The Department of Natural Resources will host a public meeting Tuesday evening at Tustumena Elementary for community members to review the four draft concept site plans for the north side of the Kasilof River.
Christy Colles with the Division of Mining, Land & Water’s Southcentral Regional Land Office will be at tonight’s meeting.
Colles: “There’s going to be a brief presentation over the history of the area, kind of why we are where we are right now, and then we’re going to go into the previous site concept plan that went out in October, the comments we received and how we’ve changed the concept plan according to those comments. We have about four different plans we’d like the public to review and give us their ideas on how we can either improve and which one we see as being a better plan for the area.”
She says the presentation will start at about 6:10 pm and end somewhere around 6:45, after that members of the public can participate in the open house to review the concept plans.
The project to improve management along the mouth of the river began in 2010 after public concerns were voiced about access and sanitation issues during the Kasilof River Personal Use Fishery.
Colles: “People park everywhere, there’s no designated parking areas, there was no facilities at the time so we are basically taking areas that are already being used for parking and hardening them off and we’re going to create designated parking spots and we’re also going to have fencing to protect the dunes and guardrail to keep people off the wetlands and areas we don’t want them to park.”
The project has cost approximately $200,000 for surveys, history and archeological work, and draft designs so far.
The public meeting will be from 6:00 – 8:30 pm Tuesday, March 8, in Tustumena Elementary School in Kasilof.