Stand vs. Salmon and Stand for Alaska dig in for long fight

The state supreme court has yet to rule on whether the contentious “Stand for Salmon” ballot proposition will make it to the voting booth this year, but groups on both sides of the issue are already in combat.

“Stand for Alaska,” the campaign formed to oppose the initiative, already has social media carrying its message that the proposition will cause economic disruption. Stand for Salmon, which supports the proposition, says it has grassroots “people-to-people” efforts underway, and that Alaskans widely support new protections for salmon.

A critic, Jaeleen Kookesh, vice president and general counsel to Juneau-based Sealaska Corp. said, “We’re all for protecting salmon, but this thing is over the top.”

The ballot proposition involves a complete overhaul of the state’s habitat permitting system and the consequences are unknown. “It’s not a simple tweak,” she said.

Kookesh spoke to the Resource Development Council meeting in Anchorage last Thursday, May 3. She cochairs Stand for Alaska along with Sarah Fefebvre, a Fairbanks businesswoman.

Stand for Salmon campaign director Ryan Rchryver said a lot of the concerns are overblown.

The initiative would set up a new, more stringent habitat permit procedure for construction that could affect anadromous, mainly salmon-bearing streams. The state Board of Fisheries has been asking for an updated habitat permit system for years, Rchryver said.

Stand for Salmon argues that current state law directs the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to approve any resource proposal near salmon streams unless the plans are, “insufficient for the proper protection of fish and game.”

The problem is, there is no definition for what constitutes the “proper protection of fish and game.” This language is too vague to guide decisions on projects that have the potential to harm our salmon, like the Pebble Mine, the group said in briefing materials.

Rchryver defended the initiative. “It is designed to put a definitive guide for development and scientific standards in place. It will create certainty for developers,” he said.

Critics say the initiative, instead, is designed to slow or block projects, that it goes beyond what the fisheries board had in mind and that state fish and game officials have said the existing, relatively simple and flexible habitat permit procedure works well.

The initiative proposes two types of habitat permits, a “minor” permit for small or routine projects and a “major” permit for a larger developments. Major permits would require an analysis of impacts and alternatives, a smaller, state-level version of a federal Environmental Impact Statement process.

Kookesh said many developers would face uncertainty as to whether their project calls for a minor or major permit. There are also several outright prohibitions including no off-site mitigation, which eliminates a widely-used procedure to offset environmental impacts of development.

This could conflict with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Clean Water Act regulations, which do provide for off-site mitigation.

Department of Fish and Game officials have acknowledged it would be difficult to develop large projects like mines under the proposal, and in presentations to the Legislature last year the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities said there could be effects on highway projects near waterways.

The Department of Environmental Conservation also told legislators there could be problems for municipal wastewater projects when existing discharge permits come up for renewals.

Kookesh also said a key part of the proposition would classify all waterways in the state as anadromous, triggering the permit requirements, and it would be up to an applicant for a habitat permit to prove no anadromous fish are present.

“It’s up to you to prove there are no fish,” she said.

Adding to the complexity is that there are many kinds of anadromous fish in Alaska besides salmon, Kookesh said. There are 23 anadromous fish species in Alaska including Arctic char and whitefish found in northern areas.

State fish and game biologists have already classified a large number of Alaska waterbodies as anadromous and do studies each year in areas where waters are not classified but development is planned.

The initiative backers said in legislative hearings last year that state budget constraints limit the ability of fish and game biologists to do the studies and that only half of the anadromous streams on the state are classified.

Kookesh told the RDC that the new permit rules would cover small, non-fish bearing streams feeding anadromous and adjacent wetlands. However, Emily Anderson, an attorney in the Wild Salmon Center’s Alaska office, said the presumption that unclassified streams are anadromous applies mainly to streams that feed into water bodies already classified.

The ballot proposition language also says streams that flow into marine waters would be included, however.

Anderson agreed that small streams and adjacent wetlands affecting those could be covered under the new permit procedures, but wetlands are now covered under the fish and game department’s current habitat permit procedure, Anderson said.

Kookesh also criticized the way the ballot initiative was written. “It was developed in private, with zero transparency,” for people who will be affected, she said. A sharp contrast was drawn with the development of the state Forest Practices Act, which sets standards and rules for protection of salmon streams and habitat in areas where timber is harvested.

The Forest Practices Act resulted from a long process of consultation with affected groups including timber harvesters, conservation groups, community leaders and state officials, Kookesh said. Sealaska was heavily involved in that because of its commercial harvesting of timber on its lands in Southeast Alaska, she said.

Each side in the controversy charged the other with being funded by wealthy out-of-state interests.

As it is written, the ballot proposition is too vague and its interpretation will be left to lawyers and judges, Kookesh said. The better way to craft something like this is through the Legislature, she said, where there is a public process for affected groups to weigh in, and were compromises can be negotiated. This is essentially what was cone with the Forest Practices Act.

Meanwhile, both sides in the debate are throwing barbs at each other over out-of-state backers. Stand for Salmon said its opponents, Stand for Alaska, is being funded by large “foreign” mining companies, Rchryver said. Kookesh, of Stand for Alaska, said Stand for Salmon’s funding is from environmental groups in the Pacific Northwest and a handful of wealthy donors, including one or more tech billionaires.

Tim Bradner is copublisher of the Alaska Legislative Digest and Alaska Economic Report