cal cg eog aerg frqqhfwlrq - georgetown tribal councilcal cg eog aerg frqqhfwlrq july, 2013 1 2...

Call Georgetown Tribal Council: 907-274-2195 or toll-free 1-888-274-2195

Summer is here, and we have been blessed with sunshine and warm weather and all of us here at GTC hope you all are able to get out and enjoy Alaska at its best. The Georgetown Council and staff members have been hard at work of late reviewing and updating our organizational documents such as our Constitution, bylaws, and policy manuals. Tribal Administrator Will Hartman and Council Vice Chairman Jonathan Samu-elson recently completed courses to be certified in financial oversight and Tribal governance, respectively. Will is also enrolled in the University of Alaska Fairbanks Tribal Management degree program. We are always looking for ways to do a better job representing and advocating for the Tribal Members of Georgetown. We would love to hear from you, if you have any ideas, questions or concerns please find the contact information located on page 2 of this newsletter and get a hold of us. You can also find us on Facebook, and if you haven’t all ready please like our page, we try to keep it updated with news and information affecting our region, photos, and videos. In this news-letter we have included information on the upcoming Annual Meeting, environ-mental issues, and updates on Council activity we hope you read through it then check us out on the web.

Happy summer and may your smoke house be full of salmon!

Connecting generations of Georgetown tribal members to the roots of their traditional community.

the georgetown

connection

July, 2013

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2 74Council Update Fish Weir Donlin Gold EIS


Some of you may recall from our last Annual Meeting the council had drafted changes to our Land Use Policies and Procedures Manual. This process begun after a Tribal Member recommended increasing our Land Committee from 3 to 5 members at the 2011 Annual Meeting. Following a review of the policies, drafting of proposed changes, and a 30 day comment period the Council passed Tribal Resolution 12-01 on November 27, 2012 approving the following pro-posed changes.

Planning and Management

The management of tribal lands and resources is to be conducted in accor-dance with a comprehensive plan and these policies and procedures. This plan and these policies and procedures are to be reviewed at least every two years, updated and kept current. A five-member Land Committee will interpret and apply these policies and procedures with the Council President executing Council-approved permits and leases, and communicating with the Municipal Land Trustee regarding State management of Georgetown’s trust lands. The Municipal Land Trustee is to be held accountable for State management of trust lands. The Council President is accountable to the Council for the management of tribal lands (refer to definitions, page 12). A comprehensive record system of all land and resource transactions is to be developed, operated and maintained.

Formation of CommitteesMembers of the Land and Community Standards Committees are appointed by the President. Each Committee shall have five members, with their chairman appointed by the President. Meetings shall be arranged at the call of the chair-man, and can be held by teleconference. Three of the five members must be present to establish a quorum. Decisions are made by majority agreement only. Minutes of the meetings are to be kept and properly filed in the Council records system with the President given an additional copy.

Our Land Committee consists of the three sitting members; Chairperson Mi-chael Fredericks, Debby Hartman, and Valerie Dudley along with new members Gary “Isa” Fredericks and David “Buddy” Kutch. The committee is already hard at work and has had two meetings thus far. The main focus of the Committee is to update procedures for permitting residential lots for Tribal Members. The hope is to insure that those individuals that are granted permits are able to complete the five year permitting phase by building a habitable dwelling as outlined in the permit stipulations. The committee has brainstormed a number of ideas that should ensure successful development while being fair to both individual Tribal Members and the Tribe as a whole. These ideas are being drafted into a new lot permitting policy which will be added to the existing Land Use Policies and Pro-cedures Manual following approval by the Council. We hope to bring you more

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5313 Arctic Bvld Ste 104Anchorage, Alaska 99518www.georgetowntc.com

T: (907) 274-2195 1-888-274-2195 toll-freeF: (907) 274-2196E: [email protected]

COUNCILChairDavid “Buddy” KutchSeat D/ Term expires:2013

Vice ChairJonathan SamuelsonSeat A/ Term expires:2013

SecretaryVanessa EvansSeat B/ Term expires:2014

MemberTraci FredericksSeat C/ Term expires:2014

MemberMichael MurphySeat E/Term expires:2015

STAFF

Tribal AdministratorWill Hartman

Environmental CoordinatorKate Schaberg

Computer SpecialistEric V. Dietrich

Council Update

Visit: www.georgetowntc.com

information at this year’s Annual Meeting. The Council recently decided to hold the Annual Meeting on August 24th at the residence of our Council Chairman Buddy Kutch, the same venue for our 2011 Annual Meeting. A big thank you goes out to Buddy for once again host-ing the Annual meeting. The meeting will coincide with the opening weekend of the Alaska State Fair, so we hope to see you at the meeting if you plan to travel into the Anchorage/Mat-Su region for the fair. The Council will be again offering an Early Bird Prize for members that return their ballots via mail prior to the meeting. We will also have a drawing for door prizes for those that attend in person.

Some other topics of importance to the Tribe, and all residents along the Kuskokwim, are the proposed Donlin Creek Mine and the status of salmon returning to our rivers. We hope you read through the articles our Environmental Coordinator Kate Schaberg has provided for this newsletter, as we feel these are some of the most important issues facing our region. She has also been posting information and links on the Tribe’s Facebook page and updating our Environmental Blog which can be found on our website, georgetowntc.com. KYUK Radio in Bethel has also been hosting call in shows on the topic of preserving the Kuskokwim salmon fishery; you can listen online at KYUK.org.

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Our EnvironmentInvestigating What Happens at the Fish WeirsThe Location – Salmon River

A tributary of the Aniak River, the Salmon River hosts one of many weir projects in the state of Alaska. Like the George River Weir, the Salmon River Weir is a cooperative project between KNA and ADF&G/Commercial Fisheries.

Pictured here, just upstream of the project site, the Salmon River is home to various fish and wildlife species. Calling this river home are all five spe-cies of salmon, rainbow trout, arctic char, dolly varden, grayling, and even pike and sheefish on the lower stretches.

Last summer, I had the opportunity to help install the Salmon River weir, and talk with some of the people that worked with two of the cooperating agencies on these projects: Kuskokwim Native Association (KNA) and Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G), this article is a summary of those experiences.

The project – Installing the Weir

Pictured here: aluminum picket panels lay waiting on the bank of the Salmon River, prior to installation.

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continued on page 6

The tripods are moved into place from the bank to their proper position, essentially creating a fence across the river, where the tripods act as fence posts (pictured on left, ADF&G Biologist Kevin Schaberg).

Sandbags are used to weight down the tripods and prevent any movement of the weir. Pictured on right, KNA Intern Dakota Phillips from Aniak, helps with the weir installation.

These posts are used to properly align the tri-pods, positioning them at the correct distance and angle from one another.

Visitors to the weir include moose, bear, and sometimes even camp dogs!

The first portion of the river has metal tripods that were already in place upon arrival. The second half consists of the wooden tripods, which have to be moved into position.

The metal tripods have wooden planks connecting them, making it easier to traverse. Here, Dakota carries a panel across to the middle of the river, where it will be placed carefully, to avoid any gaps in the weir.

continued from page 4 . Fish Weir


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Summer 2012 at the Salmon River WeirThe fish weir was installed at the Salmon River tributary of the Aniak River to monitor spawning salmon. To monitor multiple species that migrate at the same time, the fish are counted as they pass through this fence like barrier.

There are many types of fish weir designs, most of which fit into two categories: fixed and floating. Fixed weirs are simple and durable, but more vulnerable to flood damage. Floating weirs are designed to sink during floods and allow debris to pass over them, but they are much more complex to install.

The Salmon River weir is a fixed design. As we all know, there was a lot of high water this summer. Rob Stewart, ADF&G Techni-cian, speaks a little bit about what happened as a result of the flooding they experienced at the weir. He explains that the weir structure can only take so much flow before it will fail, so it is important to pull the weir before a flood gets too high. The stan-dard procedure is to remove the panels to relieve stress on the tripods and allow debris to pass.

According to Rob, “Things were going well this season at Salmon River until the morning of July 9th when, after several days of heavy rain the water began rising rapidly. As we were removing the panels several large trees landed on the weir preventing us from getting all the panels out. Some of the tripods were made of steel pipe while others were made of wooden beams. If a wooden tripod gets knocked out, it can wind up stuck in a logjam many miles below the weir. To prevent this from happening, we ran a rope through all the wooden tripods and tied it off to shore. Shortly afterward another tree collided and knocked all of the wooden tripods out. Luckily the rope pulled them to shore in an orderly line. The flood subsided slowly and we weren’t able to reinstall until the 17th. The water stayed high for the remainder of July, and panels had to be pulled once again from the 22nd to the 26th. Such events create holes in our data that require us to estimate missed passage using counts from before and after these floods.”

A Day in the Life of a Summer Intern For more information on the summer intern program or the fish weirs in general, contact Fisheries Biologist LaDonn Robbins at [email protected] or Fisheries Director Dan Gillikin at [email protected].

For now, read what summer interns Dakota Phillips and Brad Gusty had to say about their experience:Dakota Phillips spent his summer as a college intern with KNA. Having just graduated from high school in Aniak, Dakota spent the summer working for KNA before going to college at UAF. He describes his summer as moving around a lot, going from the Salmon River Weir to Tatlawiksuk to George, wherever he was needed at the time. One of the things he enjoyed the most was driv-ing up the Aniak River, and would recommend the program to others because KNA is looking to bring more locals to the fisheries program, and because he loved the experiences he had.

Brad Gusty is originally from Stony River; he graduated from Aniak High School, and is also attending UAF this fall. Brad spent

After all of the panels are in place, and have a day to settle, and sand bags are placed at the bottom to prevent further move-ment.

As pictured, it takes several people to complete this sort of project. Picture above and to the right are KNA Intern Dakota Phillips of Aniak, ADF&G Technician Rob Stewart, and ADF&G Biologist Kevin Schaberg. Not pictured here, but another contributor to the project was KNA Intern Charles Grammer from Venetie.

When all is said and done, the weir is put in place to allow free movement of water. Oc-casionally, debris can get caught up on the fence, so daily maintenance and clean up is one of the many jobs of crew members located at the weir.


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his summer working at the fish wheels in Kalskag. Brad enjoyed being outdoors and doing what he really loves to do – working with fish. “Every day is a new day but there was always something different. I really like working with the crew, we all got along really well.” He learned about fish abundance, population, escapement goals and why the weirs and fish wheels are in place. Part of his daily routine was to tag sockeye salmon, count fish species caught at the fish wheels, improve camp set up and appearance, in addition to learning about safety and boat/motor handling skills. Brad would also recommend the program to others: “Any-body looking for a future in fisheries or marine biology would love this program! It’s a great way to get exposed to living in a remote field camp, living a great Alaskan adventure, and understanding the importance of fish to our great state and its people.”

Last year, KNA had four summer interns working for them. KNA Fisheries Biologist LaDonn Robbins says that KNA usually tries to get the announcements out at the end of March/beginning of April. We post it on the website (www.knafish.org) and our facebook page (www.facebook.com/KNAfisheries). For the college interns, we also try to make sure we get them posted on the college websites, and for the high school interns we send announcements out to the Kuspuk School District teachers.


Donlin Gold: Navigating the EIS Process…One Step at a Time

It’s no news that Donlin Gold, LLC is proposing the development of an open pit, hardrock gold mine located approximately 15 miles northwest of Georgetown. Because it’s so close to home, it is important for the members of Georgetown to stay informed and be part of the public review process, so that we can be sure any potential impacts are minimized or avoided completely. The way to do this is to remain involved in the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process.

Where are we in this process now? The first part of this EIS process was the scoping. The scoping process completed by the Army Corps of Engineer came to an end on April 29, 2013. During the scoping process, a newsletter was sent out, government to government consultation was conducted with several tribes, including Georgetown, and 14 public meetings were held, for which a summary of the issues identified can be found here: http://donlingoldeis.com/GetInvolved.aspx. A complete scoping report will soon be posted on this website as well, which will go into greater detail of the comments made during the first part of the EIS process.

To give you a general idea of some of the issues raised: the barge traffic (yearly would be 122 round trips, using 40 million gal-lons of fuel) and its impact on bank erosion, spawning grounds, and their displacement of subsistence and commercial fisher-ies; Mercury and its effects on fish, animals and human health; Water quality and the potential introduction of contaminants from runoff, water treatment, tailings, fuel spills and the transportation of cyanide and captured mercury on the river; Distur-bance to fish and wildlife populations; Health impacts to the people and their communities along the Kuskokwim; Subsistence traditions being altered due to a rapid culture change, and a potential decrease in resources that are depended upon by the people living on the River.

All of these issues are important, and if any of them strike a nerve with you…it’s not too late to be involved! Staying informed is the #1 way to make a difference. Talk to your friends and families about these issues. Talk about what can be done, and voice your concerns. Although the official commenting period is over, the Corps always welcomes additional comments and/or con-cerns.

Contact Information for Army Corps Project Manager: Don Kuhle, Project Manager [email protected] 907-753-2780

Where are we headed? It’s a confusing journey, this EIS process, but we are now looking forward to August of 2014, when the draft EIS is expected to be issued. In the meantime, the Corps and cooperating agencies will be working to develop alterna-tives, study the environment that will be affected, and asses the consequences of alternatives as well. Once published, the Draft EIS will become available for a 90-day public review. The Corps will hold additional public meetings at this time, to offer another opportunity for public comment.

Until then, I will be sure to keep you informed every step of the way. Stay tuned in to our environmental blog, which can be found at http://gtcenvironmental.blogspot.com/.

5313 Arctic Blvd. Suite 104 Anchorage, AK 99518

Check us out on Facebook!www.facebook.com/Georgetowntribalcouncil

Did You Know...

If you see your name or know someone on the list below, please contact GTC at [email protected] or by phone at 1-888-274-2195.

Ja’ anna Corbett Linda EvansJermaine CarterAngela BenedictJaneeka CorbettArnold EvansDario Notti Jr.Jeffery VenesAngela NottiFather Michael Fredericks

Where are You?

Fun facts about summer

• People in the Southern Hemisphere have their longest day of summer in December.

• School summer vacations were invented by educator Horace Mann in 1840.

• France’s Eiffel Tower can grow by more than 6 inches in summer due to the expansion of the iron on hot days.

http://www.parkrideflyusa.com/blog/2012/06/20/20-fun-facts-about-summer/

Celebrities with summer birthdays

• Heidi Klum June 1, 1973• Natalie Portman June 9, 1981• Kanye West June 8, 1977• Tom Cruise July 3, 1962• Sylvester Stallone July 6, 1946• Sandra Bullock July 26, 1964

http://www.famousbirthdays.com

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