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.

Variety: Spice of life, appeal of river festival

By Jenny Neyman

Photos courtesy of Rhonda Orth, Kenai Watershed Forum. An artists puts the finishing touches on his wooden salmon figure at the Kenai River Festival last summer. Many favorite activities will return this weekend, with a few new highlights.

Redoubt Reporter

A listener could give themselves a hand cramp from turning the radio dial enough to get the same kind of musical variety offered in this weekend’s Kenai River Festival Rockin’ the River lineup.

Mellow acoustic folk music, rock ’n‘ roll, soulful ballads, fine-tuned harmonies, bluegrass, American big-band standards, blues and oom-pah music will be anchored with a Saturday night performance of electric Alaska funk, from perennial festival favorite performers and some newcomers to the venue.

“I’m very happy with it, we’ve got a good variety this year,” said Allen Auxier, station manager of KDLL, which organizes the concert portion of the festival. It can be stressful getting three days of musicians lined up to play, but once the music starts Friday night, “I get to sit down and watch the bands and I always enjoy it. Whoever is playing, I really do enjoy the variety. It’s always very, very different.”

Wave of the future — Kenai Watershed Forum evolving in leadership role

By Jenny Neyman

Photo by Patrice Kohl, Redoubt Reporter. Trees double over the Killey River as high waters discharge large amounts of mud and debris into the Kenai River in a past summer. Turbidity, the amount of dissolved solids suspended in water, is variable on the Kenai River. However, testing by the Kenai Watershed Forum shows turbidity above normal levels result from increased boat traffic during fishing season.

Redoubt Reporter

Like a salmon returning to the Kenai, Ninilchik, Anchor or the many other Kenai Peninsula rivers and streams it seeks to protect, the Kenai Watershed Forum sees itself as needing to keep pushing forward to get where it wants to go. Also like a salmon, it faces the possibility of strong currents and difficult obstructions ahead.

At its annual membership meeting Thursday at the Donald E. Gilman River Center on Funny River Road, the organization gave a look back at its accomplishments and growth, outlined its current priorities and attempted to lift the veil to what may be an even more active, yet challenging, future.

“I can tell you that probably the next three to five years the Watershed Forum will look a lot different than it does right now. The credibility is so high with the work it does, it’s continually being asked to do more work in different areas. But we don’t want to be reactive, we want to be proactive,” said Jim Butler, board president.

“We’ve come up with what we think is a roadmap that doesn’t just meet the needs of what we think our members and supporters want to do, but it meets the needs of the constituents that we deal with and serve,” he said.

Meeting those needs could increasingly become an ebb and flow of public sentiment, if what’s good for the watershed conflicts with what’s good for people’s politics or pocketbooks.

“The practical reality is this — we’re not researching really happy things. We’re trying to identify problems and challenges, and what that means is you’re the messenger, in many cases, of bad news. So we have to be able to have enough backbone by membership supporting it, and supporting us delivering this news to policy makers and being prepared to push back. And I think that’s the next evolutionary step we’re getting ready to take,” Butler said.

“Most the impacts we’re dealing with are caused by people. So what happens? We’ve got to find ways to change behavior, change policy, and most people that need to make changes, they don’t want to be changed. So we come up against a lot of folks that are challenging us in different forms that we haven’t been at before,” he said.

Going swimmingly

The Kenai Watershed Forum was founded in 1997 by local citizens concerned about the health of the Kenai River watershed. Executive Director Robert Ruffner laid out the organization’s goals in its main areas of activity — education, research, restoration and its evolving roles of collaboration and leadership: To increase the community’s awareness and knowledge about water and the environment; establish and maintain comprehensive research programs to provide quality data; work to restore and repair conditions that threaten the long-term health of the watersheds; lead collaborative efforts to address challenges and create opportunities to benefit the watersheds; and work to ensure the long-term viability of the organization and programs.

About six years ago the Watershed Forum widened its scope to encompass the entire Kenai Peninsula. The size of the organization, its budget and the amount of work it does have grown along with its scope.

The Kenai River Festival, this year scheduled for June 10 to 12 at Soldotna Creek Park, now draws about 6,000 people on a sunny weekend. The educational program is active in schools across the central peninsula and Homer, and this year is adding weeklong summer camp sessions for ages 6 to 12 at Soldotna Creek Park.

In restoration, the culvert remediation program has been a main priority in recent years, ensuring that fish passage to and from spawning grounds isn’t blocked by crushed, stuffed, inappropriately sized or hanging culverts. Invasive species, including stream-choking reed canary grass, is a continuing battle. A new focus this year is restoring a section of the Anchor River, which jumped its banks during flooding in 2002 and spread into an adjacent gravel pit.

With restoration, the challenge hasn’t been finding projects to do, it’s deciding where to best spend time and resources, Ruffner said.

Almanac: Sharp collectors — Fur Rondy pins cared for throughout the years

Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part story about a collection of Alaska memorabilia. Last week’s story discussed the collection’s recent re-emergence. This week’s story reveals how the collection came to be and its probable fate.

By Clark Fair

Redoubt Reporter

When Anchorage resident Virgil O. Dahler handprinted his name above the thin horizontal line in the center of his white Fur Rendezvous badge in February 1941, he could hardly have imagined the commotion that badge would cause nearly 70 years later.

The badge — a metal disk with a sharp pin affixed to its back so that it could be attached to a Rondy-goer’s winter coat — served then as a season ticket to all the Rondy events occurring between Feb. 18 and 22.

That season ticket is now referred to as a collector’s pin, and the 1941 pin is one of the rarest distributed in Fur Rondy history.

Dahler, who was only 22 years old in 1941, may have enjoyed the Rondy festivities that season, but he likely had little time to dwell on the significance of a celebration that was then in only its fifth year. Since arriving in Alaska in 1939 — coincidentally the first year Rondy pins were issued — Dahler had been working on the Alaska Railroad and helping build Elmendorf Air Force Base. With boyhood buddy, “Big Jim” Bergsrud, he had ventured north just for the summer, but the two stayed on long after snow flew.

In fact, the only thing that caused them to leave Alaska was the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Shortly after the United States declared war on the Empire of Japan, Dahler and Bergsrud enlisted in the U.S. Army at Fort Richardson. Dahler served in the Battle of Iwo Jima and in the Aleutians at Attu, and after his discharge in 1946, he and Bergsrud returned to Alaska and decided to homestead on the Kenai Peninsula.

They claimed adjacent properties down a road that would eventually bear a combination of their names — Jim Dahler Road at Mile 89.5 of the Sterling Highway. Dahler spent that first winter in a tent and melted snow for his water. Before the highway was completed, he and Bergsrud had to walk 16 miles each way to Kenai to buy groceries.

Hairy donation — Nonprofit ponders protocol for Fur Rondy pins

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part story about a collection of Alaska memorabilia. Part one discusses the collection’s recent re-emergence. Next week, part two will reveal how the collection came to be and its probable fate.

By Clark Fair

A Fur Rondy pin from 1972

Redoubt Reporter

Last summer, Josselyn O’Connor, the development director for the Kenai Watershed Forum, fielded a telephone call that set off an unexpected chain of events.

O’Connor, who works to raise funds for her 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, was accustomed to hearing from people interested in giving to the cause, but this turned out to be no ordinary donation.

The phone call resulted in a meeting with the donors, which led to some quick intraoffice discussions, which prompted a flurry of research, which led to a number of surprises, including a rare item dating back to 1941.

On the other end of the phone that first day was Jean Brockel, of Soldotna, who, along with her husband, Clayton, had long supported the Kenai Watershed Forum, whose mission is maintaining the health of watersheds throughout the Kenai Peninsula through education, restoration and research. Jean told O’Connor that she and Clayton wanted to make an appointment to come in and discuss a donation to the Watershed Forum.

“At the time, we were in the middle of a very big capital campaign, raising money for the renovation of the old Soberg house, to move our headquarters in,” O’Connor said. “I guess I anticipated a cash donation. I just wasn’t sure. When someone says that, they usually want to come in and donate cash. Every dollar is very important to an organization like us.”

But the Brockels were not offering cash — at least not directly.

Instead, they were offering a collection of Alaska memorabilia that had belonged to their son, John, who had died in January 2008. The collection consisted largely of Fur Rendezvous collectors pins, including most of the pins made and sold throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.

Muddy waters — Overactive year in natural turbidity stirs up challenges for river water monitoring

Photo by Patrice Kohl, Redoubt Reporter. Trees double over the Killey River as high waters discharge large amounts of mud and debris into the Kenai River on June 26. The Killey River is believed to have contributed to a spike in the Kenai River’s turbidity in the days following a rise in water levels after June 22.

Patrice Kohl
Redoubt Reporter

The impacts of human activities on Kenai River water quality are not as clear as environmental regulators would like. So when the Kenai Watershed Forum failed to secure enough funding to continue the second year of a study measuring the river’s turbidity, state regulators stepped in.

Turbidity is the amount of dissolved solids, like mud and glacial silt, suspended in water. The results from turbidity research conducted by the Watershed Forum last summer suggest the amount of mud stirred into the Kenai River by boating activity may exceed environmental regulatory standards. To be certain, regulators require a minimum of two years of data. So when it looked like turbidity research on the Kenai River might not continue a second year, regulators dug into state coffers to support it.

“We truly believe the Kenai River is a great resource that we want to protect, so we felt it was necessary to find the funding to do this work,” said Tim Stevens, an Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation environmental programs specialist.

Without at least two years of data, regulators cannot define the river’s naturally occurring turbidity levels and, consequently, how much of the river’s turbidity is human induced. The Kenai River has naturally occurring background levels of turbidity, which generally stay within certain levels but occasionally spike due to natural events that carry large quantities of silt into the river over short periods of time.

Turbidity levels in the Kenai River can be erratic, since part of the Kenai watershed is glaciated and some of its tributaries, such as the Funny, Skilak and Killey rivers, can dump large amounts of sediment into the river over short periods of time.

“If they start acting up, the turbidity levels can change drastically,” Stevens said. “At this point we’re not sure we’re going to stop at two years. … It would be smart to get more years of data so we can get the wide variance.”

Guest editorial: Pitching in to keep salmon moving

A single road crossing with a bad culvert can prevent fish from reaching miles of habitat.

Small tributaries provide a path to salmon nurseries, and juvenile salmon, particularly coho, migrate up streams.

Studies have shown that juvenile salmon that successfully migrate up and down small streams survive better in the ocean. It is important to keep these migration routes free of barriers.

Damaged, poorly designed or poorly maintained culverts all create a significant impasse to fish migration. Addressing the needs of fish passage is one of the primary focuses of the Kenai Watershed Forum’s efforts on the Kenai Peninsula.

Guest column: Following a murky trail

Storm water may lead to pollutants muddying up Kenai creeks

The Kenai Watershed Forum has discovered that in the past several years, No Name Creek and another unnamed creek in Kenai have shown a trend of elevated turbidity levels. Turbidity is a way of measuring the cloudiness of water and can be caused by natural sources, like glaciers, or human sources, such as storm drains. Extremely high turbidity levels can kill salmon, and elevated levels can make it difficult for salmon to find food or migrate.

So where exactly is all the turbidity coming from? To answer that question, KWF employees spent last summer walking the streets of Kenai to establish where water travels during a rainy day before it enters creeks. As one astute observer pointed out, water flows downhill. Indeed, Kenai does not have any pumping stations, so all storm water travels by gravity to the outlets. However, Kenai’s storm-water system was implemented in pieces as the city grew, so storm water sometimes follows more of an illogical pattern, depending on the construction of roads rather than natural topography.

To find out the path of storm water and the pollutants it can carry, KWF used a Global Positioning System unit to determine the coordinates of culverts, manhole covers and storm-drain inlets and outlets.

A construction level and observations on rainy days were utilized to clarify which direction storm water travels through ditches and gutters that eventually drain into No Name Creek and the unnamed creek.

Once the series of storm drains and gutters were mapped out, this data was used to build a drainage network in a Geographic Information System. This digital drainage network provides a better understanding of how the different areas of Kenai are linked to No Name Creek and the unnamed creek. In a few weeks, monitoring equipment will be placed where the storm water connects to the stream and water samples will also be collected. Using the GIS, monitoring equipment and water-quality collection in unison will help narrow down potential sources of water pollution that are being flushed into two of Kenai’s creeks and harming salmon habitat.

Jennifer McCard is a watershed scientist at the Kenai Watershed Forum.

Guest column: Following a murky trail

Storm water may lead to pollutants muddying up Kenai creeks

The Kenai Watershed Forum has discovered that in the past several years, No Name Creek and another unnamed creek in Kenai have shown a trend of elevated turbidity levels. Turbidity is a way of measuring the cloudiness of water and can be caused by natural sources, like glaciers, or human sources, such as storm drains. Extremely high turbidity levels can kill salmon, and elevated levels can make it difficult for salmon to find food or migrate.

Guest editorial:Habitat partnership puts focuses on fish

Kenai Peninsula Fish Habitat Partnership is a conservation partnership developing on the Kenai Peninsula. This partnership is working with the National Fish Habitat Action Plan to protect, restore and enhance our area’s fish and aquatic communities.

KPFHP is one of several partnerships developed concurrently with the National Fish Habitat Plan, designed to raise awareness of fish initiatives, assign priorities and generate annual congressional support to improve aquatic habitat. National Fish Habitat Action Plan is all about locally driven efforts that build private and public partnerships to improve fish habitat. Fish Habitat Action Plan partnerships are self-identified, self-organized and self-directed communities of interest formed around geographic areas, keystone species or system types.

These partnerships are nonregulatory and voluntary; locally and regionally based; driven by grassroots partners; focused on protection, restoration and enhancement in key watersheds; science-based; linked nationally; sustainable and accountable; and nonallocative.

The KPFHP began with a letter from the National Fish Habitat Action Plan Board accepting our request to be considered a regional partner. Since that time, an ad hoc committee representing various interests has come together to begin working on a strategic plan addressing the needs of fish habitat across a “region.” The group has conducted several public outreach meetings across the Kenai Peninsula and will continue to seek input throughout the development of the strategic plan. Developing this plan under the guidance provided by the National Fish Habitat Action Plan is our first step in being accepted as a regional partner. We anticipate this process continuing through May of 2009 and will be updated regularly under the strategic plan section of the Web site, http://office.kenaiwatershed.org/KPFHP.

Working to protect fish habitat on the Kenai Peninsula should be a goal all interests could and should support.

Guest editorial:Habitat partnership puts focuses on fish

Kenai Peninsula Fish Habitat Partnership is a conservation partnership developing on the Kenai Peninsula. This partnership is working with the National Fish Habitat Action Plan to protect, restore and enhance our area’s fish and aquatic communities.

KPFHP is one of several partnerships developed concurrently with the National Fish Habitat Plan, designed to raise awareness of fish initiatives, assign priorities and generate annual congressional support to improve aquatic habitat. National Fish Habitat Action Plan is all about locally driven efforts that build private and public partnerships to improve fish habitat. Fish Habitat Action Plan partnerships are self-identified, self-organized and self-directed communities of interest formed around geographic areas, keystone species or system types.

These partnerships are nonregulatory and voluntary; locally and regionally based; driven by grassroots partners; focused on protection, restoration and enhancement in key watersheds; science-based; linked nationally; sustainable and accountable; and nonallocative.

The KPFHP began with a letter from the National Fish Habitat Action Plan Board accepting our request to be considered a regional partner. Since that time, an ad hoc committee representing various interests has come together to begin working on a strategic plan addressing the needs of fish habitat across a “region.” The group has conducted several public outreach meetings across the Kenai Peninsula and will continue to seek input throughout the development of the strategic plan. Developing this plan under the guidance provided by the National Fish Habitat Action Plan is our first step in being accepted as a regional partner. We anticipate this process continuing through May of 2009 and will be updated regularly under the strategic plan section of the Web site, http://office.kenaiwatershed.org/KPFHP.

Working to protect fish habitat on the Kenai Peninsula should be a goal all interests could and should support.

Guest editorial: Many hands made light work of Crooked Creek project

With over 61 miles of direct stream and riparian habitat, Crooked Creek, in Kasilof, is one of the longest anadromous streams on the Kenai Peninsula.

It is a major tributary of the Kasilof River, and supports spawning and rearing for substantial runs of chinook and coho salmon and one of the northernmost steelhead runs, as well as migratory bird habitat.

During a flood in 2002, a road crossing the creek near the Crooked Creek facility washed out. For several years following the flood, the area was left with very steep, unstable and unvegetated loose gravel stream banks. This is a very popular community use area because it is one of the few public access areas for viewing spawning chinook salmon on the Kenai Peninsula. This site is also listed in several publications encouraging visitors to view fish in the creek. Community members and travelers are seen in significant numbers. After Aug. 1, it’s heavily used for fishing.

As the need for a restoration project grew, so did the interest of community members, various agencies and local elementary students. The Tustumena Elementary School sixth-grade Adopt-a-Stream program had been active in research work at Crooked Creek for 10 years. Students visited the creek monthly and were interested in partnering with the community and other groups to take on this project.

The Kenai Watershed Forum was granted funds from several agencies to attend to the needs of Crooked Creek. The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and ConocoPhilips all contributed money to accomplish the project goals of stabilizing the stream bank, creating a study/monitoring area for students, protecting habitat and improving fishermen and visitor access.

The KWF was to serve as the facilitator to bring all the parties together to work for these common goals. A coalition was organized, including KWF, Tustumena students and parents, Crooked Creek landowners, Kasilof area residents and business owners, local government leaders and staff, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Alaska Department of Natural Resources and the Alaska Department of Transportation.

The first matter of business was to bring the community and agencies with a stake in the restoration together. A community planning meeting was held at the Tustumena school in fall 2007, and a site visit was organized with all parties and agencies.

An older student from the area was looking for an Eagle Scout project and approached the watershed forum about adopting the Crooked Creek viewing platform portion of the project. Keith Clancy applied for and received all the appropriate permits. He was instrumental in securing the final design, and put a work crew together for the installation of a new, elevated study platform.

Throughout the planning and restoration stage of work, the students at Tustumena helped support the program. Classroom education continued with testing the waters of Crooked Creek through the Adopt-a-Stream program. Students organized and executed a creek cleanup day, and researched platforms, walkways and habitat restoration techniques. They designed and installed signs to educate the community and visitors about Crooked Creek, explaining how to help protect the area, respect wildlife and “leave no trace.”

Other agencies stepped in with time and materials to help make this project a success. Adjacent trails were improved by Fish and Game, improving visitor fishing and view access. DOT peeled back the original road and a visitor parking area with guardrails was established.

From the beginning, one of the focuses of the project was to bring the community together with various agencies to provide a successful restoration project that would enhance the Tustumena area and Crooked Creek. With the driving force of the Adopt-a-Stream students — known as Tustumena Streamkeepers — and their parents, the project moved forward and involved all the necessary parties.

Although huge steps have been made in making this former flood washout a desirable place to view spawning salmon and other wildlife, there is still more work to come.
KWF looks to complete the project during summer 2009 with installation of permanent viewing signs, further improvements to trails and another viewing platform. And Marathon Oil has come on board with a financial donation to the project. Our streambeds, creeks and watersheds are valuable assets to our communities. We are fortunate to have an abundance of support from the schools, residents, merchants, government agencies and private corporations to protect these critical habitat areas.

Rhonda Orth is the accounting and office manager at the Kenai Watershed Forum.