Takshanuk Watershed Council in partnership with the Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition is seeking a grant that would identify and catalog the ecological, social and economic values of the Chilkat Valley watershed.
Takshanuk executive director Meredith Pochardt approached the Haines Borough Planning Commission last week asking for a letter of support to use in the agency’s grant application to the U.S. Endowment for Forests and Communities.
Pochardt explained the grant would allow the agency to identify pristine waters in the Chilkat Valley, as well as waters that are ecologically, socially and economically significant. The identified areas would then be prioritized for restoration, preservation or development.
Pochardt repeatedly apologized for bringing the request to the commission late, as the grant deadline necessitated immediate action by the commission.
Commission chair Rob Goldberg asked if anyone would object to him writing a letter of support, and several members expressed misgivings because the issue wasn’t publicly noticed on the commission’s agenda.
Commissioner Brenda Josephson said she didn’t “feel it’s appropriate,” as did assembly member Diana Lapham, liaison to the commission. “There is a public process. There is a process that this all has to go by. And I can only state my opinion that it’s not on the agenda and for anything ‘official’ to come from the Planning Commission as support…at this late date and to be under the gun like that, it is not an appropriate action,” Lapham said.
Though no mention of the Chilkat River’s recent nomination as a Tier 3 water came up during the meeting, Pochardt’s description of the project goals closely mirrored the criteria used for determining if a water might qualify for Tier 3 protective status.
According to the Department of Environmental Conservation, Tier 3 designation is meant to “protect waters of exceptional recreational, environmental or ecological significance.” The designation prohibits any degradation of the protected waterway except for projects of temporary or limited impact.
Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition director Angie Eldred Flickinger said the proposed project is not driven by the Tier 3 nomination, though that wouldn’t prevent decision-makers from using data or information gathered during the process to bolster a case.
“This tool, the goal is to inform management decisions. It’s going to be a publicly available tool. We’re certainly not on an advocacy campaign. It’s really just an informational tool to increase the level of watershed management throughout the region,” Flickinger said.
This is the first year the Healthy Watersheds Consortium Grant is being offered. If secured, grant money would go toward developing a template for assessing any given watershed. Haines and Wrangell would serve as pilot programs, where the template is implemented and field work completed to gather data. Stakeholder meetings would be held throughout the process, and the result would be a comprehensive document about the watershed.
“The goal is to produce a report that could inform management plans that tribes, governments and other entities can use and make informed decisions based off that,” Flickinger said.