Sometimes, to understand where you’re going, you have to look back and see where you’ve been. The older I get, the more I use history to help me make better decisions for tomorrow. Today, I look at my cannery, Alaska Seafood Company; I look at Auke Bay; and I look at all that we have built in Juneau since I arrived 45 years ago. And let me tell you: most of this would not have been possible under Ballot Measure 1, the cleverly named yet misleading “Stand for Salmon” measure.
Alaska Seafood Company sits today where the old Juneau Ready Mix was. This area was a flood zone near a river — not ideal for building. Years ago, when we acquired this property, we were able to make substantial improvements that allowed us to build our operation.
Under Ballot Measure 1, you’re basically not allowed to change anything — water or land — that could cause harm to areas that could be fish habitat. That makes it pretty clear to me that had Ballot Measure 1 been in place years ago, Alaska Seafood Company would not call 5731 Concrete Way home.
But besides my small business, there is a lot of amazing infrastructure and commerce that wouldn’t be in place today under the fish habitat measure: Fred Meyer, Costco, the Egan drive over the wetlands, the airport expansion, the police station, many of our fire stations and the ferry parking lot, just to name a few.
What I’m trying to get across here is that Ballot Measure 1 is not about environmental protections. To make proposals that can enrich the environment has validity. This proposal doesn’t do that. Instead of making thoughtful improvements to existing fish habitat protections, this measure starts from ground zero and implements enough regulations to send Alaska back to the Stone Age. The people who wrote this clearly don’t know anything about the protections we already have in place.
Frankly, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has been doing a pretty good job with habitat management. Just because our policies are old, doesn’t make them bad. How about the house you live in? I bet it has gotten old too. Look at all the beautiful historical homes in Juneau. We don’t tear them down. We upgrade them over time. And that’s what we’ve been doing since statehood with our fish management policies.
I know that’s a hard pill to swallow as we look to the low king returns this year. Yes, there are a lot of closures, and that’s part of the management system. We can’t control what happens out in the ocean, but we do what we can here in state waters and land. Everybody is taking a hit on this thing equally and it stinks. But if we let an arbitrary group of Outsiders come in, who know little about the way we manage our fish and game, we stand to lose much more.
Many fish processors go through extensive permitting with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game so that they can discharge guts and gills into the bay. Not a big deal. The crabs like that. So it’s no surprise that earlier this year, Pacific Seafood Processors Association stated their opposition to the measure. Yet the proponents of Ballot Measure 1 argue that this is a good decision for our fishing industry. If this measure was actually designed to increase our fish returns, don’t you think the processors would be for it?
If there were an easy solution we could do here, on land, we would have already done it. Ballot Measure 1 isn’t presenting any ideas that are going to return salmon to the rivers. Ballot Measure 1 is just a bad idea, written by people trying to oversimplify a very complicated issue.
All you have to do is look back at the past 60-plus years to see how a future with Ballot Measure 1 isn’t possible. This isn’t a left or a right argument. It’s not a developers’ argument. This is just a decision we have to make for our communities.
For my community, here in Juneau, I know the right decision. I’m voting ‘No’ on Ballot Measure 1.
• Dick Hand lives in Juneau and is the owner of Alaska Seafood Company. My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire.
