Visiting Georgetown

June 12, 2013

Twice a year, I have the pleasure of travelling out to the Kuskokwim River, to collect water quality data in the small village of Georgetown.  It's nice to have a job to do in a place like this.

It's quite a haul to get out there and back.  Loaded down with three coolers full of water quality sampling materials, two totes, a dry bag, a YSI meter, and a whole lot of bug dope (not to mention the bear spray) we hop on a plane that takes us from Anchorage to Aniak, a small "hub" on the middle Kuskokwim.  From there, we catch another flight, this time on a Cessna 207 (small by my standards) to either Red Devil or Sleetmute.  To say we land at airports there would be a very large exaggeration.  Look out the window of this 207 and you'll catch a glimpse of the type of landing strip we're talking here.

Once we're there, we seem to always have the help of some awfully nice folks out there to  get us and our gear down to the boat via 4wheeler.  We motor up to a lodge on the Kuskokwim, just down river from the mouth of the Holitna River, near Sleetmute, AK.

 The work begins the next day, when we head back down river, past the communities of Sleetmute and Red Devil once more, and arrive in Georgetown about an hour later.  Along the way, we pass barges on the river, and moose feasting on willows.  I haven't seen a bear on the Kuskokwim yet, but I keep looking.   This year, breakup was late so the water was still pretty high and muddy in the Kuskokwim and George Rivers. The village of Georgetown doesn't have many at home residents, especially year round ones, but the members of Georgetown hope to rebuild the community someday, one house at a time.  As it stands now, here is what the view of Georgetown looks like:

We pull up across the river from Georgetown to take samples from the two monitoring wells a little ways back, within a 1/2 mile from shore.

What are we testing for?  GTC has bee collecting water quality data since 2008 in order to establish baseline data for the Kuskokwim and George Rivers.  With impending development in the area, it is important to know what the quality of the water is and has been, so that if anything should change, we can help identify the cause of such changes.

Using a YSI 556 meter, we collect water quality parameters including pH, DO, conductivity, temperature, and ORP for each of the monitoring wells.  For further description on these parameters and what they can mean for a water source, please visit our website here.Next we collect water samples to send in to a laboratory in Anchorage for further testing, including total metals, total coliform, and other organic pollutants.

The George River

We do the same in the George and Kuskokwim River, measuring for the same parameters and collecting water samples for processing back in Anchorage. Both of these rivers are vital habitat for both resident and anadramous fish, including but not limited to  pike, sheefish, and salmon.

The Kuskokwim River

     We return to Sleetmute for the night, only to be ambushed by mosquitos.  Lucky for me, that meant I was up at 3 AM and able to take in this awesome view of the river. On our way back to town, we fly first to Aniak, then to Bethel and finally on to Anchorage.  The views are once again spectacular though, so I can't complain too much.

The Kuskokwim River is the longest free flowing River in the United States.  It is home to a large variety of fish, wildlife and plant species.  The people here depend on the River for their subsistence way of life.  We at GTC hope to continue to do our part to ensure the protection and sustainability of our natural resources, so that generations to come may also enjoy what we have now.

Kuskokwim is a loose transliteration of a Yupik language word. It is a compound word meaning big slow moving thing.