The City of Kenai Spruce Bark Beetle Slash Dump Site is now open at mile 13 of the Kenai Spur Highway, just past the Kenai Soccer Fields on the way towards Nikiski. The site will be open Thursdays through Sundays from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. from June 2nd through October 2nd until the site reaches 1 1/2-acre max capacity.
City Manager Paul Ostrander tells KSRM:
“It’s open for both Kenai residents and nonresidents. It will not be open for commercial operators, but it will give folks a more convenient spot that they can dispose of their slash to remove it off their site rather than having it all the way to the Central Peninsula Landfill.”
Ostrander was asked if it matters where you dispose of your Spruce Bark Beetle Slash:
“Either option is fine. The (Central Peninsula) landfill is going to manage the slash the same way that we’re going to manage it at the disposal site. We’re just going to consolidate it throughout the summer. Once we do close it, it will ultimately be burned in late fall/early winter of this year.”
In discussing Spruce Bark Beetle mitigation, Ostrander says:
“Both our streets crew and our parks and recreation crew are going to continue to mitigate Spruce Bark Beetle by removing trees from city lands throughout the course of this summer. Later this fall, we hope to utilize some grants to remove some additional spruce trees and some of the areas that are identified in our community wildfire protection plan. Some of the gullies that run through town, we’re targeting some of the areas, primarily those areas that are at the urban interface, are areas that we’re going to target to try and firewise our community as much as we can. We expect to be receiving grants from both the U.S. Forest Service and the State Forestry as well.”
He said the site will be staffed by city employees to prevent disposal of anything other than slash such as appliances and regular household trash.