unsuitable Lands Petitions cannot be filed, such as in the case of the Pebble Project. But under soft-rock mining for coal, a provision exists for citizens and groups to petition the government arguing that a particular area should be deemed unsuitable, said Cook InletKeeper Executive Director Bob Shavelson.

“There is a section specifically written that states if an area is unsuitable for mining and cannot be reclaimed to its pre-mining values, then petitioners can ask to have it removed from the mining plan,” he said.

This legal right for interjecting public input is outlined in the Alaska Surface Coal Mining Control and Reclamation Act.

The proposed coal project would run through 11 miles of salmon stream. Though PacRim Coal has said it can rebuild the habitat that supports wild salmon, biologists have disagreed.

Shavelson fired off a letter Monday to the governor reminding him that the Unsuitable Lands Petition response deadline has come and gone. Under law, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources had a legal duty to respond to the petition by April 19. Four months later, the administration has failed to act, Shavelson wrote in the letter.

Pouring over oil transit details — Transportation risk analysis to study, reduce dangers of Cook Inlet spills

By Jenny Neyman

Photo courtesy of Dr. David Wartinbee. Escopeta’s Spartan jack-up rig makes its way up Cook Inlet this August. Cook Inlet is expected to see increased traffic in the next 10 years.

Redoubt Reporter

Given the myriad risk factors of an oil spill that a new Cook Inlet marine transportation study will be considering, the wonder isn’t the danger that spills could occur, it’s the fact that there haven’t been more of them.

“We’ve been very lucky,” said Tim Robertson of Nuka Research and Planning, which is facilitating the study. “Any of these kind of catastrophic or very serious oil spills are very low frequency events, and we’ve just been lucky that we haven’t had a serious incident. All of the parts and pieces are here for a very serious type of accident.”

The level of risk of an oil spill is a product of frequency and consequence, Robertson said — how much opportunity there is for a problem and how significant the damages could be. In Cook Inlet, both factors are great.

“We have significant vessel traffic,” he said. “We have a number of large ships that come in, including crude oil tankers and oil product tankers. We have the very large, very fast container ships that are essentially our supply line in Alaska. We have a number of smaller bulk carriers that haul fishery or forest products, and intermixed with all this other traffic are tugs and barges and fishing vessels.”

Large or small, quick or plodding, carrying environmentally hazardous products as cargo or just as fuel, each of those vessels faces significant navigational challenges in Cook Inlet.

“We have tremendous tides, and currents that are driven by the tides, that make navigation difficult in Cook Inlet,” Robertson said. “We’ve got a lot of shoal waters, waters that are shallow so a ship has to be very careful to be in their channels, not like some other places where it’s broad and deep. We have the ice season in the wintertime, which is really the only major port in North America that deals with significant ice accumulations in the wintertime. And we also have a lot of darkness and periods of obscured visibility. All those things are risk factors.”

If there is a spill, the possible environmental damage is great — world-class fish runs, federally protected beluga whales, migratory birds and sea life. And what’s being hauled isn’t the only danger. The fuel required to do the hauling would also be hazardous if spilled into the inlet.

“It’s not just looking at the cargo being crude oil. Even if the vessel is carrying something benign, like pingpong balls, if there’s an incident it still has its own fuel source on-board. There is a risk of danger regardless of the cargo,” said Jerry Rombach, director of public outreach for the Cook Inlet Regional Citizens Advisory Council.

In the past three decades, there’s only been one significant spill in Cook Inlet — when the tanker Glacier Bay ran aground on a large submerged rack on July 2, 1987, and spilled 207,000 gallons of oil. And there’s been one recent major close call, on Feb. 2, 2006, when an ice floe tore the tanker Seabulk Pride lose from the KPL dock in Nikiski and pushed it aground about a half mile up the beach.

Overall, Cook Inlet’s record of oil spills is relatively unfouled, particularly considering the amount of vessel traffic and the navigational hazards that exist. The point of a maritime transportation risk assessment of Cook Inlet currently being launched is to keep that record clean.

“There haven’t been many incidents but there have been a few and it only really takes one. It gets people thinking about the risks involved in maritime navigation, and especially with our oil production and oil shipping in the inlet, it is even more necessary that we take a look to determine if our navigation needs warrant any additional oversight,” Rombach said.

CIRCAC is partnering with the Coast Guard and Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation to conduct the assessment. It is a federal requirement added by Congress to the reauthorization of the Coast Guard in 2010 that such an assessment be done, prompted in part by the Seabulk Pride incident, and even more so by the Selendang Ayu incident in 2004, when the cargo freighter ran aground off the coast of Unalaska and spilled an estimated 350,000 gallons of bunker oil and diesel.

A marine transportation risk assessment has already been conducted for the Aleutian Islands region, and now it’s Cook Inlet’s turn. Nuka Research, based in Seldovia, was contracted to facilitate the process, as it did for the Aleutians project and has done for the Alaska DEC in assessing risks of land-based oil spills statewide.

The study is expected to cost under $2 million, Rombach said, with about $430,000 being secured so far.

“We know we’ve still got fundraising to do, but this gets us about a fourth of the way to where we need to be. It’s enough that we can get a big part of it under way,” Rombach said.

The project will include three phases. The first is to assess current vessel traffic in Cook Inlet and project what traffic will be like over the coming 10 years.

“It looks at what types of vessels are here, what kind of cargo are they carrying, how much fuel they have on board, what kinds of fuel they have on board, what routes they take, that sort of thing,” Robertson said.

An initial Cook Inlet marine traffic analysis was completed in 2006, so this will be an update of existing data. It’s likely to show an increase in traffic, Rombach said, especially with increased oil and gas exploration activity, such as the arrival of Escopeta’s Spartan jack-up rig, and the expected addition of another jack-up rig from Buccaneer Energy this winter.

“We tend to think that there’s a higher level of activity in the inlet. Some of that might be wishful thinking, but some smart people are saying there’s a lot of oil left in the inlet. We’re not fortune tellers, we don’t know what might happen with the gas pipeline coming to Nikiski, but we just think all signs point toward a greater level of activity in the inlet and we want to be prepared,” Rombach said.

Next will be taking that 10-year projection and estimating what potential accidents could occur, given that traffic. A panel of experts will review those two reports to analyze what impacts may occur if those accidents were to happen.

“Where would oil go if it ended up in the inlet? They would do a trajectory analysis. And experts from natural resource agencies might estimate what would get oiled if these spills occurred. It gives us the consequences,” Robertson said.

An advisory panel representing various stakeholder groups and agencies will monitor these phases, then take all the resulting information and come to a consensus on recommendations to submit to the Coast Guard that would increase vessel safety and decrease the risk of spills in the inlet.

“At the end of it, we will have this risk picture. They’ll look at it and say, ‘OK, these are the things we can do to reduce the risk — either reduce the frequency of the accidents or the severity or the consequences of the accidents,” Robertson said.

The recommendations could be simple or complex. Some of the suggestions from the Aleutians advisory panel in the wake of the Selendang Ayu spill, for example, were for the Coast Guard to keep specialized equipment on-board and to have different vessels available to respond immediately to an incident.

“Some might be fulfilled just by the Coast Guard tweaking how it operates. Some others might require new regulations, so that you’d have a whole new regulatory process that would kick in that would include public comments and writing new regulations and rules and so forth,” Rombach said. “We really don’t know where this will take us, but some of it could be quickly implemented, some other suggestions might take longer to implement.”

Rombach said the advisory panel will operate as independently from the management team as possible, even to the point that some of its recommendations may not be exactly what the steering agencies would like to see result from the process.

“We (CIRCAC) would like to see (a requirement for) double-hulled vessels, for example. But the recommendation might be that, based on the hazards that are identified and the traffic patterns that are projected, the panel may say, ‘We don’t think that’s necessary.’ So we know that there might be some undesirable recommendations (from what CIRCAC may prefer) that might come out of this, and we’re prepared for that.”

Currently, applicants are being sought to serve on the advisory panel, with one panelist and one alternate from 12 identified stakeholder categories, including Cook Inlet ports and harbors; land and natural resource managers; Alaska Native Tribes and subsistence users; nongovernmental organizations; the fishing industry; mariners in local trades, including tugs and barges, container ships and tank vessels; marine salvage and rescue tug operators; marine pilots; and oil platform or mobile drilling platform operators.

Panelists will be appointed as individuals, not representatives of a company or organization, and will be selected based on their knowledge of local infrastructure, relevant industries, waterways, navigation, weather, habitat and area use.

“I consider this our key to success is seating a good advisory panel. We’re looking for folks with knowledge of their stakeholder group, willing to come to the table and learn. Our experience with this process is everyone has something to teach everyone else,” Robertson said.

The deadline for submitting an application to serve on the advisory panel is Aug. 26. The application can be downloaded on the risk assessment website, http://www.cookinletriskassessment.com. Completed forms can be emailed to CIRAapplicants@nukaresearch.com or faxed to 240-368-7467. Notification of the selections is expected by Sept. 1, with the first panel meeting slated for Sept. 12 in Anchorage.

For more information on the risk assessment, including all relevant documents, schedules and contacts that will be updated as the process continues, visit www.cookinletriskassessment.com.

As this process begins, Rombach cautions Cook Inlet residents to realize that it takes more than good luck to avoid oil spills.

“Particularly in a place like Cook Inlet, and particularly with the nature of the cargo largely being gas or oil, that just almost screams for this attention to be given to navigational hazards. We would like to think that the shippers in Cook Inlet, the oil processors and operators, the oversight of our organization and the presence of an outfit like (Cook Inlet Spill Prevention and Response), that we are as prepared as any place on Earth for an incident of almost any kind,” he said. “This is just one more piece of the puzzle that hopefully, when the effort is all said and done, we will have a product and set of recommendations that will take us even further than other parts of the country, and other parts of the world, in preparedness.”

Mite concerning — Red mass on East Mackey Lake leaves biologists scratching heads

By Dr. David Wartinbee, for the Redoubt Reporter

Alaskans have been seeing red quite a lot lately.

Photos courtesy of Dr. David Wartinbee. A mysterious red mass drifts to the shore of East Mackey Lake on Aug. 4. The mass is thought to be a massive hatch of larval mites, though it’s not known for sure why so many ended up on the surface at the same time.

We recently heard about reddish-colored fungal spores that were found en masse in Kivalina. Then there was red-colored water in Kachemak Bay, similar to a red tide, though not harmful. Apparently it’s now the central Kenai Peninsula’s turn.

I was taxiing my plane to the dock at the northern end of East Mackey Lake on Aug. 4 when I spotted a 100-yard streak, between 10 and 30 feet wide, of bright red stuff in the water. As I tied up the plane, the wind shifted and this fire-engine red material drifted toward the plane.

As an aquatic biologist for 40 years, I had never seen anything like this and was way beyond curious. I took photographs as it approached and got out a jar to collect a small sample. Yes, as a geeky biologist, I almost always carry a few jars for collecting bugs or other interesting things.

The red stuff was on the surface of the water and was made up of very small particles.

Worms crawl in, cause damage in refuge — Study tracks possible wriggling invasion

By Joseph Robertia

Photos by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Deanna Saltmarsh holds up a preserved nightcrawler sample, one of several worms she collected this past summer while conducting research on invasive species at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge as part of a graduate project through Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage.

Redoubt Reporter

Anyone who thinks their desk is a mess should see Deanna Saltmarsh’s workspace. It’s one thing to be piled with stacks of paper and associated office debris. It’s quite another to be buried in more than 300 worms.

“I’ve collected 336 worms, to be exact,” she said. “My friends bet me I’d end up being called ‘the worm lady,’ and within the first two weeks that’s what everyone was calling me. I knew it would happen.”

Saltmarsh earned her moniker this summer while conducting field research and collecting samples of earthworms from the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge as part of a graduate project through Alaska Pacific University, in Anchorage. She said she is actually more interested in the effects the worms are having on the environment, than in the worms themselves.

“I’m really interested in invasive species in general,” she said.

This may sound confusing to anyone with a green thumb, but Saltmarsh said that while worms in a garden are a good thing, they may not be as beneficial for the environment outside raised beds and planting boxes, for much the same reasons.

In gardens, earthworms aerate the soil, mix organic material into the soil profile and process coarse organic debris into a form that can increase nutrient availability. But these soil-altering abilities also mean that when they successfully invade regions naturally devoid of earthworms, something is likely to change.

“They’re good in an agricultural setting, but not so good in a forest ecosystem,” she said. “They can limit plant species diversity and plant species richness, they can change nutrient cycling to produce more grasses and weeds, and they can lend to erosion by their consuming of the organic material from the forest floor, which can leave bare earth and plants with their roots exposed.”

Seeing red not always trouble — K-Bay algae bloom a nontoxic event

By Naomi Klouda

Photo courtesy of Homer Tribune

Homer Tribune

Bright red streaks in the waters at Tutka Bay last week caused a bit of a fright among local observers, but the radiant blooming algae pose no reason to be alarmed.

A “red tide” or any unusual discoloration of the water doesn’t always signal paralytic shellfish poisoning, explained George Scanlan, the shellfish permit coordinator for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.

In this case, the red discoloration is from a bloom of algae that aren’t toxic.

“Red is the color given by the organism itself. It becomes more apparent and spectacular when they are present in large concentrations,” Scanlan said.

Ideal warm temperatures and plenty of nutrients in the water can cause the proliferation of the phytoplankton.

Red tides do not always spell a signal for PSP, though scientists warn those who harvest shellfish to be on the safe side and avoid eating shellfish such as  clams, mussels and oysters that have not been tested for PSP during these periods. In Kachemak Bay, the toxic chemical is not present in seaweed.

“Oyster growers at Kachemak Bay submit a weekly sample for PSP testing throughout the summer. We have a fairly good record of the level of PSP toxin based on those weekly testings,” Scanlan said. “During this time period of bloom, the samples submitted have been clean. The level of the toxin has been either nondetectable or well below the regulatory limit of 80 micrograms per 100 grams of toxin.”  

Moth feeding frenzy infiltrates trees

By Naomi Klouda

Photo provided. A caterpillar and the results of its feeding frenzy are seen on a leaf earlier this summer.

Homer Tribune

A certain hungry caterpillar is eating its way from Matanuska-Susitna region shrubbery to lower Cook Inlet salmonberries, proliferating in an abundant population that has gardeners worried.

An army of caterpillars is capable of stripping trees and bushes of foliage. But birds sure aren’t complaining.

“Song birds and migratory birds are stuffing themselves on the caterpillars,” said Janice Chumley, an agricultural-horticultural and integrated pest management research technician with the Kenai district of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service.

“This was the second year when we saw this high of a population, which tend to run in cycles,” she said.

Complaints have poured into the Cooperative Extension Service’s Kenai Peninsula office from property owners concerned about the copious consumption of leaves on alders, willows, ornamental plants and beloved berry bushes. While other moth species can eat their way through shrubs sufficient to cause some damage, the main culprits are the autumnal moth and the Bruce spanworm that seem to cause most of the defoliation currently being seen on such a large scale.

According to an article, “Geometrid Moth Information and Control,”  compiled by Michael Ray, of the Cooperative Extension Service, and John Lindquist of the U.S. Forestry Service, the autumnal moth originated in Europe, and was reportedly first seen in Alaska in 2005. The Bruce spanworm is caught flying even in snowstorms and is native to Alaska.

Science of the Seasons: Pretty smelly — Chocolate lilies offer distinctive sight, odor

By Dr. David Wartinbee, for the Redoubt Reporter

Photos courtesy of Dr. David Wartinbee. The light-colored pistil and stamens are set off by the rich brown petals of a chocolate lily.

A couple weeks back I was invited to join a number of fellow entomologists in an attempt to collect as many insect species as possible from selected areas within the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.

Each of us concentrated on those insects we know the best. For me that was the aquatic dipterans known aschironomids. The larvae develop in various aquatic habitats, become a pupa for a few days, and then emerge as an aerial adult. They look like miniature mosquitoes but the adults do not feed. As adults they simply mate, deposit eggs and die in about a week. While usually very small in size, they are extremely numerous. Due to their large numbers, they dominate most aquatic habitats and are a food source for many other animals in or around the stream, lake or pond.

At one point during our three days of insect collections, we were taking a break in a moist meadow beside a stream. I spotted a couple flowering chocolate lilies. They usually have two or more beautiful, brown-colored flowers with speckles of yellow or green on the petals. Their pistils (female flower parts) are usually light green and the stamens (male flower parts) are bright yellow. These light-colored reproductive parts are easily spotted since they contrast with the dark petals. The flowers are quite attractive and the name is easy to remember because of the milk-chocolate color.

These are quite interesting plants and worthy of a closer look. To begin with, unlike the typical compelling odor of garden flowers, or whatever odor the name chocolate lily might conjure up, these flowers produce a strong, unpleasant fragrance. It can be described as similar to rotting flesh or untreated sewage. Ugh!

Fledgling views — Gull colony bustling with life

Photos by Clark Fair, Redoubt Reporter

The flats near the mouth of the Kenai River host one of the largest, if not the largest, colony of herring gulls in Alaska. At the end of the breeding season, it is not uncommon to find more than 30,000 adults and young occupying the site, with much smaller numbers of glaucous-winged gulls and Arctic terns.

Adult herring gulls arrive by the thousands on the flats each spring to build nests of mud and grass and lay clutches of one to three speckled olive or brown eggs. Both parents share the three- to four-week incubation duties, and then they take turns guarding the nest and hunting for food for their young brood.

Typically, the gulls will harvest hooligan or salmon smolt, but they scavenge fish-processing waste from area canneries and rob chicks from the nests of other bird species. The adults ingest the food and regurgitate it for the chicks to eat. Herring gull chicks grow rapidly on the rich diet available near the river mouth, and they are able to fledge in only a matter of weeks. By fall — despite the predation of bald eagles and other predators — the chicks swell the ranks of the herring gull population, which then leaves the central Kenai Peninsula and begins flying down the coast to continue feeding throughout the winter.

Most of the herring gull eggs have hatched by now, and those interested in watching the birds can observe

Olivia Fair snaps a photo of a curious chick on the Kenai flats.

them readily with binoculars or a spotting scope from the bluff near the Kenai Senior Center.

Nettles pack power as ‘people’s medicine’

By Naomi Klouda

By Naomi Klouda, Homer Tribune. Janice Schofield, an expert on Alaska wild plants, was in Homer last week for a workshop on edible plants.

Homer Tribune

The backyard, blessed with dandelions, horsetails, devil’s club and nettles, may seem more problem than gift. But each of those plants has a use that is power-packed for health.

Consider that in Japan, devil’s club was literally loved to death. Today, the plant needs to be imported because widespread use as a healing herb has nearly wiped them out, said Janice Schofield, an expert on Alaska’s wild plants with a new book on the subject.

Nettles are shy plants often found shaded by large, wild shrubs. Hikers know the sting and burning itch of bare-skin contact. Horsetails, that ancient plant that shows up in fossil records from the dinosaur era, can be used to immediately counteract the sting by scrubbing it across the irritated area.

Nettles offer a powerhouse for remedies to keep a prostate healthy, cure a urinary tract infection and inhibit bleeding, said Schofield, author of “Discovering Wild Plants” and “Alaska’s Wild Plants.” Her first acquaintance with the weeds began in Kachemak Bay in the early 1980s. She spent a year studying nettles.

“I realized I was only at the tip of the iceberg — there is such a long relationship between humans and nettles,” she said.

Flowing with care — Stream Watch program conscripts public volunteers to protect streams

By Joseph Robertia

Photo courtesy of the Kenai Watershed Forum. Lisa Beranek, right, recently hired by the Kenai Watershed Forum to coordinate the Stream Watch program on the Kenai and Russian rivers, explains conservation principles to two recreationalists recently.

Redoubt Reporter

The Kenai and Russian rivers are world-famous for their fishing opportunities, but visiting anglers from all over the world don’t always share the same sense of stewardship and awareness of avoiding ecological impacts as those who call the Kenai Peninsula home.

Some anglers need to be informed about using designated access points to get to and from the river to prevent bank erosion. Others may come from areas without bears, so they lack knowledge of how to stay safe in an area where numerous hungry bruins are roaming. There are also stringy snags and knotted clumps of discarded fishing line along the banks that must be cleaned up to prevent injuries to wildlife.

To accomplish all of this, the Stream Watch program was launched by the U.S. Forest Service in 1994. This award-winning program utilizes trained volunteers to help protect world-class fisheries through public outreach activities and cleanup events.

The program has become so effective it is expanding to the lower Kenai River this season, and will now include an area from the Russian River in Cooper Landing downstream on the Kenai to Centennial Park in Soldotna. As such, the Kenai Watershed Forum brought on a new person to oversee the operation.

Lisa Beranek started as the Stream Watch coordinator May 13, and she said it’s been going great so far.

Science of the Seasons: Horsetails here to stay

By Dr. David Wartinbee, for the Redoubt Reporter

Photo courtesy of Dr. David Wartinbee. The strobilus on top of a fertile stem of horsetail has some branches below it. This strobilus is mature and open, so spores are being released to be carried by the wind. A nonfertile stem is seen on the right.

During the first couple weeks of June, most Alaska gardeners are getting their gardens planted. Of course, there is much discussion about when to plant particular species, and it depends on who is doing the planting and the microclimate where one is working.

Despite the variations in planting times, one thing many gardeners in Alaska will agree on is that Equisetum, or horsetail, is the worst weed in the garden.

It seems to come up before anything else and it grows until things are about to freeze. The gardener in my family has muttered many curses on the ancestry of these species while weeding.

Speaking of ancestry, Equisetum plants have been around for hundreds of millions of years, and often show up in Carboniferous period coal deposits. Organisms that have survived that long have evolved some pretty good methods of reproducing and coping with the environment, despite the constant extractions by aggressive gardeners.

Changing tides — Kasilof River gets new fence, special-use management

By Joseph Robertia

Photos by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. From left, volunteers Mike Wiley, Ricky Gease, Bob McCard and Harry Miller stabilize a piece of guardrail while Brent Johnson uses a Bobcat to drive a post into the sand Wednesday as part of the fencing project to protect the grass-covered dunes and estuary areas on the south beach at the mouth of the Kasilof River.

Redoubt Reporter

While salmon fuel the commercial fishing industry of the Kenai Peninsula, and sportfishing and personal-use harvesting of fish add to the tourism business of the area, it would be hard to deny that these same fish coveted by so many different user groups also can cause conflict, putting these groups at odds with each other from time to time.

However, the ongoing dune-fencing project at the mouth of the Kasilof River is turning into an example of how those with varied interests can work together toward a common goal of habitat protection. Several fishermen — commercial, sport and personal use — as well as others simply concerned with mitigating damage to their local area, joined forces last week for the betterment of an ecologically sensitive area that is vitally important as an estuary for young fish, migratory birds and other species of wildlife.

“The construction phase has gone marvelously. A great bunch of guys have volunteered to help,” said Brent Johnson, president of the Kasilof Regional Historical Association and a member of the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly, representing the Kasilof area.