A 50-foot buffer zone prohibiting development on the banks of Kenai Peninsula’s bodies of water will remain the way it has been for the last two years.
An ordinance to change that anadromous streams buffer zone to just the Kenai and Kasilof River Watershed Districts failed by a five to four vote on Tuesday night.
Many in opposition of the ordinance said the borough needed to increase the buffer zone.
“The best return on investment is conservation and protection… 350 runs of salmon in the Pacific northwest are extinct in most of our lifetimes, we know a lot of that is due to habitat degradation.”
Those wanting changes to the buffer zones stated it was impacting their businesses and targeting the wrong individuals.
“There used to be five or six welding shops that did projects on the Kenai, now we’re down to me, I’m the only one doing them for the last several years because nobody wants to deal with this regulation hoopla that you guys have set up on this… Nobody in this room wants to destroy the habitat, the water, or the salmon. So why don’t you go after the people who are destroying it.”
One other point raised was that the 50-foot buffer zone is not considered public property, which assembly member Kelly Wolf streamlined.
Asm. Wolf: “The 50-foot set back that was created by the Kenai Peninsula Borough is not your right to infringe on somebody else’s private property. It doesn’t give you freedom, as we hear tonight, to go defecate on somebody’s private property, or fish from that private property, or leave trash behind. Respect is something we all should have for each other. And for a business that is operating and dropping off clients in front of other people’s homes, that’s shameful.”
Assembly member Kelly Cooper said there are variances available through the borough’s Don Gilman River Center for property owners who need them but throwing out the entire conservation efforts was not the way to improve a good program.
Dale Bagley, Wayne Ogle, Stan Welles, and Wolf were the assembly members who voted in favor of limiting the 50-foot buffer zone to the the Kenai and Kasilof River Watershed Districts.