The Cook Inlet watershed is a spectacular ecosystem covering 47,000 square miles of Southcentral Alaska. Melting snow and ice from mount McKinley, the Chugach Mountains and the Aleutian Range drains into rivers such as the mighty Susitna, Matanuska and Kenai, which feed the productive waters of Cook Inlet.
The watershed stretches 430 miles from its northernmost tip to its southernmost tip, and 220 miles from its easternmost reaches to its westernmost reaches.
Cook Inlet is 192 miles long.
8,000 square miles is saltwater.
The watershed drains 39,000 square miles (about the size of the US State of Virginia).
The watershed encompasses Alaska's most diverse and unique ecosystems including the alpine tundra of the Denali wilderness, coastal rainforests of the southern Kenai Peninsula, and abundant wetlands of the Susitna, Kenai and Matanuska river deltas. Cook Inlet's marine environment has been noted by scientists as among the most productive ecosystems in the world.
All of Alaska's 9 terrestrial ecosystems are found within the watershed.
Cook Inlet contains over 346 islands and islets.
Cook Inlet's tidal exchanges are as large as 39 feet, resulting in currents up to 11 knots.
Cook inlet is one of the most seismically active regions in the world, including 4 active volcanoes.
mouse over photo for credit
One of the highest concentrations of public lands in the nation is located within the watershed, including Denali, Katmai, Kenai Fjords and Lake Clark National Parks, Chugach National Forest, Kenai and Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuges, four state parks and sanctuaries, including the world famous McNeil River Bear Sanctuary, and seven Critical Habitat Areas. These productive habitats support a rich fabric of life, including brown and black bears, moose, caribou, migratory birds, wolves, humpback, beluga and killer whales, sea otters, sea lions and all five species of wild pacific salmon.
36,000 square miles (92%) of the watershed is public land.
7 national parks and wildlife refuges are found within the watershed.
4 state parks including Alaska's only state park wilderness are in the watershed.
7 state critical habitat areas are in Cook Inlet watershed.
Approximately 400,000 people, nearly 2/3 of Alaska’s population, live in the watershed. Cook Inlet communities depend on the watershed’s healthy waters and habitats for their livelihoods. Alaska Native villages pursue a subsistence lifestyle that is centuries old, supplying up to 90% of the villagers’ diet. Cook Inlet represents one of the most productive fisheries in Alaska, in which five species of salmon, herring, scallops, halibut, and several other species of bottom fish are harvested. And each year, nearly one million visitors from around the world venture to Cook Inlet to relish its magnificent beauty.
Energy alternatives outlined for Alaska legislators
By Richard Mauer
The Anchorage Daily News
JUNEAU — With some legislators fuming over the pace of in-state gas development and broadly supporting energy diversification, a special House committee summoned the promoters of six large Railbelt projects last week to explain themselves and whether they should be subsidized with public funds.
One of the projects -- a wind farm already under construction by Cook Inlet Region Inc. on Fire Island -- is poised to change Anchorage's view to the west and the approach to the city's international airport. The Anchorage Native corporation, owner of the island, plans to prepare sites for 36 wind turbines this summer and have the project in operation by the end of 2011.
Ethan Schutt, a senior vice president at CIRI, told the House Special Committee on Energy that the wind farm is projected to generate as much as 54 megawatts of power. That's enough electricity for about 18,000 homes and a little bit more than the capacity of the natural gas turbines at Chugach Electric Association's International Airport Road power plant in Anchorage, a relatively inefficient 1960s facility now used mainly for backup.
Three other proposed projects, all in early stages of development with no guarantees they will become operational, are near the flanks of Mount Spurr, the active volcano 75 miles west of Anchorage:
• Ormat Technologies Inc. of Reno, Nev., wants to tap directly into the volcano, drawing heat from water brought to the surface and converting it to electricity in on-site turbines. It would generate 50 to 100 megawatts.
Millett introduced a resolution which opposes the designation of Cook Inlet as a critical habitat for beluga whales. (Daniel Hernandez/KTUU-DT)
by Ted Land Wednesday, January 27, 2010
JUNEAU, Alaska -- Rep. Charisse Millett hopes the feds will pay attention to what she calls a threat to Alaska's economy.
The Anchorage Republican introduced a resolution on the House floor Wednesday which opposes the designation of Cook Inlet as a critical habitat for beluga whales.
The National Marine Fisheries Service is considering protecting 3,000 square miles of Cook Inlet, but Millett says this will only harm Southcentral Alaska's economy, as the state would have to meet new environmental regulations.
She also says shipping at the Port of Anchorage would be disrupted.
In October, the National Marine Fisheries Service released its annual Cook Inlet beluga population estimate.
They say the 2009 population of 321 whales is down 54 from the year before, and way down from more than 650 counted in 1994.
They say the population is not recovering as anticipated.
Millett looks at the numbers differently, and points out that in 2005, the population of Cook Inlet belugas was estimated at 278, and last year's estimate of 321 shows a 4 percent yearly increase.
She says the critical habitat is unjustified.
"I think that this is not a good idea. I think it's just a way to slow down development and I really think that ESA's and listings like this are used to a detriment to our state, especially, singled out all the time," Millett said.
House Joint Resolution 40 now goes to the House Resources Committee for consideration.
CIRI is investing in innovation, technology and a diverse portfolio of clean, dependable and economic energy options, including wind power.
FIRE ISLAND
A photo simulation demonstrates a possible wind farm on Fire Island. Image courtesy of Chugach Electric Association.
CIRI is developing Alaska's first commercial-scale wind energy project on company land on Fire Island, in Cook Inlet just west of Anchorage.
Southcentral Alaska uses natural gas to generate more than 90 percent of its electricity. However, Cook Inlet gas reserves are running out. Clean, renewable wind energy could diversify Railbelt power resources, which would increase reliability and decrease ratepayers' vulnerability to gas shortages and price increases.
The project is expected to include 36 turbines capable of producing 54 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 19,000 homes.
Site preparation on Fire Island is underway, with infrastructure work to commence in 2010.
The location was initially selected by Chugach Electric Association as a site that could provide commercial quantities of electric power to key load centers on the Railbelt grid.
WHY WIND?
- Wind energy is renewable, so it won't run out - The long-term cost of wind-generated electricity is cheaper and more predictable than fossil-fuel powered sources - Wind power reduces greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts - Wind power could offset the need to burn natural gas, so that Cook Inlet oil and gas reserves would last longer - Using wind energy locally could let the state take full advantage of escalating petroleum prices by selling more Alaska oil and gas to the rest of the world - Alaska wind energy resources would be built and operated in-state by Alaskans
The other day, I was driving through Johnson Pass when I saw a guy pulled over along the side of the road. He was staring off into the mountains. At the other end of a long leash, his lab was leaving a deposit in the snow. I knew what the guy was up to. He wasn't going to clean it up. He was going to get in his car and drive away, as if nothing happened.
But before we judge him for thoughtlessly soiling a pristine landscape, I want to make a comparison. I want you to think about your toilet and what goes in it.
As adults, most of us do not like to get caught up in fantasy. We don't put lost teeth under our pillows and we know who leaves the presents under the tree. But there is a little pretend story we tell ourselves every time we put something nasty down the drain.
It just disappears, right? I mean, of course, some government someone somewhere --the EPA or the DEC or the FBI or whoever-- must be keeping an eye on things to make sure nothing bad happens. But in general, for most of us, it's out of sight, out of mind. Not too different from the guy with dog.
That's the way of thinking that keeps us from coming up with a better long-term plan to deal with the tons of pollution we dump in Cook Inlet every day. Think doo in the snow is gross? Try this: salty, oily run-off from city streets, runway de-icer and tons of filtered and chlorinated sewer discharge. Now imagine it marinating your halibut steaks.
This is our approach to waste water here. It has not changed much in 30 years.
Let us take a little trip down the drain. What you flush travels through a series of pipes until it reaches the waste water treatment plant at Point Woronzof. When it gets there, it goes through what is called "primary treatment." A big screen filters larger solids. Then the water goes to big basins, where floating material is skimmed off, and sludge is removed from the bottom. All that stuff gets incinerated. Heavy grit and incineration ash goes to the landfill. As one of the guys at the plant explained it to me, you got your "floaties," your "sinkies" and your "lurkers."
What lurks once you get rid of all that floats and sinks? Water soluble pollutants like detergents and chemicals, particles of decomposing human waste and bacteria. That "effluent," as it is called, gets chlorinated and heads out into the inlet. The liquid is relatively clear, but it has more decomposing material in it than what is being discharged almost everywhere else in America. Piping it into Cook Inlet is legal thanks to a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency we've been getting renewed for the last three decades. We're in another renewal process right now.
Treatment plant:: Gravity sludge thickeners, foreground, and larger primary clarifiers are used in the wastewater treatment process. (ERIK HILL / Anchorage Daily News)
It used to be a lot of places got waivers like ours to pipe minimally treated sewer water into the ocean. That's not true any more. The number of waivers has gone from many to a handful. Now there are only a few places like us left (including a number of communities in Southeast Alaska). Many are smaller than Anchorage. Some big ones, like Honolulu and San Diego, may be forced to change because either the EPA or the locals aren't comfortable with what they're doing anymore. Sewage treatment upgrades cost hundreds of millions of dollars. These communities have been left to fight the EPA or scramble for a plan.
Some people say not to worry about the shrinking number of waivers. The inlet is uniquely suited for wastewater discharge, at least when it comes to the standards measured by the feds. It's silty, so murky effluent doesn't mess it up too much; it's churning, so pollution and chemicals disburse quickly; and it's super oxygenated, so there's enough oxygen for the metabolic processes of decomposing waste as well as the fish. The sewer utility tests methodically for heavy metals, industrial and agricultural pollutants. And in all these years, it hasn't found much that causes alarm. But then, there are many things it doesn't test for, including an emerging group of pollutants whose effects have not been widely studied. Take, for example, all of the anti-depressants swallowed and excreted by the people of our city, or the birth control pills, or the steroids or the antibiotics or the vitamins or the Benadryl tablets. And then there is all that laundry detergent, and the anti-microbial cleanser and the musk-scented body wash.
What does all that do? We don't know. Studies in other places have shown that pharmaceuticals and personal care products persist in the environment and do weird things to fish and mollusks, messing with reproduction. The EPA is studying these pollutants now, looking at what needs to be regulated. For the first time, the EPA will consider these as it goes through the process of considering renewal of our waiver. There is very little sewer technology anywhere to deal with emerging pollutants.
Complicating matters even more is the fact that Cook Inlet beluga whales have been recently listed as an endangered species, and federal regulators want more protection for the inlet. The EPA will consider all of that in the permit process, too. Whale populations declined, some experts say, because of subsistence hunting that wasn't well managed. That stopped, but the population didn't recover. No one knows why. No study has linked their problems to pollution from the sewer or anywhere else. But then, there haven't been that many studies. And as far as I can tell, there's also little known about how pollution from Anchorage affects other animals, including the fish and shellfish we eat.
We're banking on getting federal waivers forever, even though they are becoming rare in the U.S. There is growing concern about the environmental impact of a new group of pollutants in our waste discharge that we have no idea how to deal with. And we have an endangered whale population swimming where we are doing our dumping. Why not be pragmatic and face our waste? Why not start talking about our wastewater disposal and how we might pay, eventually, to improve it?
And while we're facing ugly water facts, maybe we should be thinking about storm water, too. It contains oils and road salts as well as lots of pet waste. It goes right into our urban creeks, untreated. Guess where they end up? And there's the airport, where propylene and ethylene glycol, as well as urea and potassium acetate (both known to kill fish in certain concentrations) are used to melt ice. Though there are efforts to curb it, some of that is making its way into the inlet, too. Some days at levels above what regulators consider kosher.
When I asked people about what our wastewater and run-off might be doing in the inlet, the main answer was that it hasn't been studied enough. That might be a place to start. If we know what's causing harm, we can address it. Right now, there are far more questions than answers.
In the meantime, try this: next time you flush or buy scented fabric softener or let your dog go on the trail, think about where it all ends up.
Do you really think we can keep doing this forever?
