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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2012-05-10 KRSMA Board PacketKenai River Special Management Area Advisory Board *** Meeting Agenda*** Thursday, May 10, 2012 5:30 p.m. Gilman River Center CALL TO ORDER A. Roll Call; B. Minutes Approval C. Agenda Changes and Approval II. Public Comments/Presentations Debby Burwen, Alaska Department of Fish and Game Fishery Biologist III. They are looking for potential sites for the Kenai King Salmon sonar site. She will also talk about the Didson counter equipment. III. REPORTS A. Agency and Government Reports a. State Parks—Director's Report: Ben Ellis b. DEC -Tim Stevens c. ADF&G- Tom Vania/ Robert Begich d. USF&WS- Janet Schmidt / Andy Loranger e. USFS/Chugach- Bobbie Jo Kolodziejski f. City of Kenai- Sean Wedemeyer g. City of Soldotna- Peter Micciche h. Kenai Peninsula Borouoh- Brent Johnson B. Committee Reports a. President's Report b. Guide Advisory c. Habitat d. River Use e. Legislative/Government Activities f. Board Development g. Agenda/Board Structure/Housekeeping tilm7 IIf.91JI ..9 VI. CORRESPONDENCE VII. PUBLIC COMMENT VIII. ADJOURNMENT A. Board Comments B. Date/Agenda of Next Meeting September 13th, 2012 at 5:30 p.m. Kenai Area Office, PO Box 1247, Soldotna, AK 99669, 907-262-5581 Y 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 git Alaska Dhsion of Parks and Outdoor Recreation Department oGAlatural Resources, In cooperation with the Kenai Peninsula Borough „sem _ 1 KD `� A s Kenai River Special Management Area Advisory Board Meeting Minutes Gilman River Center Thursday, April 12, 2012 5:30 p.m. ��R�Zr7�7:7�1g7 A. Members Present: David Carey, Joe Connors, Jack Sinclair, Tim Stevens, Carol Padgett, Robert Begich, Andy Loranger, Andrew Carmichael, Ricky Gease, Sean Wedemeyer, and Andy Szczesny. B. The minutes from the March 8`h, 2012 meeting were approved as written. Housekeeping item - Dave Carey stated the minutes should reflect who ran the last months KRSMA meeting. C. Agenda was approved as written. II. Public Comments/Presentations Janette Cadieux and Deb Carlson gave a presentation over the Cooper Landing Walkable Community Project. Discussed the presentation and decided to write a draft letter to the governor and copy the Commissioner on it, asking for the support of the Cooper Landing Walkable Community Project and ask them that the Governor approve the Capital appropriation that the legislature passed for this project. III. REPORTS A. Agency and Government Reports a. State Parks, Jack Sinclair, most of our seasonal staff are back on this month. The one dilemma that we are facing internally is that we have yet to see the State Park position turn up the in legislatures amended budget, either House or Senate version. We will only have two effective rangers on the river this summer. We also are unfortunately, greatly over budget; somehow we didn't get $100,000 put in our operating budget this last year. So we don't have a whole lot of money right now for our staff, we are hoping that we will be able to get one temporary ACC position for Jacques crew. The Pillars new dock has been delivered and is ready for installation when the river opens up later. We also have new pavers that will be put in at the Cooper Landing boat launch later this year. We stili have $80,000 in the Governors operating budget to be appropriated to the borough for a dispatcher this summer. Pam Russell stated that permitting is picking up and it is getting busy. b. DEC, Tim Stevens, two things to report. Unfortunately our peer review for the Kenai River Turbidity study hasn't been completed yet. Hope to have the peer review report by the end of May. Don't know the fate of the two grant applications to do water quality monitoring on the Kenai River this year through the AQWA funding project. There are two projects for the Kenai; one is to support the Kenai Watershed Forum with its twice annual sampling of the water quality testing of the Kenai River, once in April and again in July. Also, there is a proposal to do beach monitoring this summer in July and August. c. ADF&G, Robert Begich, next meeting will have summary of outlooks for Kenai River Salmon runs and planned projects for the season. We have some money in the capital budget to do Chinook salmon work in the river and also in the inlet. The fishing regulations are out. d. USF&WS, Andy Loranger, coming up in early May and right before the next meeting of the board, we will be finalizing the action plan for the Russian River, the Interagency Coordination Group will be meeting and we will be putting the finishing touches on that. We are gearing up for our seasonal crews coming in May. We did get funded for a new visitor center at the refuge headquarters and we are in the process of initial planning and contracting for A&E work, as well as things like geotechnical stuff will happen this summer and we hope to be breaking ground sometime next year. We are finalizing the MOU for the Stream Watch Volunteers Stream Watch Program right now and that should be into place very soon. With the folks from Stream Watch spending some time on the middle and lower rivers, as well as the traditional work they do at the Russian River, Kenai River confluence area. Robert Begich mentioned the Chinook work, I just wanted to say as part of the overall work, our Kenai Fish and Wildlife Field Office, and the fishery folks from there are going to be initiating some work as part of a larger project in the Kiley River and Benjamin Creek area. e. USFS/Chugach, Bobbie Jo Kolodziejski was not present. Kenai River Special Management Area Advisory Board Minutes — April 12, 2012 f. City of Kenai, Sean Wedemeyer, dock pile repair and cathodic protection, we awarded that to American Marine and that work will happen in May. We are gearing up for the personal use fishery. We just notified the Corp of Engineers that we will be utilizing our permit to dredge the boat launch in May. g. City of Soldotna, Andrew Carmichael, started installing our 40 ft fish cleaning station to try to deal with the carcass issues, on Monday. The boat launch will receive an extra 10 foot on each of the ends of the ramps, to try to help with the minus tides that we get that far up river in the spring. h. Kenai Peninsula Borough, Brent Johnson was not present. B. Committee Reports a. President's Report, Joe Connors, encouraged more participation by the board members. b. Guide Advisory, Joe Connors, met today. Had one item on our agenda. In your lay down papers, is the second version of the guide suspension per violation statement, it is a draft problem statement. Would like everyone to read and come to an understanding, because the committee itself has tackled the task of looking at all the current stipulations and regulations that pertain to guides, realizing that the process we have starts, in terms of convictions of a guide, one of the agencies has to issue a citation to a guide, then the guide has to be found guilty or plead no contest. So this always occurs first in the process and there are five or six agencies that can issue citations and get that process started. When that is done, there is a second part, that part is the DNR use of suspensions. Over the years, there has just been more and more. So, the committee is reviewing the current guide stipulations, there are 28 of them; Our goal is within two weeks you will have a packet and we will be recommending particular types of suspensions or warnings for particular types of activities. The purpose is to pass it here at the KRSMA board and send it to the commissioner, director, and superintendent. c. Habitat, Tim Stevens, talked about the lateness of the Peer Review report and I fielded some questions from the general public that was there on some of the information in the Draft Turbidity Report. d. River Use, Carol Padgett, we had a couple of items on our agenda, one was the discussion on limiting the users of the river and basically we decided to put that on hold at this point. We also talked about the capacity and adequacy of public facilities, restmoms and things like that. The river use will put this on the agenda for this fall. We had talked about potentially some fencing around Jim's Landing, near the pullout where you come in, because there are just too many boats and they are running into each other. Janet had talked to her facilities folks and they are going to put some temporary fencing up so boats can come in and more down. We will see how it goes this fall. We have the Boating Safety Resolution out there; Jack Sinclair said we should see a public draft by the end of the summer, so hopefully, ideally public comment this fall. Dwight Kramer, from Kenai Fisherman's Coalition was sharing that his group was working with the City of Kenai to get a reduced fee for seniors, who are launching at the city dock. It ended up they went to the City Council and the Harbor Commission and got seniors approved to launch for free, except for during the personal use fishery period. e. Legislative/Government Activities, nothing to report. f. Board Development, nothing to report. g. Agenda/Board Structure/Housekeeping, nothing to report. IV. OLD BUSINESS V. NEW BUSINESS DEC Turbidity Presentation Request Letter was not taken up, but rather a verbal request was made to Tim Stevens. He stated that they would have someone at the fall 2012 meetings to give a presentation once the Peer Study Review is complete. VI. CORRESPONDENCE Commissioner's response to the board's letter requesting the reinstatement of the Kenai River Park Ranger position VII. PUBLIC COMMENT — no public comment Kenai River Special Management Area Advisory Board Minutes = ;� {'➢ 2 1*vS,uf,2 ►yllliln1it711l111011 TII=1 111 A. Board Comments Ricky Geese, commented the Kenai Visitors and Cultural Center will be holding the largest wildlife art show ever in Alaska this summer, there will be 120 paintings, wildlife art paintings, from some of the best wildlife artists in the world. The grand opening will be on June 1", 2012. Jack Sinclair we will have our usual potluck before the meeting. B. Date/Agenda of Next Meeting May 10, 2012 at 5:30 p.m. Kenai River Special Management Area Advisory Board Minutes — April 12, 2012 `moi='"a.