Public comments received in March supported the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge’s plan to install light-penetrating metal walkways along the Kenai River near the Russian River Confluence.
Chief of the Refuge’s Visitors Services Matt Conner says the aim of the project is to preserve the banks in that area by extending a project that was paused there about ten years ago.
Conner: “Starting from the confluence down to right about where the Russian River Ferry takes passengers over, is where the project stopped in 2006. We looked at that and decided to continue that project down another few hundred feet down the river to protect that side as well, adding down some walkways.”
Public comment on the proposal closed in March and Conner says some of the most useful input came from communities like Soldotna who shared lessons they learned after putting in their own walkways.
Conner: “Some of the advice we got was that if you put the walkways [down to the water] too far apart, people will just go over the side of the rail and go down the hill and it defeats the purpose. So they really emphasized that even if we don’t have the money up front to put as many walkways down, to at least have enough leniency built into the project where we can add staircases later, which was a great suggestion and until they brought it up hadn’t really thought about. So we’re looking at that and adding that to our whole engineering design.”
The Refuge had hoped to get the walkways installed before this fishing season but since the proposal bid process has not started yet, the work will wait until after this year’s sockeye run.
The Refuge previously reported that the estimated costs for the approximately 600 feet of walkways will be around $275,000.