Cook Inletkeeper

Solarize the Kenai pools the buying power of local home and business owners to negotiate for reduced installation rates on solar energy systems. 

Federal oil and gas leases coming up for sale in Cook Inlet are in the same area as the new North Pacific Fisheries Management Council restrictions on commercial salmon fishing. State and federal agencies could cooperate to keep the fishery open, but the State of Alaska declined to do so.

On this morning's  The Coffee Table, learn about the latest from Kenai Peninsula College’s Showcase Series: A Changing Kenai Peninsula, Climate Change’s Possible Impact on the Future of Hunting and Fishing.

Adding solar energy to a home or business is easier and cheaper when people band together. Forming a collective can bring down costs and make a project more attractive to installers. That’s the goal of Solarize Homer.

You can find information on the Homer, Kenai, Fairbanks and Anchorage Solarize projects at kenaichange.org. or at akcenter.org To sign up for Solarize Homer, contact organizer Satchel Pondolfino at satchel@inletkeeper.org

This week on The Coffee Table, learn how to sign up for Solarize, a collective purchasing program to spur solar energy development in local communities.

Solarize organizer Satchel Pondolfino, Louis Flora from The Alaska Center and Scott Waterman from Spirited Energy Ventures talk about the program and what it takes to add solar energy to your home or business.

You can find information on the Solarize Homer, Kenai and Anchorage projects at kenaichange.org. or at akcenter.org.

There is no quick and simple way to identify and implement a local response to climate change. Discussions, planning and prioritizing all take time and Kachemak Bay Campus is devoting the next eight months to that end. KBBI’s Kathleen Gustafson spoke with Zoe Cramer, one of the organizers of an action plan underway at the college on Pioneer Avenue in Homer. Cramer says the source material is "Drawdown" by Paul Hawken.

Discussions will be held every third Thursday at 6 p.m. at Kachemak Bay Campus on Pioneer Avenue in downtown Homer.

Transcript:

A dry heat wave across Southcentral Alaska has raised temperatures in Cook Inlet streams, and there’s fear the sunny weather and warm water could be bad news for salmon.

Sue Mauger has tracked non-glacier stream temperatures in Cook Inlet for years. And she says she hasn’t seen readings like these.

“We saw the highest recorded temperature we've ever measured in 15, 16 years,” she said. “That was 81.7 degrees on the Deshka River.”

That’s a north-south river between Talkeetna and Anchorage known for its premier sportfishing.

Environmental groups are protesting the state's move to renew a federal permit that allows oil and gas producers to release a variety of pollutants into Cook Inlet.

This is the first time the state has issued the permit. Environmental groups say the state should move the oil and gas industry away from the practice, and those groups are also pushing back against the state raising the volume of oily wastewater producers are allowed to discharge.
 

Cook Inletkeeper  observed the 30th  anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill by hosting a discussion on  building a sustainable and healthy future.

On this membership drive edition of Kachemak Science , Kachemak Bay Birders name the lesser sandhill crane their Bird of the Month on Bird Rhythms.
Also,  McNeil Canyon Elementary students, Hudson Loboy and Gautoma "Bubba" Schuett-Iwamura, present their data on dissolved oxygen and macroinvertebrates.  And, you'll hear part one of Sue Mauger's conversation with Kachemak Science on her recent trip to Antarctica.

Recently, Cook Inletkeeper sponsored a panel discussion to commemorate the 40th anniversary the Kachemak Bay oil and gas lease buyback. The buyback prevented oil and gas development in the Bay and protected it as a critical habitat area. 

The Randolph Yost drill-rig came to Homer from Singapore. A Homer environmental group is worried the Yost, now docked in the Homer port, could have brought invasive species into Alaska waters. The group is criticizing the Department of Fish and Game for not checking the rig before it docked in Kachemak Bay.