The great salmon debate

Hopefully, you’ve been paying attention to the controversy over the past several months about the salmon habitat permitting initiative being forwarded by the Stand for Salmon group. On the other side, the Stand for Alaska group has been arguing that this same ballot initiative would virtually end all development involving salmon waters or salmon habitat in Alaska.

I find this interesting because SFA presents a picture of complete and almost total shutdown of future development projects like mines, roads, and other similar undertakings. As we all know, few things in life are that cut and dried. The argument against the SFS initiative is that strict and specific permitting requirements are already in place and that there is sufficient governmental permitting oversight to protect our salmon habitat.

I wrote only a short time ago about the Mat-Su Borough’s concerns that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was not following the Clean Water Act permitting requirements in granting the Donlin mine project permits for their proposed road and pipeline through the borough and across critical wetlands areas. That’s at the federal level. It doesn’t sound to me like adequate governmental permitting oversite is occurring there. How is the state doing so much better?

On January 17, 2017, the Alaska Board of Fisheries wrote a letter to the legislature asking them to revise and tighten aspects of the current fisheries habitat permitting regulations and requirements. The first point in the letter asked for improving public notification and opportunities for public comment for projects that have the potential to impact salmon habitat.

According to the letter, “ADF&G Habitat staff tracks the average time for permit issuance after an application is received at 4 days.” Many people expressed during public testimony that not enough time was allowed for public consideration of these projects.

The second point was concerned with enforceable standards. Quoting from the letter, “Under current law, the commissioner of ADF&G is directed to approve a fish habitat permit for a ‘proposed construction, work, or use…unless the commissioner finds the plans and specifications insufficient for the proper protection of fish and game.’ AS 16.05.871(d). Permits may be issued with little restriction because nothing in the statute or regulation defines what constitutes ‘the proper protection of fish and game’.”

When this matter was brought before the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Fish and Wildlife Commission, the commission voted to draft a resolution to be sent to the Assembly asking that “…the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly supports laws and permitting requirements that outline a clear standard so that responsible resource development protects our fisheries and enhances our communities and our economies.”

Over that same period, the SFS group was developing their initiative to address these same concerns and working with legislators to introduce a bill to achieve essentially the same permitting updates. The legislature failed to act on this, so the “fallback position” was the SFS ballot initiative.

The SFA group has been running editorials attacking the initiative as an economic growth killer. I have yet to see exactly how this would happen given the explanations of the SFS initiative I have heard. If tightening standards and adding teeth to enforcement of permit standards is so bad, I wish the SFA folks would develop a “what if” scenario and apply the changes proposed in the initiative to it to demonstrate how the changes would kill various projects.

I understand how there is a certain “fear” of government regulation, but unless one distrusts government and the folks doing the project reviews, there shouldn’t be a problem if the project is worth doing to begin with. Given a clear set of permitting requirements, life should be easier for the developer because he now knows what is expected to receive a permit.

Now, back to the MSBFWC proposed resolution. It was scheduled for action on the Assembly agenda at their last Tuesday evening meeting. I received an email stating that the resolution was pulled from the agenda prior to the meeting because it was felt that there was more to gain by allowing the opportunity for discussion at a future assembly work session.

Over the weekend prior to the scheduled vote by the Assembly on this initiative, the Alaska Republican Assembly circulated a document stating’ “The Borough Manager is attempting to sneak a resolution through on the consent agenda to support an environmental group called ‘Stand For Salmon’….”

To my knowledge, the Borough Manager had nothing to do with the proposed resolution and neither did SFS. When you can’t demean the idea, you demean the people you think are associated with it!