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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2002-04-18 KRSMA Board PacketSpecaal flAa ~ gementArea "Working togethec..tor the rirer° G~®b~~OG°3~I ~ OQG°3D *** Meeting Agenda*** Thursday, April 18, 2002 7:00 p.m. Kenai River Center I. CALL To olinER A. Ro11 Call B. P.pprcval of 3/21; 02 minutes C. Agenda Changes and Approval II. PUBLIC COMMEN'T' III. NEW BUSINESS r .~ A. Recent Alaska Board of Fish Decisions affecting the Kenai River, Mark Gamblin, Area Sportfish Biologist; ADF&~G B. Kenai River Angler Impact Study, Mary King, P.DF&G C. Doug Reger, Hydraulic and Quartentary Geology of the Kenai River (EPA Grant) D. Snug Harbor Road Snowmachine Parking Area Proposal IV. OLD BUSINESS A. Commercial Operator Committee: draft guide board proposal B. Sterling Highway MP 45-60 Report: Janette Cadieux, Stakeholder process report; Chris Degernes, agency report C. Kenai River Center Update. i. DOT Clearing along ROW in Cooper Landing V. PUBLIC COMMENT VI. ADJOURNMENT A. Board Comments B. Date/Agenda of Next Meeting Committee MeetinQS at the KI2C: 4/18/02:4:OO~pm: Commercial Operators Conmittee tlieeting; 5:00 p.m. Forest Legacy Committee Meeting < ~I Kenai Area Office, Box 1247, Soldotna, AK 99669, Soldotna 262-5581 'L~ Kenai r~ninsula Borough, Box 850, Soldotna, AK 99669, Soldotna 262-4441 p Alaska Division of PaMS and Ou!door Recreation, Department of Natural Resources, in cooperation with the Kenai F~nlnsula Bcrou9h. ~: I{enai River Special IVdanagement Area Advisory Board Meeting Minutes Thursday, March 21, 2002 7:00 p.m. Kenai River Center I. CALL. TO DRDER A. Roll Call Present: Joe Connors, Ted Wellman, Brett Huber, Dave Westerman, Rick Wood, Lance Trasky, Chris Degernes, Robin West, Paul Shadura, Janette Cadieux, Deric Marcorelle, Ann Whitmore-Painter, Linda Snow, Bill Shuster, and Tim Navarre Absent: Jirn Golden, Charles Quarre B. Approval of 2/21/02 mhmtes Approved as written. B. Agenda Changes and Approval Ted moved the Boat Wake Study to item B timder new business. II. PUBLIC COiVIMENT Sam McDowell discussed the contamination site in Sterling at Cook's Tesoro and the affects on the Kenai River. He claims that the contamination has not been cleaned up. Sam went over a handout he gave to 7Ced W. .Joe C. asked how much fuel is thought to still be present in the ground? Sam McDowell estimated about 7,000-10,000 gallons. III. NEW BUSINESS A. t~Iilce Lilly, Alaska Water Resources Association Meeting Announcement Mike asked the board to co-sponsor the American Water Resources Assoc. anneal meeting. Fie said they are asking for support only, not funding. The AWRA meeting is from April 8`h-10`" at the Kenai River Center. One of the sessions will address the potential impacts of low-level nutrients and persistent organic polhitants in the Kenai River watershed, and other sessions will have some relevance to the Kenai River. Mike also provided an update to the Board related to the surface/ground water project he has been working on. Two index sites on the Kenai River were chosen, one on the lower part of the Kenai River at the Pillars Boat Launch and;one at he Soldotna City Park (old DOT site). They installed wells along these sites to look at the mass exchange interactions between ground water and the river. Mike said the data shows how groundwater impacts the river at many scales and is concerned that current regulations on river management do not address this. He urged the Board to participate in the upcoming AWRA meetings and become more involved in water resource issues. Brett H. made a motion to co-sponsor the upcoming meeting. Joe C. seconded the motion. Tem N. asked if sponsoring is within the board's purview. Ted W. said it would be good to lend supporC for activities that help us do a better job in advising resource management agencies. Vote was unanimous to support the AWRA. B. Boat Wake Study -Ptaase II, Gordon Nelson, USGS Gordon said they. have been trying to determine how they can help out with this study. He has asked his staff to concentrate on one section of the river to better understand the process. He said they were looking fora 1-2 kilometer section of the river to conduct this phase and are currently loolting at the Pillars area. Gordon proposed to start out with a habitat study, which includes an extremely detailed map of bottom materials, banks, bank angles, soils and such. He also has planned on doing repetitive acoustic doppler profile surveys at muhiple stream gages in the study section of the river. Once the habitat studies are started, they will create around.a dozenrross sections for analysis. Currently Gordon is working on designs of how to conduct the surveys. Gordon talked about how the waves create beaches each year along the banks. These beaches make great energy attemrators since the wave roll on the beach, break up and do not slam into the banks like they would on a vertical bank. USGS will want to look at natural attenuation of wakes and also evaluate how ground water affects these banks (i.e. ground water forcing material out of the bank). Gordon also proposes to evaluate suspended sediments and track where they go. They will track the sanlpling day and night during Juiy. They want to then create a video documentation of this, to show how boat Kenai River Special Managemen4 Area Advisory Board Page 2 3/21/02 Meeting Minutes passings affect the river bank. This will create good documentation, which will lead to the next step. Gordon said he would have a draft document available for the board soon: Dave W. asked how long is the 4ime period for this study. Gordon said it would take most of the summer starting in May. Lance T. asked how this study would correlate to what the Corps study provided and will it be able to evaluate how the boat wakes maybe accelerating erosion of the banks. Gordon said they would be using the video equipment and the information from the sediment study to determine this. Ted W. asked how this study is going to use the Corps study. Gordon said the Corps study was valuable, but converting the study to a way to measure how much erosion those boats are causing would be difficult. Brett A. said he thought this study was to build off of the first one and asked where we are going now with this new study. Gordon said the detailed bank mapping would help to determine characteristics of banks that are more susceptible to bank erosion than other banks He also stated that his staff wanted to map whole reaches of the river and Gordon said it would be too diffictdt to do this. Lance T. said there are two parts here, one to confirm if boat wakes are in fact accelerating erosion: of the river banks and second to get information to allow Gordon to distinguish whether there is a distinct difference between wave heights and wave energies Brett K. said Dr. Maynord suggested Looking at thresholds depending on bank heights and soil types, and nothing here addresses this. Paal S. said we need more work on this and asked for a better study to do what we want. Ted W. suggests the boat wake committee discuss this more with Gordon Nelson. C. ZIp 1Vlart C'ontaminatiou Report, Don Fritz, AIlEC; Cook's Tesoro Contamination Report -Paul Horwath, ADEC Don Fritz gave a brief history on the Zip Mart spill. Tn 1995 an installation of an upgraded tank system found minor site contamination. The business continued to operate for several years while DEC continued to ask for further assessment of area to confirm the extent of the release. In fall of 2000 an engineering fain hired by the operator n_r"the site put in 5 monitor wells and encountered standing free product about 1 foot deep on the aquifer. Since then, the monitor wells have found a lot of free product in the water. DEC estimated about 100,000 gallons of gasoline were released over a long period of time. The Kenai River is about 1 mile away from the site. Kenai River Special Management Area Advisory Board Page 3 3/21/02 Meeting Minutes In 1993 the underground lines were replaced with double walled lines that were supposed to be able to detect leaks. In 1995 new double walled tanks were installed. Currently no leaded gasoline or diesel has been found and DEC thought the contractor had it fingerprinted to apost 1994 release but theyare not sure now: The owner/operator had been funded by state grants so far but there is not enough grant monies to continue with the assessment and free product recovery. The Zip Mart owners have stated that they do not have the resources to clean up the site, so DEC has stepped in to start the clean up priase. Currently DEC is starting Phase Two in which they evaluate how to recover the free product. Don said to help evaluate the extent of the free product and plan for recovery, they are planning to put in another 15 monitoring wells. Paul S. asked if there was any chance this spill will reach the Kenai River. Don said it is not likely to reach the river. The farthest distance a spill like this has gone is around''/4 mile past the source edge. Brett i3. asked if a hydrogeologist has evaluated the ground water flow. Don said no and believes this is a simple and straightforward issue. What DEC cannot figure out is why the wafer well on theZip Mart site has not been contaminated. Ted W. asked when DEC first became aware of this large amount of fuel. Don said DEC first knew in December 2001 or January 2002. DEC was aware of a minor contamination on the site after the 1995 tank upg-ade during a site assessment. They believe the major contamination came from the lines between the tanks and the island, but they are unsure when the release happened. Tim N. asked what DEC's timetable is now for action. Don said May or Tune DEC will do apilot study on free product recovery and hopefully have the system installed and operational by July. There should be art assessment done starting mid April. Janette C. would like to know what DEC knows about the aquifers that are contaminated and how they communicate with their sun-oundings and what makes DEC cerCain that the Kenai River will not be affected. Don stated simply the distance is too great from the river. Paul Horvath also said that DEC's investigation history with this type of spill shows that after the gasoline dissipates in the ground water it does not migrate more than a''/n mile from the site. Paul Horwath~ gave abrief history on the Cook's Tesoro spill including when DEC became aware ofthe contamination in 1989 when DOT was conducting an evaluation for right of way expansion. In 1990 the State Kenai River Special Management Area Advisory Board Page A 3/21/02 Meeting Minutes paid a contractor to excavate the site; treat and remove the contaminated materials. Additional monies spent at the site since have been used to contirue monitoring the ground water. Up until3 years ago when Sam McDowelP'filed a lawsuit and had a consultant drill a well that found free product, DEC had not found any free product: on he site: So far, no free product has been found. on south side of highway. There has, however, been contamination found on properties on the south side of the highway from the station. Paul said DEC plans to continue to monitor some of the wells but does not intend to pursue additional proactive cleanup on this site. Joe C. said he is concerned about the proximity to the Kenai River and the fact that it's headed to the Moose River. Paul said in. DEC's opinion, this site has been thoroughly assessed with many of the monitoring wells coming back clean for years. He says this site is not likely to get worse. Dave W. asked what caused the leak and what is being done to prevent future leaks. Paul said this leak probably came from numerous small leaks in the pipes over the years. He states that between 1988 and 1998 there was a phase in to change the underground storage tank systems to meet stringent standards including leak detections and double wall tanks and piping. Lance T. asked if DEC has taken any sediment samples in the Kenai and Mooserivers downstream of the spill site:- .Paul said heyhave not pursued testing beyond the location of the clean wells. Brett H. asked if there is any way to remove the free product found. Paul said they are getting almost no recoverable free product, 1-2 ml. a day, which is not really worth the effort. Brett H. made a motion for the board to write a letter to DEC, EPA and affected management agencies suggesting a minimum sampling be done in the Kenai River. Joe C. seconded the motion. Ted W. said he is especially concerned that six years had passed before any action was taken at the Zip Mart, and would like to offer an amendmentto the letter that the Board avoid taking a position by keeping the letter generic, since This is too closely tied to potential lawsuits and the board should avoid a legal issue. The vote was unanimous for the letter to be sent. D. Forest Legacy Program, Evie Witten Evie said she is currently working on an assessment of need for the Forest Legacy Program. in Alaska. The Nature Conservancy is under contract with Alaska State Parks to do the assessment. The Forest Legacy Program is a national program run by the USFS to provide federal funding for conserving resource values of private forested lands from conversion to non-forested status The emphasis is on keeping lands in private ownership when possible. The program usually provides Kenai River Special Management Area Advisory Board Page 5 3/21/02 Meeturg Minutes 75% federal and 25% state match funding: Each state's Forest Legacy Program is unique, with each tailored to the state's needs. Evie said she is working on setting up an assessment of need which includes researching and:compiiing information on forests and forest resources in the state and is seeking input fromgroups and people around the state on what are important resources and what people want protected. Evie said she would like to see a response from individuals or the board as a whole and would like those by May 1. Ted mod. said he would like to see a small committee coma together to discuss this before the next meeting. Tim N., Chris D., Robin W., Ann W-P. and Linda S. volunteered for the committee, which will give a summery of what is going on and provide a recommendation to the board at the next meeting. IV. OLD BUSINESS A. Recreation Use Study Committee-Report and Recommendations, Chris Degernes Chris said the committee has met twice since the February 21s` board meeting. The primaty issue was to work on the survey. Several drafts have circulated and Dr. Brown has provided his recommendations. Tn his comments to the committee, he recommended comparing use levels in 2002 with use in 1992, so would urge that a survey using similar questions be utilized. Chris said there were concerns regarding whether this survey may be perceived as negative, so the committee added a question to try to gauge satisfaction. The committee also worked on a draft schedule for surveys, including where and when to survey to reach different types of users. During the discussion of the GPS monitoring effort, it was estimated that the ratio of guided versus private boats is approximately 70% - 30% during June and July on the lower river. However, if the sampling is done at the same ratio, there is a risk that too few private boats might be sampled, so Dr. Brown has recommended that roughly equal numbers of guidecUprivate boats be sampled, and he can correct for the disproportionate sample later. The video monitoring is being worked on now, but no schedule for dates and locations has been made yet. Janette C. made a motion for the board to accept the survey as proposed. Paul S. seconded the motion. Brett II. said he is not comfortable with the survey as it is. He said it does "' not give much of an opportunity for folks to say they had a good time. Joe C. said he still has some concerns,mainigregarding question #10 which he believes is loaded and section three that he thinks is too redundant and asks too many non-motorized questions. Kenai River Speciat Management Area Advisory Board Page 6 3/21/02 Meeting Minutes Paul S. says he likes the form as it is and that it is important to compare it to the 1992 survey. Ted W, said this survey came out of the Comprehensive Plan as one of the maj or recommendations regarding guided use on the Kenai River. Joe asked ifthis is for the owes riveronly: Ted said during2002, the lower river will be the section we'll concentrate on. Tim N. made a motion to move question # 9 to ~#I azid start with very satisfied to very unsatisfied. Brett H. seconded the amendment. Bill S. suggested we talk to Dr. Brown to make sure the changes are not contrary to the 1992 survey. Deric M. said most folks filling this out are from out of state, are not familiar with the politics and will not perceive this survey as negative. The vote on the amendment includes moving question #9 to #1 and to add a question to ask why a person is not satisfied, if they checked they'd had an unsatisfactory experience. Vote on amendment: All in favor Tim N. says we have to feel comfortable with the survey and made a motion to add a block "I don't know". Brett H. seconded this motion. Vote failed, with only three members voting for the motion. Dave W. abstained. Vote on original motionto accept the survey: Motion passed with one opposed (Joe C.) and one abstaining (Dave W.) Chris D. asked for more input from the board on the schedule for the survey and video locations. B. Keuai River Nutrient Study Public Outreach Committee Brett H. said they are not ready to move forward at this time. There are some decisions being made on Phase I of the outreach study that included putting a study plan together that should be complete by the end of September. There is not enough of a product to do a good job of the public outreach component until we have more information from the contractor. The committee will bring more information on this to the September board meeting. V. PUBLIC COM1i~IENT Sam McDowell said he is still concerned about Cook' Tesoro and wants to be sure the Board understands that there is another side of the story ~egmpared to what Dl~,C. presented. Kenai River Special Management Area Advisory Board Page 7 3/21102 Meeting Minutes Mike Lilly offered a perspective on the evening's discussion about the contaminated sites, saying that it will be important to understand the qualifications of the "expert." He states there are limits to what can be cleaned up, but most sites can be cleaned up to minimize long term impacts. Mike stated "inadequate assessments iead to inadequate actions." He also stated that he feels that self-regulations are dangerous and encourages independent reviews. Suzanne F. is seeking comments on the draft Guide Board proposal by April l l`n and comments on the draft Junior Ranger sixth grade curriculum by the next board meeting. VL A,BJOURNMENT A. Board Comments Paul S. says as a board member, his value on being part of the information exchange with the people we are associated with is great, and the board should restrain from getting too involved with these issues. Deric M. said the major problems with these spill sites are that the "responsible pai-ties" are not being responsible and are fighting the cleanup process. The State does the best it can once it is diunped in their lap. Bill S, said last night he attended the opening meeting for the Chugach P,lectric re-licensing process and they might want to give a presentation sometime in the future. Chris D. provided a brief summary of the proposed budget cuts fa.eing State Parks. Fortunately, none directly affect the Kenai River, but if they do go through, it will devastate Alaska State Parks system. The proposed cuts passed the House and will soon be considered in the Senate. Robin W. said he appreciated the board reviewing its charter and thinks we have been doing great job. Tim N. said he wants to add to the next agenda a discussion on a snowmachine parking lot along Snug Harbor road. Joe C. said he encourages feedback by the next meeting on the document from the commercial users committee handed out earlier by Suzanne. Brett H. appreciated everyone's time they spend on this board. B. Date/Agenda of Nest Meeting April 18`n Issues lined up already for next meeting: Mary King, F&G, habitat angler impact study. Mark Gamblin, Board of Fish actions. Snug Harbor Road snowmachine parking area. Kenai River Special Management Area Advisory Board Page 8 3/21/02 Meeting Minutes