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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2010-09-09 KRSMA Board MinutesKenai River Special Management Area Advisory Board Meeting Agenda Thursday, September 9, 2010 5:30 p.m. Gilman River Center RECEIVED CALL TO ORDER A. Roll Call; B. Minutes Approval SEP -1 2010 C. Agenda Changes and Approval II. Public Comments /Presentations KENAI CITY CLERK III. REPORTS A. Agency and Government Reports a. State Parks— Sinclair, Russell b. DEC- Stevens c. ADF &G- Vania/ Begich/ d. USF &WS- Schmidt e. USFS /Chugach- Skibo f. City of Kenai- Ogle g. City of Soldotna- Micciche h. Kenai Peninsula Borough- Carey B. Committee Reports a. President's Report b. Guide Advisory c. Habitat d. River Use e. Permits f. Legislative /Government Activities g. Board Development it Agenda /Board Structure /Housekeeping IV. OLD BUSINESS V. NEW BUSINESS A. Distribution of Draft 2009 KR User Impact Study B. VI. CORRESPONDENCE VII. PUBLIC COMMENT VIII. ADJOURNMENT A. Board Comments B. Date /Agenda of Next Meeting October 14, 2010 5:30 p.m. KENAI RIVER Special Management Area "Working together...for the river" Kenai Area Office, PO Box 1247, Soldotna, AK 99669, 907 262 -5581 Kenai Peninsula Borough, 144 N. Binkley, Soldotna, AK 99669 907 -262 -4441 Gilman River Center 514 Funny River Road, Soldotna, AK 99669, 907 260 -4882 Alaska Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation, pepartment aturai Resources, in cooperation with the Kenai Peninsula Borough KENAI ER C'. N T k M MM Kenai River Special Management Area Advisory Board Minutes Gilman River Center Thursday, May 13, 2010 5:30 p.m. CALL TO ORDER A. Members Present: Ted Wellman, Jack Sinclair, Bobbie Jo Skibo, David Carey, Bruce King, George Heim, Carol Padgett, Brenda Trefon, Terri Carter, Robert Begich, Tim Stevens, Janet Schmidt, Adam Reimer, Wayne Ogle. B. The Minutes for March 11, 2010 were approved as written. C. Agenda Changes and Approval: Under Old Business, added Item B, Letter to the Borough; Under New Business added item A, to discuss having an additional meeting before the end of the month for proposed Hydro Project at Grant Lake. IL Public Comments /Presentations Speaker Series Presentations: Megan Murphy gave a presentation over the Kachemak Bay Estuarine Research Reserve. III. REPORTS A. Agency and Government Reports a. State Parks, Pam Russell, guide permitting is picking up and getting busy. State Parks, Jack Sinclair, all parks opened on May 1, 2010. Most of the volunteers will have arrived by this weekend and volunteer training will start on Monday. This winter we finished driving piling at the Funny River and Morgan's Landing parks, in anticipation in putting in some new walkways. The borough habitat ordinance that is being rewritten is going to hopefully change some of the height requirements for our walkways, which may bring them down just a little more for people to use. The Pillars ramp was finished mid -April, with 13 new planks going out into the water. We will have some design work going on this year for Bings Landing, we are going to be looking at the trail system, that comes back from the boat launch area walking back to the backline. It's been just a maze of trails and erosion problems from people walking down to fish for reds there and we are going to be working on a new design for access and stairways for the trails themselves along with some shoreline stabilization projects as well. The governor's budget hasn't been signed yet; if everything goes as planned we will get $330,000 for Slikok Creek State Recreation Site. We will be resurfacing the parking lot area there and replacing creosote stairway with light penetrating walkway stairway. This is all part of the cultural resource management plan that we did for Slikok Creek. Part of our commitment for doing this plan was to improve the trails and access to that park because of the fact that we did close out the access from the college. Capital wise, we only got about 3.8 million for parks statewide and only about $400,000 came to the Kenai. With the recreation study, Doug Whittaker has been working pretty diligently, we just started our internal review on half the document just to make sure for the contracts sake that he has completed everything on it. We are not really giving it out to the public yet, but it's going to be tumed around as soon as we get the other half. The problem with the study is that Doug's counter part is Bo Shelby became ID, which means that Doug is actually writing the other half right now. My goal is to have the study out by July 1, 2010 for public review draft which will go out for a 45 -60 day review and by September we will start working on turn around for a final document. There is a public meeting on Monday the 17 from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm at the Tustumena School, regarding Kasilof management in which about 25 agencies will attend. They are going to be talking about improving the access, river management, and other various items. We were recently recipients of a new sign, which was part of the action that was taken by this board to approve the voluntary drift area for Eagle Rock and the Kenai River Professional Guide Association paid for 2 large signs that were finished, we are just tweaking them a little bit now, just working on getting some of the paint correct on them. We will work on finishing the permits from them. 9nai River Special Management Area Advisory Board Minutes May 13, 2010 Page 1of4 We will be preparing a capital budget in August and try to get an email out to board members in July about what our proposals are for the Kenai River, all of them are deferred maintenance. The only new construction might be. at Bings Landing, in setting aside parking for the backline area, there is really no day use parking at Bing's, other than for parking and launching boat. We will still have to go through a public process to get good feedback from the public. b. DEC, Tim Stevens, of the 3 grants that were applied for ACWA (Alaska Clean Water Act) funding, turbidity stud received full funding for 3 sites in the lower river for another year to make sure we have a good database to ensure we are meeting standards; we also received full funding for the watershed sampling that takes place twice a year. They applied to cover the costs of the petroleum analysis; ACWA did not select the application for the re -write of the Kenai Peninsula Borough habitat ordinance. c. ADF &G, Robert Begich, fish and game is wrapping up field season; King Salmon assessment programs began on Sunday thel6th. For the Kenai River early run Chinook, we will be deploying radio tags in the fish. Also we have our outlooks complete for early and late run Kenai King Salmon and they are both well below average. We are looking at about 10,500 to the sonar for early run, early run average is about 16,500 and for late run around 32,000 to the sonar, average is around 43,000. Russian river anticipating average sockeye salmon run around 60,000 70,000 fish, which we are expecting. Kenai late run sockeye commercial fish is forecasting a total run to the inlet of about 45% below the long term average, so we are looking at a 1.7 million total to the inlet. Based on what we want to see back to the sonar, that is also going to be a slow fishery for everyone. d. USF &WS, Janet Schmidt, gearing up for summer season, my program alone is going 8 to 44 people. Have a pretty full house this year. On the upper river we are putting some temporary restrictions on the Russian River area to mirror what the US Forest Service is doing, so that we have similar regulations both sides. e. USFS /Chugach, Bobbie Jo Skibo, planning to go to the river use committee on discussing a potential river wide stream watch program; The Chugach National Forest has recently approved 2 Resource Advisory Committees or RAC's. We have one RAC (Resource Advisory Committee) that is now the Kenai Peninsula and Anchorage Borough RAC, in which i coordinate, we have a 15 member body and will convene on June 12 2010 at the Begich Boggs Visitor Center in Portage Valley these meetings are open to the public. They are separated in interest groups and vote on project proposals that could range from restoration projects to recreation related projects on federal lands, based on secure rural schools and self determination act. If you want to leam more about what kind of proposals can be submitted, do a Google search on the Secure Rural Schools and Self Determination Act. Just wanted to give heads up since we won't have meetings for a while. There could be opportunity for anyone, interest group, non- profit, state, private, federal, to submit project proposals to go after some money. Funding will be available until 2012. Russian river updates, we will have our food storage regulation in place, where people have to keep backpacks within 3 feet, fish on stringers or legally retained fish must be within 12 feet. Leash laws are in effect and will go across boundaries. In regards to fish carcass management, there are no changes. There will be press releases going out, essentially no major changes from last year. At the Russian River this week we have a large volunteer group up there, the McLaughlin Youth Center and Federal employees are putting up all the habitat fencing. The US Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Fish and Game, was provided some direction from the executives of those agencies on dealing with the collaborative public process to discuss some of the management challenges we are faced with at the Russian River. Again since we aren't going to meet until potentially October, there might be some dialog before then, scheduling some public meetings, etc. The Kenai River Trip, there were some dates suggested, this would be for team building and localized education to some of the key places we talk about on the Kenai River. The dates suggested were July 11` for Upper River, Monday August 9th to do Lower River. f. City of Kenai, Wayne Ogle, the City of Kenai is in the mist of building the library extension. We have awarded a contact to Holden Company to construct the South beach fencing project, we have roughly around $60,000 dollars and we will guarantee 2,500 linear ft of fence to go up and see how much more we can buy with that amount of funding. We have funding for building more public restrooms down at the North beach near the mouth of the river. Also getting engineering design together for Meeks Creek Bridge. At Meeks Creek Bridge, there is a lot of ruined concrete that was dumped along there and we are looking for funding to get rid of that while, working on the bridge project. Also, looking at upgrading trails with this funding project. Lastly, we have a project with Robert Ruffner to do a culvert replacement on 4 Ave and Spruce, which is a creek that has been cut off because of a failed culvert. This should be coming out for bid. g. City of Soldotna, Peter Micciche, nothing to report. Kenai River Special Management Area Advisory Board Minutes May 13, 2010 Page 2 of 4 B. Committee Reports h. Kenai Peninsula Borough, David Carey, the first phase of the KPB 21.18 Ordinance rewrite was divided into 4 parts; the first 2 parts have gone through the entire process and were enacted by the assembly, the others are in process. The Kasilof meeting on Monday May 17 is very important; a lot of work is going into it, I think it could have some real ramifications for us in what we do here. Had a discussion with the state and they are still interested in the borough taking over the ownership of the Ninilchik Harbor. Bank restoration for the Don Gilman River Center was approved. The entire borough budget is 75 million dollars, we are at an average year, and we have 40 million dollars in addition to that in grants that are in process; along with that from the state there is 152 million in capital projects for things here on the Kenai Peninsula there are 74 different projects of that 12 million is additional money to the borough. As of Monday the budget has not yet gone to the governor, once it goes to his desk he has 20 days not counting Sundays. a. President's Report, nothing to report. b. Guide Advisory, did not meet. c. Habitat, is meeting twice a month now to talk about 21.18 issues. Later on this evening we are going to talk about a letter that we prepared for the boards consideration on the last ordinance to be introduced on Phase 1, group 4. Today we talked about progress on the symposium. We've gotten enough verbal commitments from various funding sources to proceed with developing the agenda and contacting speakers. Our goal is to have the speakers and basic agenda outlined by November of next year. Give the planning process a whole year before the actual symposium. Phase!! of 21.18 is the more philosophical questions about buffers and whether this one is adequate and whether there are significant changes that need to be made or not. The habitat committee has agreed to meet over the summer to help provide suggestions for how phase!! should go to the river center staff. So we will be meeting twice a month this summer to formulate a plan to bring to whole board in September with what we think is the appropriate way for the borough to proceed. d. River Use, did not meet. e. Permits, did not meet. f. Legislative /Government Activities, Dave Carey asked the board to consider a real focus on the Kasilof River, a discussion about it, as we move ahead into next year because the amount of capital projects this year Dave Carey though it was very likely that the first session of the next legislature is going to be focused much more on word smithing and tweaking and looking at a lot of laws. Hoping we might take on looking at things that need to be addressed, those that aren't necessarily monetary. We have a huge opportunity with the people that sit around this table in terms that they represent some very different interests. Asked that we look at some legislative things in terms of different needs and also the issue of the Kasilof River. Hopes that the focus of this committee for next year will be to look at a need possibly for some legislative and statutory changes. Board Development, didn't have a meeting. Jack Sinclair reminded the board of the next nomination period. There are going to be 6 seats up for nomination. 3 of those are 1 year seats and 3 of those are 3 year seats. We have to consider these by September 2010 and the appointments need to be done by the end of October 2010. The deadline for submissions for applications is sometime during the 3 week of August. Ted Wellman, Carol Padgett, George Heim, Adam Reimer, Jim Czarnezki and Bruce King all have seats coming up. a. h. Agenda /Board Structure /Housekeeping did not meet. IV. OLD BUSINESS A. Tabled for discussion: The Pillars parking and access B. Letter to the Borough: KPB Ordinance 2010-21 Bruce King made a motion that letter to the borough be brought to the board. Brenda seconded. Brenda made motion to amend letter to the borough, fifth paragraph, "21.18.080 Conditional Use Permit (line 11) A conditional use permit may not be approved unless it is determined the activity will be conducted in a mariner that does not result in significant erosion, destruction of wetlands or riparian habitat, result in increased ground water pollution or adversely impact fish and wildlife." nai River Special Management Area Advisory Board Minutes May 13, 2010 fage3of4 Adam seconded. Amendment passed unanimously. A vote taken on sending amended letter to the borough. Passed unanimously. V. NEW BUSINESS A. Grant Lake Hydro Project Dave Carey made a motion to write a letter to HEA from the KRSMA stating the Grant Lake Hydro Project is incompatible with the existing KRSMA comprehensive plan. Adam seconded. Vote was taken to have KRSMA board president with the assistance of the habitat committee draft up a letter stating that the Grant Lake Hydro Project is incompatible with the existing KRSMA comprehensive plan and reference the section within the plan. This letter would be sent to HEA and FERC. The motion passed unanimously. VI. CORRESPONDENCE None VII. PUBLIC COMMENT None VIII. ADJOURNMENT A. Board Comments Brenda Friday on June 25 the Kenaitze Tribe is having a pot -lunch weekend with the elders from all around Cook Inlet. We will be sharing traditional ecological knowledge from the elders and we were hoping people from the agencies or KRSMA board could attend to help facilitate discussion with the elders. It will be located down at the tribe's Educational fishery site around 5:00 pm on June 25th. Brenda will email information to everyone. Bobbie Jo Skibo let everyone know if you have any volunteers for stream, on Saturday June 5` 2010 at 10:00 am at Cooper Landing Elementary School they can sign up. On the KRSMA River Trip, we will take to committee and try to determine dates. Adam Reimer commented on the Kenai Peninsula Borough Ordinance 21.18. Janet Schmidt, reminded everyone of the Kenai Shorebird Festival on May 21 -23` Jack Sinclair stated the river management society is going to be hosting a Kenai River workshop next fall 2011. The Governor will be signing the regulation package the board worked on within the next few months. Also, we are looking for a couple of volunteers for counting bank fishermen and boaters on the upper and lower Kenai River once a week. B. Date /Agenda of Next Meeting September 9, 20i 0 5 :30 p.m. Kenai River Special Management Area Advisory Board Minutes May 13, 2010 Page 4 of 4