The changing landscape of rivers in the Upper Valley is causing concern for business owners and residents in Talkeetna. One issue is the filling of the Talkeetna Boat Launch with silt. That issue, and the planned solution came up at Monday’s Talkeetna Community Council meeting. KTNA’s Phillip Manning was there and has this report:
Upper Valley residents sometimes pride themselves on the area’s “wild” rivers. The Talkeetna, Chulitna, and Susitna are not dammed at any point, and allowed to flow in their channels freely. Over time, those channels can shift. At Monday’s Talkeetna Community Council board of directors meeting, Talkeetna Boat Launch operator Aaron Benjamin told the Council about the problem he has seen growing in recent years.
“Right now, the Talkeetna river has been moving to the far side, as everybody knows, and the channel that the launch is in is getting less and less water every year.”
Benjamin says less flow in the boat launch area means more silt accumulation. He says there really isn’t enough water to float a boat there at the moment. In addition, Aaron Benjamin says, this year, the main channel has not broken up, meaning that the water feeding the Talkeetna to the boat launch is coming from elsewhere.
“All the water that’s going through the launch right now is not coming from the river, it’s coming from the sewage lagoon. The entire thing is sewage almost all the way to the railroad trestle. I’ve walked the whole thing; the whole channel—the whole bottom—is just full of algae growth almost past the boat launch, now.”
The water that comes out of the sewer lagoon has been treated, although there have been multiple occasions where the water has tested out of compliance for fecal coliform and other contaminants. As a measure to help water flow past the boat launch again, Aaron Benjamin plans to divert incoming water where the channel has shifted. He believes that would help wash out the silt accumulation, and would dilute the lagoon water, as is intended.
Benjamin planned to begin the redirection last fall, but ran into a new regulation that requires river modeling. In Talkeetna, floods are a major concern, and any redirection of water could pose a risk. Talkeetna Community Council Chair Whitney Wolff says that the Mat-Su Borough, which has been part of the process, wanted to vet its own concerns about the potential for changes in the floodplain.
“They’re concerned about East Talkeetna. They’re concerned about the airport. They’re concerned about the sewer, so they need to be careful introducing water back in there.”
Aaron Benjamin says he has been working with the borough and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to obtain the necessary permits to divert some of the Talkeetna’s flow.
Whitney Wolff says that the issue has forced some local business out of the boat launch area and onto the Talkeetna River revetment.
“Hopefully, we all could get together and see what we can do to make this happen, because we’ve had Mahay’s and other boaters operating off the dike.”
Benjamin says he is hopeful that the diversion will be successful, but that it is not likely a permanent solution to the shifting river channel, and the next big flood could change the situation again.
“I’m going to do what I can possibly do to alleviate some of the problems…but the entire river is moving away, and I don’t know how—even if we put a Band-Aid on it this year—I don’t know how long that’s going to last.”
The required river modeling is expected within a week, and Aaron Benjamin says work can begin shortly thereafter.
