The Kenai City Council unanimously approved amending grant funds for the amount allotted for sampling at the mouth of the Kenai River, which is required to build an adequate database for future modeling efforts and will be provided through a cooperative agreement with the Kenai Watershed Forum.
Ordinance No. 3143-2020 was drafted to add an additional $34,216 to the existing sampling grant. Maggie Harings, environmental scientist with the Kenai Watershed Forum, announced that the amount had changed slightly: “I was informed literally during this meeting that the new amendment total would be $34,254, which brings the overall grant total – the new total for the entire grant – to $121,573.”
The council agreed to amend the ordinance to reflect this new amount. After being amended, the ordinance passed unanimously.
This will mark the 8th year of bacteria monitoring at Kenai North and Kenai South beaches. Water quality samples will be collected weekly at the two beach sites.
The testing is done in order to evaluate background levels of bacteria before, during and after the fishery season to determine progress towards meeting water quality standards. Sampling along the Kenai River coastal beaches has indicated that bacteria levels frequently exceed acceptable levels. Testing indicates that the predominant source of bacteria is gulls.
The majority of exceedances are at beach sites downstream of a gull rookery, while a small number of exceedances occur near the gull rookery sites. Department of Environmental Conservation regulations and policies state that water quality standards in a water body may only be exceeded as a result of human actions, therefore DEC does not list a water body as “impaired” for natural conditions.