SAWC Member groups carry out a variety of restoration and enhancement projects to improve watershed health in their communities. A big thanks to the folks at Twin Lions Productions for putting together this video highlighting some of the restoration projects our hard working Coalition member groups are carrying out in their communities! Post by Twin Lions Productions.
A relatively new concept in Southeast Alaska, rain gardens are becoming a popular method for treatment of storm water across the country. Storm water is the excess rain and snow melt that runs off impermeable surfaces such as rooftops, pavement roads, and parking lots. As water runs off these surfaces it can pick up and carry pollutants like oil, fertilizers, soil, and trash that may ultimately flow directly into a nearby stream or harbor. Or, it may go into a storm drain and continue through storm pipes until it is released untreated into a local waterway. Rain gardens are designed to capture runoff from impermeable surfaces like roads and sidewalks, allowing the water to filtrate down through the soil and sediment rather than running into storm drains, which lead directly to…
On July 16 SAWC began sampling the waters at City Park and Petroglyph Beach in Wrangell [caption id="attachment_5038" align="alignnone" width="500"] Petroglyph Beach, Wrangell[/caption] [caption id="attachment_5037" align="alignnone" width="500"] City Park Beach, Wrangell[/caption] These beaches were identified by DEC as a high priority because of their frequent use for swimming, wading, and recreation activities. Through this project, SAWC will increase public awareness of potential sources and the health risks associated with bacterial contamination and will work with the City and Borough of Wrangell to limit beach access in the event of bacterial exceedances. SAWC staff collects weekly marine water samples from each beach that are sent to and tested in a Juneau lab for fecal coliform and enterococci bacteria. Sampling will continue for 20 weeks during the high-use spring and summer recreational seasons, following…
Last week the Chilkoot Indian Association hosted the University of Alaska Anchorage's resident aquatic insect expert Dan Bogan, who led a Macroinvertebrate Biomonitoring Training for community practitioners in Haines. The training teaches participants how to identify and use aquatic invertebrates to gauge stream health. With the University of Alaska Anchorage's Aquatic Ecology Department, Bogan administers the Alaska Stream Team data collection program, a coordinated collaborative citizen-science effort to collect consistent and reliable biological data on the ecological health of Alaska's streams. The Alaska Stream Team hosts an online database where volunteer stream monitors can enter, view, and/or share basic chemical and biological information collected using educational or volunteer-level Stream Team methods. [caption id="attachment_5007" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Taiya Inlet Watershed Council's Rachel Ford gets her hands dirty to find some aquatic insects[/caption] Participants in the recent…
Cannery Creek is an anadromous stream that flows into Letnikof Cove, near Haines. It is listed as habitat for Coho Salmon and Dolly Varden rearing. The previous culvert was classified as “red” based on a perch of 108 inches at the outlet and a gradient of 5.77%. It also had a break in the middle that allowed flows to dissipate out of the culvert and only allowed fish passage at tides of 17.61ft. or greater, which is approximately 14% of high tides. The Takshanuk Watershed Council sought funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Patagonia World Trout to replace this culvert to allow for unimpeded fish passage. The failing culvert was replaced with a 95” x 67”, 60’ long rolled aluminum pipe arch culvert. The culvert…
The Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition (SAWC) was recently awarded funding through the State’s Alaska Clean Water Actions (ACWA) grant to carry out community watershed projects in the communities of Haines, Skagway, and Wrangell. A partnership between the State of Alaska’s Departments of Environmental Conservation, Fish & Game, and Natural Resources, ACWA was created to characterize Alaska’s waters in a holistic manner, and facilitate the sharing of data, resources, and information among state agencies. The ACWA grant program awards funds for projects to restore, protect, or conserve water quality, quantity, and aquatic habitat on identified waters. Pullen Creek Rain Garden and Outreach, Skagway Funding was awarded to carry out the Pullen Creek Rain Garden and Outreach project in partnership with Coalition member group Taiya Inlet Watershed Council in Skagway.…
[su_slider source="media: 4846,4845,4844,4843,4842,4841" height="400" speed="300"] An important subsistence resource for many Southeast Alaska communities, eulachon (locally pronounced “hooligan”) are a small anadromous fish that gather in large schools at the mouths of rivers and streams as they prepare to swim upstream to spawning grounds. The arrival of these oily little Southeast delicacies are an official harbinger of spring for the residents that gear up with nets and waders and head out to scoop up the “candlefish” which are often loaded into smokehouses to further flavor and preserve the fish for eating. According to Alaska Department of Fish and Game, watersheds with eulachon migrations in Southeast Alaska include the Unuk, Stikine, Taku, Mendenhall, Lace, Chilkat, Situk, and Alsek. The Takshanuk Watershed Council in Haines has begun a…
[su_frame][/su_frame]The only permanent settlement on Admiralty Island, 55 miles Southwest of Juneau and 41 miles North of Sitka, Angoon is a small community of about 570 residents. Because of the community’s remote location, produce available in town is very expensive and has often traveled hundreds if not thousands of miles before reaching the consumer. Angoon’s climate is much drier than that of other Southeast communities, providing residents with an excellent opportunity to grow produce that will offset the expensive and reduced-quality produced currently barged in. Meredith Pochardt, Takshanuk Watershed Council’s Food Security Coordinator is working with the community of Angoon to initiate the Angoon School/Community Garden Project. The goal of the projects is to establish a garden that will be utilized by teachers, students, and the community as…
Congratulations to our friends at the Southeast Alaska Fish Habitat Partnership! SEAKFHP has been granted full recognition status by the National Fish Habitat Board SEAKFHP works to foster cooperative fish habitat conservation in Southeast Alaska and partners closely with SAWC to support and inform aquatic resource management in the region. [gview file="https://www.alaskawatershedcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/SEAKFHP-RELEASE.pdf"]
On February 28th, the Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition’s Aquatic Resource Mitigation Coordinator will facilitate a meeting in Haines to discuss community wetlands identification and planning with a local advisory committee. The meeting is hosted by the Chilkoot Indian Association and is part of a tribal initiative to develop a public education tool that will inform the public and developers on the presence and value of wetlands in Haines. The CIA and SAWC have invited Teri Camery, a senior planner and wetland review board lead for the City and Borough of Juneau, to present at the meeting and share with participants the experience of the CBJ in mapping and assessing wetlands in their community. SAWC works to support local governments and tribes to play an active role informing natural resource management…
