Hoonah Stewardship Council members met on 09/19/2019. In attendance were : Basia Trout, Jackie Dick, Ricky Contreras, Sean Williams, Ian Johnson, Jeromy Grant, Sam Sheakley, Niccole Williams, Arianna Lapke, Faith Grant, and Phillip Sharclane.
Indoor Air Quality
Sam Sheakley updated the HSC on the results of our 2019 indoor air quality work. As a reminder, we found that homes with stoves older than 20 years had 1.5 times more PM2.5 and on average were above the EPA threshold. In 2018 we worked to improve air quality by replacing some stoves and repairing some. As Sam explained, we created a decision tree and made each of the home owners anonymous to select the houses. This left any bias out of who was selected. At the end of the presentation there were a few questions:
Phillip Sharclane asked if there was a control for this study? The Answer : in effect there was. We monitored houses that had wood stoves and those that did not. We did not expect homes without wood stoves to have increased PM2.5 from the stove itself.
Ariana asked what the EPA threshold is. The Answer : 35 μg/m3 over a 24 hour period. The machines we use measure how much your house has over a 24 hours period. You can read more about the standards on the EPA website HERE.
Basia asked why we chose to focus on indoor quality. The Answer : we used the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium healthy homes survey to determine there was an issue there. You can read more about their resources HERE
Electronic Waste
Our final E-waste backhaul included 6,500 pounds of waste. It is being shipped to SBK Industries in Tacoma to be responsibly recycled.
Food Fair
Arianna Lapke provided an summary on the Food Fair. The Food Fair was a great success! Thank you to all that came.
There were >150 people attending, 326 jars of food distributed, 3 harvesting events, a raffle and prices.
We learned this year that 1 food competition was better because it was easier to run and didn’t pull people away as long. We really appreciated having the Gaawta Kaan dancers there!
Some challenges : Getting people to come to the harvesting events was difficult, we could have done a better job of talking about the point of the event during the day, it was hard to get enough resources for the venison stew
Suggestions for next year : cook food the night before, connect with the Frybread Association of America, Use the ANB hall next year to get volunteers and space, put the judges outside so they are more involved, bring more frybread!
Faith asked why we held this event. The Answer : To celebrate community food, culture, to be connected with each other and connec to food collection, to connect youth and culture.
Coastal Program
Sean Williams provided an update on the Coastal Program.
He talked about the study design which includes looking at shoreline types. We are using ShoreZone data to determine where to dive. Once there we look at the habitat and determine if the ShoreZone product is correct.
To date they have done 7 scientific dives. They will continue to dive into the autumn, but conditions are getting cold quick!
Question – is this only around Hoonah? The Answer : Yes, we are diving on road-accessible sites around Hoonah such as False Bay, Long Island, Whitestone Harbor
Sitka Sound is coming to Hoonah City Schools to do a teaching program. This will be a great chance for our youth to learn about coastal science.
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