Advocating for Southeast Alaska Waters
Our Clean Water Program works with Southeast Alaska communities to develop solutions for protecting, managing, benefiting from, and celebrating local waterways.
Photo by: Susan Stephens
Photos by: Michele Cornelius (top) Connor Gallagher (below)
The Waters of Southeast Alaska
Southeast Alaska is as much water as it is land. Here, the interconnected web of the Inside Passage is home to lush wild salmon rivers and immense watersheds that feed the trees of the Tongass and the oceans of the world. It is a place teeming with biodiversity — from whales and wolves, to eagles, deer and bears, to salmon and human communities.
There is wisdom here too, connection, balance, and resilience — lessons learned through millennia of change and adaptation.
Yet, balance is becoming more difficult in a world of rapid change and large-scale resource extraction.
What We Do
Our Clean Water Program supports Southeast Alaskan communities in having a strong voice, developing solutions for managing, protecting, and benefiting from local waterways, and learning from local knowledge about what works for maintaining balance in this place.
What’s happening with Southeast Alaska waters?
More than 105,000 gallons of mine waste spilled at Kensington Mine
Reports of more than 105,000 gallons of mine waste spilling from a ruptured tailings pipeline at Coeur Alaska Kensington Mine in late January hit the news yesterday.While Coeur Alaska claims the spilled tailings are geochemically inert and “pose no long-term impacts...
Comment now: Lutak Dock deadline September 7
The public comment period for the Lutak Dock project in Haines has been extended to Thursday, September 7. It’s not too late to comment on this highly impactful project!In 2021, the Haines Borough was selected to receive $20 million in federal funding for the Lutak...
Comment today on the Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan
Now is the time to check out the Alaska 2024-2027 Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan, with comments due by this Sunday, September 3. This is your opportunity to let the State know what you think about Alaska’s plans for transportation spending its own money as...
Photo by: Alex Crook
Southeast Watersheds
Our work is currently focused on three transboundary watersheds: the Chilkat | Jilkaat Heeni (near Klukwan and Haines), the Stikine | Shtax’héen (near Wrangell and Petersburg), and the Unuk | Junak (near Ketchikan, Saxman, and Metlakatla).
We have selected these rivers because they are all vitally important to the survival of wild Pacific salmon and nearby communities, they are threatened by upstream mining activity, and there are still opportunities to take protective action in each case.
Click the graphics below to learn more about these three rivers and how to protect them.