Waterkeeper program proposed for Prince William Sound

Steve Sutherlin

A Waterkeeper program is needed for Prince William Sound, musician and former fisherman David Grimes told the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council at its quarterly board meeting in Anchorage Dec. 7.

Grimes is working at organizing a Prince William Sound Keeper, which he says would be a clearinghouse for scouting reports from fishermen, villagers and others regarding the health of the sound’s ecosystem.

“Prince William Sound is a global treasure, not just for the people who live here,” Grimes said. “How the richest nation on the earth treats its richest places says a lot about the future of the earth.”

The Waterkeeper Alliance is the umbrella organization for 70 Keeper programs located throughout North and Central America, including Cook Inlet, the organization said. The Keeper concept started on New York’s Hudson River where a coalition of commercial and recreational fishermen mobilized in 1966 to reclaim the Hudson from its polluters. Grimes said the program was modeled after the riverkeepers of the British Isles who looked after private trout and salmon streams. Keeper programs employ a variety of strategies to enforce environmental laws including conducting water quality monitoring, participating in coastal planning, attending board meetings, educating the public and devising solutions to water quality problems, and if necessary pursuing litigation as a final step to enforcement.

The Keeper program, he said, has a broad mission that deals with everything that goes on in the watershed, even events like the trans-Alaska pipeline reauthorization, which affects almost all watersheds in Alaska, Grimes said. A PWS Keeper would monitor the rockfish population for over fishing, the herring population, sea lions, whales, seals, and other animals. The Keeper would also document “ongoing problems” from the 1989 oil spill, he said.

Editor’s note: The “What’s New” section of the Cook Inlet Keeper’s Web page (http://www.inletkeeper.org/) contains reviews on various oil and gas projects.

Cook Inlet Keeper, which recently partnered with the Alaska Center for the Environment on Environmental Defense Fund’s ActionNetwork, is headed by attorney Bob Shavelson.