A representative from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and scientists from Skagway’s tribe met with Skagway residents to explain their beach monitoring program. It screens for unhealthy levels of fecal contamination that could pose a risk to beachgoers.
Reuben Cash is the environmental coordinator for Skagway Traditional Council. He studies air quality, helps control invasive plants and now monitors sea water.
On April 2, Cash gave the public what’s becoming his yearly poop presentation. He told the audience that in 2023, the water at Skagway beaches was safe for recreation.
Cash discussed ways to keep Skagway’s beach water within healthy parameters. He says properly disposing of fish will keep defecating birds away.
You catch a fish, you gut it,” Reuben said. “You know, put it somewhere a little bit more responsible and chop your waste into teeny tiny pieces and throw it into fast flowing, out flowing water so that it’s not staying on the beach where the gulls are gonna get it. It can still go out and marine mammals can get to it. But we’re not going to be having that congregation of gulls.”
Cash says people should use outhouses and dumpsters for their waste. He also stressed cleaning up after pets and responsible boat practices.
Starting in mid-May, Cash and his team will start their monitoring schedule. They’ll test five Skagway beaches each week for fecal contamination. It’s part of a program that the tribe joined last year, called BEACH. It stands for Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health Act Program. The federal program is administered through Alaska’s Department of Environmental Conservation.
The purpose of BEACH is to monitor water quality for recreational purposes. Eric Dye is an environmental specialist with the Skagway Traditional Council. At the public presentation, he outlined the potential consequences of unsafe water.
“And the EPA has determined that bacteria is responsible for much of the coastal water quality impairments we’ve seen nationwide,” Dye said. “Ailments caused by these pathogens from fecal contamination can include gastrointestinal or respiratory illnesses, skin rashes, eye, ear and wound infections.”
Dye said potential pollutants include Skagway’s wastewater facility which releases treated effluent approximately 410 feet from shore. Other sources are wastewater discharge from permitted cruise ships, stormwater outfalls across town, faulty septic systems and wild and domestic animals.
Through the BEACH program, water samples are taken from Nahku Bay, Smuggler’s Cove, Yakutania Point West, Small Boat Harbor, and Airport Beach. If the amount of harmful bacteria exceeds state standards, the public will be notified via social media, signage and press releases. All test results are also promptly posted to Skagway’s BEACH page.
Samples must be handled carefully with sterile equipment. Once a sample is taken, the tribe’s team has six hours to get it to Juneau for testing. Program Assistant Colton Belisle said last year, they had several challenges sampling the ocean.
“Namely, the weather and our time constraints and getting samples dropped off, and kind of ensuring that everything get to Juneau in that six hour window,” Belisle said. “And one of our biggest challenges was probably the Airport Beach site just as a site. So, the least surprising challenge we dealt with here in the Windy Valley was wind. Surprisingly though, this only really proved to be a huge issue the first couple of weeks. The first couple of weeks, it was really bad and made it a huge pain to try to deal with paperwork in the field and trying to get stickers on stuff and back into bags so it doesn’t blow away. And the other challenge it provided was the waves. It’s hard to walk, it’s hard to find footing, it’s hard to kind of keep samples clean and kind of uncontaminated. And just kind of kept bringing muck up into where we were trying to keep clean.”
Tuesday’s BEACH presentation can be found at Skagway Traditional Council’s YouTube page, along with Salmon in the Classroom and other science content.
