Blog – Water Policy Consulting LLC

Get Hal Shepherd’s new book “Return to Ekeunick’s Time – Defending Waters and Tradition in the Arctic”

One of the primary motivations

behind the campaign for Alaska’s statehood was the impact of large canneries on salmon that used fish traps and wheels to drain returning runs. At the same time, due to the lack of the Territory’s regulatory authority and because federal authorities were under the control of corporate interests, these canneries avoided paying taxes and laws to protect the fishery.

Return to Ekunick’s Time looks at how, as the 49th state to enter the union, Alaska had the benefit of observing the mistakes made by other states that were beginning to experience environmental degradation due to industrial extraction. As such, in the early years after statehood, the State was a leader in creating and enforcing environmental policy which, together with the emerging activism of Alaska Native communities, played a part in the birth of the nationwide environmental movement.

Eventually, however, the lure of the riches, particularly from the discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay, became too much for Alaska’s political leadership, and over the past 50 years, the extraction industry has dominated state policies. Today, under a series of conservative politicians in power at both the federal and state levels (as championed particularly by the former Trump administration), resource extraction corporations are once again having substantial impacts on water and subsistence resources relied upon by Alaska Native communities.

At the same time, after a campaign led by powerful industrial interests and conservative politicians to discredit the environmental movement, today tribal leaders and everyday citizens in Alaska are hailing a new era of protecting water resources by emphasizing traditional values and management strategies in the face of existential threats from climate change and politics. According to Alaska Native author William Oquilluck, during the time of Ekeunick – the legendary leader of the Inupiat people in ancient times – “the Eskimo’s ancestors did not use their minds like later times when they invented tools, clothes, houses, boats, and weapons. They had no worries about living.”

Could the return to traditional values as a means of addressing the impacts of climate change and mismanagement of natural resources, help to move the needle towards a return to times when Alaska Native people will no longer have to worry about the survival of their traditions and culture?

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Kachemak Bay Watershed Collaborative

The Chugach Regional Resource Commission (CRRC) is an Alaska Native Tribal consortium in south-central Alaska whose Dena’ina, Alutiiq, and Sugpiaq villages and association members have stewarded of the Kachemak Bay watershed for over 10,000 years. CRRC’s mission is to promote Tribal sovereignty and protect subsistence lifestyles through the development and implementation of Tribal natural resource management programs to assure conservation and sustainable economic development in the traditional use area of the Chugach Region.

CRRC serves the greater Chugach region of Southcentral Alaska, including Lower Cook Inlet, Resurrection Bay, and Prince William Sound. Within Lower Cook Inlet CRRC will work with area member tribes to establish the Kachemak Bay Watershed Collaborative (Collaborative or KBWC) to protect salmon streams located within the Kachemak Bay Watershed (Watershed). The Athabascan and Sugpiaq communities located within the Watershed rely on a subsistence economy, as they have since time immemorial.

CRRC will engage a diverse group of stakeholders with land ownership or authority within the Watershed, including Federally recognized Tribal entities, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Alaska Departments of Natural Resources and Fish and Game, the municipalities of Homer, Kachemak Selo, Voznesenka and Razdolna, Seldovia and the unincorporated Native village communities of Nanwalek and Port Graham, and conservation organizations.

Many changes related to warming fresh and marine water temperatures impact the subsistence resources. Increasingly common drought conditions and spruce beetle outbreaks in the region threaten the health of the plants and animals rural communities rely upon for subsistence. These changes are happening at a rate no one thought possible even a decade ago. Land management activity within the Watershed can exacerbate such impacts. The Collaborative will work to be more inclusive of tribal and other local communities along with local, state, and federal stakeholders in monitoring, planning, and decision-making within the Watershed. The implementation of risk assessments and planning documents, along with preserving connectivity and non-climate stressor mitigation actions, will ensure better protection and management of salmon habitat in the Watershed.

Project location

The 4,926,794-acre Watershed is made up of five small watersheds located in the Kenai Peninsula Borough within the state of Alaska and encompasses the municipalities of Homer, Kachemak Selo, Voznesenka, Razdolna, Seldovia, and the unincorporated Alaska Native village communities of Nanwalek and Port Graham. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) Hydrologic Unit Codes (HUC) in which the group will work are: Cook Inlet, Stariski Creek-Frontal Cook Inlet, Fox River, Sheep Creek and Quiet Creek-Frontal Kachemak Bay Watershed HUC ID #s: 1902080000, 1902030108, 1902030110, 1902030109 and 1902030111 respectively.

Technical project description

There is currently is no group focused specifically on this Watershed, although a diverse array of stakeholders, including livestock grazers, tourist and recreation groups, industry, environmental organizations, recreation advocates, universities, land use, tribal, state and federal entities, municipalities and the general public utilize the area. This Watershed group will also help fill a planning gap left by the elimination of Alaska’s Coastal Zone Management program.

There are several ongoing or previous watershed planning activities, projects, or efforts related to the Watershed that the Collaborative will build upon, including:

The Kachemak Bay Fox-River Climate Risk Assessment analyzes current threats to salmon habitat within a portion of the Watershed, addresses salmon habitat connectivity and climate resiliency for the entire Watershed, and works with federal and state resource agencies to enter into cooperative agreements for management of salmon habitat on a watershed basis;
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game Fox River Flats Critical Habitat Area (FRFCHA) management plan addresses regulatory management goals for the FRFCHA and includes managing the area to 1) maintain and enhance fish and wildlife populations and their habitat; 2) minimize the degradation and loss of habitat values due to fragmentation, and; 3) recognize cumulative impacts when considering effects of small incremental developments and action affecting critical habitat resources.
The Kachemak Heritage Land Trust’s (KHLT) Krishna Venta Conservation Management Plan addresses working collaboratively with state, federal, and local entities as KHLT purchases and negotiates conservation easements on private lands for the purposes of management and protection of fish and wildlife habitat of KHLT’s 160 acres in the FRFCHA;
The Kenai Mountains To Sea – Land Conservation Strategy to Sustain Our Way of Life on the Kenai Peninsula calls for the creation of contiguous “green” corridors along 20 inter-jurisdictional anadromous streams, most of which originate on the Kenai Refuge. Such protection will increase the resiliency of these streams and the marine habitat into which they feed from the effects of a rapidly warming climate while ensuring that large piscivores such as brown bears and wolves persist to transport marine derived nutrients onto the landscape;
The Department of Natural Resources’ Kachemak Bay State Park and Kachemak Bay State Wilderness Park Management Plan addresses management of the 371,000- acre Kachemak Bay State Park and Kachemak Bay State Wilderness Park (State Park);
The Cook Inlet Keeper State of the Inlet watershed restoration plan within the Watershed captures threats and community-specific concerns and ideas to help direct CIK’s watershed-based organization as the plan future projects.

Join the Collaborative:

If you are a federal, state, or tribal entity, conservation group, or anyone else interested in the welfare and sustainability of Kachemak Bay, please join our Collaborative. If you have any questions please contact Hal Shepherd halshepherdwpc@gmail.com

Climate-Resilient Water Management: An operational framework from South Asia

Climate change is having an unprecedented impact on global water resources on which billions of people rely and because water is linked to everything else, global food, energy and economies are similarly affected by impacts on water systems. As a result, in 2014 the UK Department for International Development, sponsored the Action on Climate Today (ACT) program as a political compliment to technical or scientific strategies for addressing climate related impacts on water.

Using a Climate-Resilient Water Management (CRWM) approach as a way of increasing the resilience of global water systems, ACT has been working to encourage policies that manage and protect water systems from the impacts of climate change in the water sector. Although implemented in five South Asia countries, to date, this paper proposes that the ACT strategy for water management including assessment, supply augmentation and demand; floods and droughts and other extreme events; and public and governmental education on the need for CRWM, can be applied by practitioners and policy makers working in water resource management around the world.

The paper concludes by calling for the need for a new paradigm to meet the urgent need to address the rapidly growing global water crises including:

“1. Move beyond ‘business as usual’ to integrate the best available climate data and information in managing water resources;
2. Adopt a multi-disciplinary approach to mainstreaming the risk of climate change in programs and policy;
3. Map and lock into existing government priorities at different levels to secure political will;

4. Firmly acknowledge that CRWM is political as opposed to being a purely technical or scientific paradigm; • Frame and communicate about climate change using language and concepts that are relatable and impacts that are tangible;
5. Frame and communicate about climate change using language and concepts that are relatable and impacts that are tangible.”

Six Wishes for Biden’s First 100 Days

As a pragmatist, despite profound relief after Joe Biden’s win, I don’t imagine four short years of rational leadership will undo all the environmental damage inflicted by the Trump administration. But here’s my wish list for Biden’s first 100 days.

Goal one: Rejoin the Paris Climate Accord. Biden has vowed to rejoin the Paris Agreement on Day 1 of his presidency. Apparently, this only requires a letter to the UN to take effect and would recast the U.S. to, once again, take a leading role in reducing atmospheric CO2 levels. Unfortunately, there’s no making up for lost time. At 417.16 ppm in May of this year, up from an annual peak of 407.70 in May of 2016, the CO2 genie is out of the bottle.

Goal two: Work some bipartisanship magic and move a COVID-19 relief package through the House and Senate with green energy funding for states and local governments. This legislation should stimulate green infrastructure research and development and fund job training, especially in regions hardest hit economically by COVID-19 like Alaska, where 37,600 individuals lost their jobs as the hospitality and fossil fuel industries took a hit. This funding could employ local contractors in weatherizing state and municipal buildings, installing solar panels, wind turbines, and heat pumps, and setting up recharge stations in and between Alaska’s cities for electric vehicles.

Biden’s “Build Back Better” economic plan includes a 2-trillion-dollar budget over the next four years to address fossil fuel emissions and ramp up a conversion to clean energy while addressing America’s aging infrastructure. In the process he plans to create millions of new jobs in the automobile, transportation, power, and housing sectors. If he succeeds, the plan will move our nation closer to Biden’s goal of 100 percent clean energy by 2050. How would he pay for this, you ask? By repealing Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 for the country’s wealthiest ten-percent, projected to drain 1.9-trillion-dollars from the treasury over a ten-year period.

While he’s at it, Biden could extend the soon-to-expire Investment Tax Credit for the new installation of residential and commercial solar energy systems.

Goal three: Use emergency authority to rewrite drilling and land management plans which redirect BLM staff away from leasing and permitting new oil and gas leases on federal lands, like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This isn’t an all-out ban, but would avoid lengthy and contentious congressional and legal battles. He could, apparently, sign an outright ban on offshore drilling in federal waters, which accounts for about 16% of total oil production.

Goal four: Use his executive powers (newly expanded under the Trump administration) to put the teeth back into the NEPA process by bringing back independent (rather than industry-based) environmental analysis, requiring assessment and consideration of cumulative effects (like climate change and water resources), and an easier process for meaningful public input. Better yet, protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, sensitive areas in the National Petroleum Reserve, like Teshekpuk Lake (critical to vast flocks of migrating waterfowl,) and cultural resources like Bear’s Ears National Monument, through legislation that safeguards them from oil and gas exploration and extraction in perpetuity.

Goal five: Reverse Trump’s recent order to lift the roadless rule in Alaska’s Tonga’s National Forest, opening up 9.4 million acres to road building and logging. Instead of building a maze of new roads to cut old-growth stands of red and yellow cedar, Sitka spruce and hemlock, work with Native Alaskans and the USFS in a compromise to identify low-impact regions within roaded areas where selective cutting would not result in mudslides and damage to salmon streams and could be done without an offset of millions of taxpayer dollars to cover the cost of road construction.

Goal six: Weigh in on new national Arctic strategies with the Arctic Council with a focus on sustainable economic development and strengthen international collaboration.

Over the past four years, while Trump disregarded and disemboweled climate science in the US, the scientific world has moved on without us. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the far north. As temperatures in the Arctic and subarctic continue to increase at twice the global rate, whole ecosystems are shifting, impacting wildlife, indigenous peoples, and opening up new economic opportunities hand-in-glove with potential hazards. The United States should be at the table, or on the ice, alongside our international colleagues.

Let me close by saying, when I feel discouraged by the assault we’ve suffered over the past four years, like a hundred razor-sharp cuts to our environment and our democracy, I remind myself of the nation-wide March for Science, the global Student Strike for Climate, and the vast swell of support (FINALLY) for addressing climate change as a key issue in the 2020 Democratic race, and I find courage. We’re in for a fight, but we’re woke, and we’re ready.

Out with the Old, In with the New

In an attempt to keep up with the times and create an opportunity for other folks to contribute their ideas and insights on and about Alaska, this will be our last issue of the Water Policy Consulting Newsletter. Instead, staring the first of January, we will shift our energies to a new blog under the name of Boreal Observer. This will allow us to expand our audience and speak out more directly about issues facing Alaska. As always, our focus will include the evolving climate crisis, timber and mining issues, water rights, and litigation. Additionally, we will add a focus on community and environmental resilience and appreciation of this, our last great wilderness. You can find us at https://borealobserver.com

If you, or someone you know, is interested in sharing essays or photos about their observations and experiences in Alaska, please contact us for more information about submissions.

Trump Makes Haste to Lay Waste to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

In an effort to hold oil and gas lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before President Trump leaves office on January 20^th, the Bureau of Land Management has issued a call for nominations. The timing is tight. A 30-day call for submissions will end December 17^th followed by a 30-day notice prior to final lease sales. With 1.6 million acres of caribou and polar bear habitat at stake, conservative groups around the country, along with the Gwich’in Steering Committee, are suing the Trump administration over violations to the Endangered Species Act, a flawed environmental impact statement, and the foreshortened two-week public comment period (which ended on November 6^th) following the initial announcement of the plan.

Despite the last-minute opportunity for lease sales, bidders may be hesitant, given President-Elect Joe Biden’s victory. Biden is adamantly opposed to opening the refuge and has vowed to use the powers at his disposal, be it a congressional bill or an executive decision, to thwart oil and gas lease sales on the Arctic Plane. Couple that with a growing list of major banks unwilling to lend capitol to developers eyeing the Refuge, ferocious legal opposition from numerous environmental and Native challengers, and continued low oil prices, there’s good reason to hope that Big Oil will leave well enough alone.

ConocoPhillips Receives Final Approval for New Arctic Field

The Bureau of Land Management gave their Record of Decision go-ahead for the Willow Master Development Plan, paving the way for ConocoPhillips to tap the projected 590-million-barrel reserve on the eastern edge of the National Petroleum Reserve. While Alaskan delegates may cheer the news, environmental groups see it as yet another failure of the State and Federal governments to scale down oil production in favor of carbon-neutral technology. Read more.

Lawsuit Seeks to Halt Ambler Road Project

Once again, the Trump administration is embroiled in a lawsuit, this time with Tanana Chiefs Conference, over a “rushed, flawed, premature, and inadequate” environmental impact statement related to the proposed Ambler Road Project. The Tanana Chiefs Conference, plus a number of other independent Athabascan and Inupiat villages, have filed suit to halt the 211-mile industrial road. The road will open up access through the foothills of the Brooks Range to copper deposits on Bureau of Land Management lands. According to the lawsuit, “Mining operations are anticipated to sprawl out in every direction from the road corridor passing directly through and between several National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, and other conservation system units, thus piercing the heart of one of the most spectacular and sensitive regions of Interior Alaska.”

Governor Dunleavy Nominations Graphite Creek Project to Fast-41 Permitting

Hot Springs Creek Below the Proposed Graphite One Mine Site

Due to Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy’s nomination of Graphite Creek project in the remote Kigluaik range north of Nome, as a high-priority infrastructure project, as eligible for new legislation intended to fast track the permitting process for transportation projects. Title 41 of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, (Fast-41) adopted by Congress during the Obama administration which was intended to be a surface transportation reauthorization focusing on highway, transit, and rail programs. The Act establishes a new Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (FPISC), authorized to stream line the NEPA process including elimination of public review and comment. Due to the unprecedented authority provided to the Council, until now, the Act has traditionally been applied only to Infrastructure and transportation Projects.

However, mining companies and the Trump administration have been pressuring FPISC to include mining as a sector under the Act. According to the mining industry magazine Critical Minerals Alaska 2020, “a federal entity meant to provide a one-stop-shop capable of coordinating permits across different federal agencies, thereby streamlining and shortening the overall process for large infrastructure projects that are eligible for the program. Mining projects that supply the materials needed for the energy, communication, and transportation infrastructure in the U.S. may be eligible for Fast-41.” [1] If the proposed Graphite One Mine is included into Fast-41, Critical Minerals Alaska 2020 says it “could help reduce the seven to 10 years it takes the average large mining project in the U.S. to get through the permitting process.”[2]

The sudden surge in the mining of graphite and other precious minerals in Alaska results from a dramatic increase in demand for batteries, solar power, computers, and other high-tech products that require such minerals. For instance, graphite is a significant component of the lithium-ion batteries used for electric cars and some renewable energy systems. According to the World Bank , due to the growing global interest in such cars and energy, the demand for graphite, lithium, cobalt, and other battery metals could increase by nearly 500 percent by 2050.[1] The report says that, “[g]raphite demand increases in both absolute and percentage terms since graphite is needed to build the anodes found in the most commonly deployed automotive, grid, and decentralized batteries. ” Similarly, according the United States Geological Survey, there are currently no graphite mines in the United States, requiring American battery and other manufacturers to import 58,000 metric tons of graphite during 2019.[2] According to CMA2020, with “5.7 million metric tons of quality graphite outlined so far, Graphite One Inc.’s Graphite Creek deposit in Northwest Alaska could provide a reliable domestic supply of graphite to North America’s burgeoning lithium-ion battery sector.” [3]

[1] Shane Lasley, High priority Alaska REE, graphite projects Gov nominations elevate mine projects to Fast-41 permitting, p. 6-7, High priority Alaska 2020 (November 2, 2020).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Shane Lasley, Western Alaska deposit could feed graphite into supply chain, Mining News, CRITICAL MINERALS ALASKA, pp. 28-29 (2020)

Reversing Trump’s Environmental Policies Under a Biden Administration will be a Tall Order

This year’s presidential election was a close race in a handful of states. When the Associated Press announced that, for just the second time in 70 years, with the help from the Native vote, announced a decisive win for Democrat Joe Biden announced an ambitious Indian Policy as part of his campaign, over President Trump on November 7, 2020. This was partly due to record turnout throughout the country, including pivotal votes from Native Americans in key states. As of 2018, the state of Arizona alone which turned from red to blue this election cycle, members of federally recognized tribes made almost 6% of the population and the Navajo Nation alone contains around 67,000 eligible voters.

The question on everyone’s mind is whether a Biden win will end Trump’s war on the environment. If the democrats do not become the majority party in the senate, in order to stay on track with his environmental agenda, Biden will need to rely primarily on executive actions and essential legislative measures like tax reform, the federal budget and the Farm Bill. Just hours after the United States officially withdrew from the Paris accord, on the day after the election, for example, Biden announced that he would reverse that decision on the first day of his term in office.

During his candidacy, Biden also pledged to reverse several of Trump’s Alaska initiatives including drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and issuing a permit to develop the Pebble Mine. Also, in relation to Alaska Native Tribes Biden plans to create a new division of the Justice Department that will focus on environmental and climate justice and to incorporate environmental justice throughout EPA programs.

The key will be how hard will the Trump administration push for completion of it’s resource extraction agenda before he leaves office on January 20. Although, The Trump administration recently issued a request to energy companies to identify what specific land areas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should be offered for sale, this will be difficult due to the remaining environmental analysis, leasing logistics and the fact that global banks continue to adopt policies stating that they will not fund drilling in the Arctic due to climate change. And there’s also the fact that many of the Trump administrations decisions affecting BLM lands, including ANWR and the NPRA leasing were made by Scott Pendly who has been serving illegally as the Director of the Bureau of Land Management for the past 14 months.

Never one to let a small thing like the law get in the way of opening lands up to resource extraction activity however, Trump could simple move to put leases in ANWR and open up areas to mining, despite federal laws or even court orders to the contrary before leaving office. And then there’s the fact that Trump has not conceded the elections results to Biden and may not leave the Whitehouse at all.