A Chilkat Indian Village proposal to pursue top-level protections for the Chilkat River received a lukewarm response from the Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve Advisory Council this week.

Tribal council president Jones Hotch Jr. asked the council to support a resolution requesting the river be designated as an Outstanding National Resource Water, which protects waters of exceptional recreational, environmental or ecological significance and prohibits any degradation of the waterway.

An Outstanding National Resource Water is the highest designation protection level a body of water can receive. There are no Outstanding National Resource Water designations in Alaska. Other states including Minnesota, Wisconsin and New Mexico have awarded the designation, also called “Tier III” protection.

Hotch said he and others perceived a lack of king salmon in the Chilkat Valley this past summer, and took it as a “warning” for how future seasons will go. “I can say it was the worst summer we ever had for subsistence fishing,” he said.

“I feel like the salmon in this valley have been faithful to us for decades, and with your support of Chilkat Indian Village efforts to have the Chilkat River nominated and designated as on Outstanding National Resource Water, (we) will begin to help our salmon come back to the Chilkat River and spawn,” Hotch said.

Failure to protect the salmon will have generational consequences, Hotch said. “I want my grandson’s great-great grandchildren to eat the same kind of wild stock salmon that I enjoy, that my father enjoyed, that his father enjoyed. I just feel very strongly that this could be us helping the salmon.”

Assembly member Diana Lapham, who sits on the council, said while she appreciated the Chilkat Indian Village’s position, she didn’t feel the public had enough chance to weigh in.

“I’m hesitant in endorsing this resolution as it is, because I have seen no public process as far as the community members being able to weigh in on this resolution,” Lapham said. “I feel that this resolution is coming out of the dark.”

Lapham called the Tier III designation “stringent” and “strict,” claiming it would “clamp down” on a business’s ability to grow. She was also concerned about the permitting impacts to the Haines Highway project.

Development of the potential Constantine Mine didn’t come up at Tuesday’s council meeting, and Hotch declined to comment in a previous interview when asked if pursuing the designation was a preemptive protection effort against the mine’s development.

Steve Lewis, who represents the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the council, said the council is supposed to represent the eagle preserve, not the community. “I don’t think it’s necessarily our responsibility to make sure the Haines community is actually represented here,” Lewis said. “I think (the resolution) is a great idea, because it supports clean water, which is great for eagles, so I’m behind it.”

Council members Mike Eberhardt (representing the Department of Natural Resources), Mark Sogge (representing Fish and Game) and Andy Hedden (representing business and industry) said they didn’t feel like they could vote on the motion.

Mayor Jan Hill suggested Hotch submit the resolution to the Haines Borough Assembly for consideration so it could work its way through the public process. “I don’t want this to come off as we don’t support the efforts to protect the river. I think that we do, but we do have a public process that we need to go through before we can take action,” Hill said.

Hotch rescinded his motion requesting support before the council could vote.

After the meeting, Hotch said he was hoping for a different reaction from the council. “We’re going to reevaluate,” he said. “We’re still going to support this.”

The Chilkat Indian Village also brought the issue to the council last spring, but it was postponed.

States are required to adopt policies allowing a Tier III designation to be made, though Alaska hasn’t yet complied with that mandate from the federal level. In the meantime, the only other way to obtain the designation is through the Alaska Legislature.