More on Ballot Measure 4

Well, the official election results aren't in yet, but its not looking good. 57% no and 42% yes at this point.

But I realized I wasn't as clear as I wanted to be last night (given that I was really sleepy when I was writing) - in terms of allowing Pebble Mine to happen, Ballot Measure 4 would prevent the proposal to reach the permitting process. Those against the mine do not want it to reach the permitting process, because the precedent is that every mine that has reached the permitting process has gone through. Of course, the proponents are just trying to say "wait and see" - they are doing some preliminary exploration to determine the environmental impacts of the mine, and preliminary drilling to estimate the claims. They are arguing that if they are able to get permits, that means that the mine will be ok for the fish.

I'm actually really jealous of my boss, because on Friday she is flying across the Inlet to the Pebble Mine area as part of a field team funding by the Nature Conservancy. The woman leading the team apparently used to work for USGS, but resigned, because she was trying to voice her opinion about Pebble Mine and the government didn't want that. Anyways, the point of this expedition is to get baseline data about the area for the impact assessment. Except one could argue that there is no way they can get true baseline data at this point, since preliminary drilling has already started (therefore we don't know what the environment was like before that started). Anyways, one thing that is really awesome about this expedition has to do with those laws regarding anadramous streams. Because that area is so largely uninhabited, there are a lot of streams and water systems that haven't been documented. Hell, I got to help out with a headwater stream project about 40 miles north of Homer, and we found undocumented streams. There WILL be salmon in the streams across the Inlet, and if those get documented, they'll be able to get more protection. God, what a cool expedition to be on - being the first to document salmon in streams in order to prevent a mine from poisoning them all....

Conservation in the Alaskan political arena

Today is a big day for Alaskan politics. First off, the primaries for congressional representatives are going on (Ted Stevens, the old republican senator who is being indicted, is still running - and leading the primary so far at 63%). But what's keeping me most on edge is a ballot measure - the infamous (at least around here) Ballot Measure 4.

Ballot Measure 4 is highly controversial, more so because of the way it is being framed. The proposal is being sponsored by Alaskans for Clean Water. Those against is are led by Alaskans Against the Mining Shutdown. Its a pretty confusing proposal, and the fact that its a touchy topic makes everything more contorted. So I will try to explain the best I can, given that I only understand it at a baseline level, and that I know far more about the "yes" than the "no" side.

Anadramous streams (those that are spawning grounds for anadramous fish like salmon) get special protection in Alaska's legislature (and maybe nationwide? I'm not sure). These protections placed a lot of limitations on factories, mines etc., because they would not be able to get permits to function if they couldn't guarantee that they could uphold the water quality standards for the environment in which they were built. However, a past administration created a loophole for industry, allowing for mixing zones. The idea of mixing zones is basically "the solution to pollution is dilution" - it allowed for the measurement of toxins being dumped or secreted by an industry to be measured a certain radius away from the direct source, rather than right at the outflow. Ballot Measure 4 is, put simply, overturning this loophole, and calling for environmental standards to be measured directly at the outflow.

Why is this so controversial? Because it will make it much harder for proposed mines to obtain the permits they need to proceed. Mining has been, and is an important industry in Alaska - it provides a lot of jobs, lots of tax revenue for the state. The proponents of Measure 4 state that it will only apply to new, large scale metal mines (existing mines will not be affected, as they will be grandfathered in). The opposition claims that existing mines must continually apply for and renew permits, and therefore this kind of measure could shut down mining across the state.

Another reason this Measure has been so much in the limelight (its gotten national attention) is because it is closely tied to the issues surrounding the proposed Pebble Mine. Yesterday I went to a screening of the documentary Red Gold, which won this year's Best Documentary at the Telluride Film Festival). Pebble Mine would be a copper and gold mine - half would be underground, and half would be an open pit mine. Apparently the claims are fairly sizeable (although I can't find out how much they are estimated to be valued at right now) However, for one thing, mining in general is just terribly destructive on the environment. (One reason why this Pebble Mine/Ballot Measure 4 stuff has sparked my interest is that mining is an issue home in Virginia too, and I had a lot of friends involved in fighting mountain top removal) But the region where Pebble Mine would be located is right in the Bristol Bay watershed. Bristol Bay is home to the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world. (The picture at the top of this post is a Bristol Bay sockeye run). The region is just incredibly diverse, healthy and well persevered. One thing that I love about Alaska is how much untouched land there still is. Pristine environments that have yet to be largely impacted by people like so much of the rest of the world. The proposed mine could produce up to 2.5 billion tons of waste material. And it's located on the top of a mountain, so all that crap is just going to flow down. And yes, mining provides a lot of jobs, but so does fishing. But fishing is not just commercial - lots of communities rely on fisheries for subsistence living. It's not just a job, it's a way of life. Perhaps it's true that Ballot Measure 4 would hurt the mining industry. But mines hurt fisheries, and personally, it makes more sense to me to eliminate the industry that is temporary and finite, rather than the one that is renewable if managed properly.

At 11:19 pm, the poll counts say Ballot Measure 4: No -56%, Yes - 43%

Sunshine and water

Oh boy, I've been neglecting you dear readers for a very long time. Honestly, its just because SO much has happened, I haven't had any time to write about it. And yes, there is quite a lot of news to catch up on. But its late and tomorrow I leave early to go check some field sites on the more northern end of the peninsula...actually that should be really cool - my boss and I are going to meet up with some Fish and Game people, who will take us in a boat across a huge lake to a site. Checking our sites won't take very long, but the F&G people are putting in a weir (basically, this barrier on a river that blocks fish passage except through a narrow opening - a sonar or something is connected to this, and in this way, they can track how many salmon are running upstream) so we'll be stuck out there while they do that. But we'll also probably get to help so it should be fun. Hopefully the weather will be ok. It's STILL raining A LOT here. Thankfully, the sun decided to shine for soccer today again. Hah, honestly I haven't been to practice in aaages, but today I dragged my lazy butt out of the house and I'm really glad I did. We had a Real Game...well, more real than we've had before - we played against some middle and high school girls on a team. Amazingly enough, the game was well matched and we won! (Yes the soccer moms beat the little mini-jocks woohoo)

Anyways, I'm digressing. I have a lot that I'd like to share, but I don't really want to leave you with a novel documenting the entire month, so I will proceed in smaller but (hopefully) more frequent postings....

So, one thing that's happend in this past month is that my family came to visit me! That was really fun - it was nice to show them around town, we went on some nice hikes, but my favorite thing was our trip to Seward, which is on the other side of the penninsula. I went there with my friend Lauren at the very beginning of the summer, but I wanted to go back because I wanted to take a boat tour of the fjords on that side of the penninsula. And it was so very worth the trip. Like I said, the weather hasn't been very cooperative (amazingly enough, while my family was here, we had the best weather all summer) but the day we went out on the boat couldn't have been more perfect. The water was completely flat and placid, the sun was out, the sky was blue...I loved the tour because we saw a TON of wildlife (sea otters, seals, Steller's sea lions - which are endangered, a humpback whale, lots of little seabirds, and two orcas! - it was my goal of the summer to see orcas, yay), but it really would have been worth it just for the scenery. It was breathtaking.



I'm sure you won't find it surprising that I have a TON more AMAZING pictures, which I am slowly uploading to my online photo gallery...I'll let you all know when those are up. But yeah, Alaska is beautiful when the weather is nice. Hah, keep in mind I don't take pictures on shitty days :)

Anyways, I'm really exhausted so sharing time is over but, until next time!

Grab bag update

So this is the puppy I've been housesitting for the past week and a half. She's so adorable. Also..in HEAT. Woah, that was SO not part of my job description when I said I'd housesit. She has this big rottweiler boyfriend. He broke into the house on Friday (um yeah, ridiculous) and I am certainly not going to gaurentee that I successfully kept her out of trouble. I don't know why the owners didn't spay her, because when I called them to tell them she went into heat, they were like "we do NOT want puppies." *shakes head* well...if she DOES have puppies, they will be cute. And maybe I will get one. buahaha.

So after all my whining about the weather, summer has FINALLY arrrived!! It has been sunny and WARM all week. Today is the 5th day in a row! Its so wonderful. On Monday, when I got off work I just lay out on the deck of the house for 2 hours. I played soccer last night in a tshirt and shorts and I even have a shorts tan. Its kind of funny though, its not even 70 degrees here, but it feels SO warm. I think maybe because of the angle of the sun, it feels hotter than it is because the sun is so close to us. But man, its so good to see the sun. The entire town is smiley and I'm nervous that all too soon it will be crappy out again. I feel like this is so lucky that I want to take every day of sun as if it were the last.













This was sunset from the deck of the house a few nights ago. I recommend clicking the picture to see the bigger version, this one is kind of small. (FYI sunset is around 10:45pm or so)

My parents arrived in Anchorage last night and today they are driving down to Homer. I'm glad the weather is showing off for them. I am looking forward to showing them around town.

I mentioned earlier on that I've been playing soccer with a bunch of moms (refer to a previous post in which I'm featured in the newspaper) - its just a club team, we play pickup games and do (minimal) drills. Mostly its just really low key and fun. Its a nice way to socialize and get exercise, and being part of a team that is not competitive and just really supportive is great. Especially because I'm definitely noticing personal improvement (no one likes doing things that they suck at). Yesterday was especially awesome because, like I said, the weather was BEAUTIFUL, and I made some really good plays, ANNND we got t-shirts! They are so awesome. This is our logo. They are blue shirts with red writing. I'm number 8.

Last thing of note is that on Tuesday, Ted Stevens got indicted. He's Alaska's senator, and he's been in office since 1968! That's the longest serving Republican in office. The airport in Anchorage is named after him. I don't know enough about the Alaskan political climate to really understand the significance of all this, but he is not the first Alaskan governmental official to be under scrutiny for corruption. Most (if not all) are state representatives, but I know a lot of people I've talked to (who are, given my line of work, pretty liberal) are pretty cynical about the situation. And Stevens' indictment seems to be a cause for celebration in my place of work.

Abnormal weather

So I've been complaining a lot about the weather lately. And everyone who lives here, who knows I'm trying to decide whether to live here or not, emphasizes that this summer has been very unusual.

Anchorage Daily News wrote about it...

Dipnetting

This new monitoring initiative has just started at work, and I'm basically running it. We're taking water samples from the public beach and sending them up to a lab in Anchorage to be tested for pathogens like fecal coliforms (delicious I know). This was the first week, and it was the biggest pain in the ass...hopefully all the problems that arose with the coordination of collecting and shipping the samples were only related to being the first run, because I have to do this for 7 more weeks.

Other than the beach project taking up far more time than it really should, life is good. The weather had been absolute shit all week...actually, we really haven't seen the sun since before the 4th of July. That in itself was really getting to me, but then Wednesday and Thursday, it just POURED. We were in the field Thursday and while the water doesn't really bother me (I mean, we're in streams, we're wearing clothes that can get wet) I really dislike how everything starts to smell like wet dog. We don't even have a dog.

Fortunately, Thursday evening the weather FINALLY cleared, and we saw the sun. Its absolutely amazing how much you can miss the sun. And how much a little bit of sun can totally change your mood. On our way back to Homer from the field site (we had driving 3 hours north of us for this one..), my boss and I met up with her significant other, his mom (who was visiting from "outside" aka the lower 48), and his buddies from work (he's a fish biologist for AK Fish and Game) on the Kasilof River (which is about 60 miles north of Homer). The word on the street was that the Reds were running. Aka, red salmon were swimming up river to spawn. So my boss etc wanted to go dipnetting.

Dipnetting is this form of fishing where you stick this HUGE net into the river and basically water for fish to swim into it. If you get to the river at the right time, you can catch 35 fish in one day by this method. The run wasn't quite as strong when we got there, but it was still decent. In about 3 hours, my boss came home with 9 fish. Thats a nice stash of fish they'll be able to eat for quite some time (of course, freezing most of it). Dipnetting is only legal for Alaskan residents (related the the idea of subsistence, which I will talk about in more detail in a future post) so I couldn't participate, but it was still fun to hang out on the beach and watch all the goings on. The knowledge that salmon are running in a particular river really does travel fast...people call up their friends when the runs are strong and everyone leaves work early to catch their fish. On the beach, there are rows and rows of tents and RVs. Its a pretty festive sight, actually.

Anyways, long story short, a yucky wet field day turned into a pretty nice evening. The sky was clear, you could see all the snowy mountains across the inlet, the seine boats were driving in for the evening and the sun was setting on the water.

And the adventures continue

After my lamentations about lacking a camera during my recent moose encounter, serendipty brought to me an even closer moose! And now, the moose featured in today's entry IS one I myself took a picture of. This young lady (yes, she was clearly female, and also certainly not full grown) was grazing right outside my office window. She was about 25 feet away, and only a large pane of glass separated us, which gave me the odd sensation of being at the zoo. She's pretty cute, I think.

And speaking of offices, this wouldn't have happened if not for something crazier that happened a couple of weeks ago, which is now pertinant to my life and future.

I've been working here for 4 and a half weeks now. On the Monday of my 3rd week (so I was two weeks deep into my internship), my main boss and I got back to the office late after being in the field all day. The director of the organization sits us down and tells us that the other woman I've been working with resigned. First of all, that puts us all in a bit of a tight spot this summer, because its the field season and all 3 of us were going out. Now there are just two of us. But more importantly, they offered me her job. (And the image that should come to mind is me, wide-eyed, speachless, and mentally screaming "hooooly crap"). I was planning on being here for 12 weeks. Not forever. Alaska is very far away from all my friends and family. However, I have certainly enjoyed this job quite a bit, possibly more than any other internship I've had. So that certainly was a lot to think about. After lots of thought-processing and discussion with the staff, they've agreed to hire me temporily to fill the position. This gives me more time to get comfortable with the job, get to know Homer better, and bails them out a bit from lacking a key staff position during a busy time of year. So, long story short, I'm now here until around Thanksgiving. Oh, this was pertinent to the moose becuase I just moved into a bigger office with a bigger window and thats where the moose was (woohoo, moving up in the world!).

In other news, I was in the local newspaper the other day. Apparently I'm a soccer mom now (but really, I just attempt to play with them given that my soccer experience amounts to middle school PE classes) - I'm in the picture, in the blue shorts. In the print version, the picture is bigger and its easier to see me, but you guys will have to settle with the online version.