At the February 19th Kenai City Council meeting, Kenai Watershed Forum’s Executive Director Robert Ruffner voiced concerns about the possible overnight closures.
Ruffner: “If the personal use fishery down at the mouth of the river is going 24 hours a day and there’s a time period where the city or somebody else decides to restrict access to the water itself one of the potential things that might happen is that folks would migrate away from the traditional fishing areas on the sand and walk across the wetland vegetation to gain access to the river upstream.”
As we previously reported, the City of Kenai is planning to close beaches nightly during certain hours in order to clean them.
Ruffner asked the Council to consider the unintended consequences of possibly closing sections of the beach. He said that in similar incidences where people reroute onto that sensitive sort of vegetation the compaction is hard to reverse.
Ruffner: “What we’ve discovered in trying to restore some of those areas is that one: it’s very expensive. And two: it takes 10 – 15 years to get the natural vegetation to come back in those areas when the damage is sufficient enough.”
The council will meet March 4 for a work session on the beach closures and other concerns.