Jordan Creek flows through a heavily urbanized part of Alaska’s capital city (Juneau, Alaska) and is listed as an impaired water body by the state of Alaska. Official impairments include excess sediment and debris inputs and no or low levels of dissolved oxygen in streambed gravels where salmon eggs incubate and aquatic insects live. Jordan Creek and the surrounding watershed form an important system for supporting anadromous fish populations due to the availability of spawning and rearing habitat and have historically supported populations of wild coho (Oncorhynchus kisutch), chum (Oncorhynchus keta), sockeye (Oncorhynchus nerka) and pink (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) salmon, Dolly Varden (Salvelinus malma), steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss), and coastal cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki clarki). In 2019 member groups of the Southeast Alaska Fish Habitat Partnership (SEAKFHP), led by the Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition, Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and Alaska Department of Fish and Game, teamed up to strategically address urban stormwater pollution and support long-term efforts to address water quality impairments with a focus to fully restore the health of Jordan Creek and make it the first salmon stream removed from the state’s impaired waterbodies list. Projects underway in Jordan Creek include water quality treatments, invasive species and riparian management and direct outreach to local businesses and communities to engage the community in long-term stewardship for the creek and surrounding watershed.
The story of Jordan Creek (in Juneau, Alaska) is a tale of a salmon stream dramatically transformed by both nature and humans.
As one of the greatest forces of nature, glaciers have profoundly impacted Juneau’s landscape for millennia. During the Little Ice Age, Juneau’s Mendenhall Glacier advanced down its valley discharging huge volumes of meltwater and sediment from its terminus. At the peak of this advance, a broad network of braided outwash channels meandered along the east side of the valley, from the glacier’s face to the nearby ocean. These channels roiled with frigid, sediment-laden waters virtually inhospitable to salmon and other fish.
The glacier’s advance reversed around the year 1750. With this retreat, outwash channels combined forming what is today called the Mendenhall River on the valley’s west side. As their connections to the retreating glacier diminished, the abandoned east-side channels transformed into small, clearwater salmon streams dependent on snowmelt and rain to sustain their flows. Tlingit people, the original inhabitants of the Áakw Táak (Mendenhall Valley), hunted, fished, and gathered foods along these streams. Their footprint in the valley was very small.
Outsiders flocked to the area during Juneau’s gold rush in the early 1900s. Hydropower facilities built near the glacier powered gold mines and dairies scattered across the Mendenhall tide flats, suppling a growing population with milk. As flat and relatively dry land, the Mendenhall Valley was developed rapidly and extensively. Small streams were channelized and dredged for gravel to build roads and neighborhoods. Eventually, nearly all land between the glacier’s terminal moraine and the ocean was developed for housing, businesses, and an airport. Although more than 10,000 people live in the valley, much of Jordan Creek was spared. Most of the watershed sits in a narrow undeveloped strip of land at the base of Thunder Mountain. This is where Jordan Creek begins.
Today, from its headwaters to its mouth, Jordan Creek flows through two very different worlds divided by Egan Drive, Juneau’s major thoroughfare. Upstream of Egan Drive, the natural world dominates. Most of the watershed is covered with forest, shrublands, and wetlands. Neighborhoods encroach in only a few places. On the steep face of Thunder Mountain, numerous headwater streams cascade to the valley floor converging to form the main stem of Jordan Creek. Salmon, trout, and char live in the stream and beaver, snowshoe hare and wolves share the forest with hikers seeking solitude along the Under Thunder Trail.
At Egan Drive Jordan Creek abruptly enters an urban world. Meadows and wetlands have been replaced with roads, parking lots, and buildings - all necessary parts of a thriving community, but with consequences for the health of the stream and its salmon. Streamside vegetation is missing or confined to a narrow strip next to the channel, which has been straightened and relocated in places. Snow and gravel get plowed into the channel and stormwater carries pollutants into the stream that harm aquatic insects and fish. Litter is common and urban noise fills the air. To reach the stream from the ocean, returning salmon swim through 1,000 feet of culvert under the airport.
Not surprising, Jordan Creek is listed as an impaired water body by the state of Alaska. Official impairments include excess sediment and debris inputs and no or low levels of dissolved oxygen in streambed gravels where salmon eggs incubate and aquatic insects live. Polluted runoff from urban surfaces enters the stream at 15 outfalls delivering sediment and other contaminants to the stream. This stormwater contains petroleum hydrocarbons; fecal coliform bacteria; heavy metals like zinc, copper, and lead; and other pollutants harmful to fish and other aquatic life.
For 30 years, agencies and organizations have documented the creek’s baseline conditions and developed several watershed recovery and management plans. Stream banks have been revegetated, riparian areas protected with fencing, invasive plants eradicated, and stormwater treated. The individual and cumulative impacts of these projects on watershed health has been small. Fully restoring the health of Jordan Creek will come from a focused, comprehensive, and community-driven effort to address the highest priority and impactful projects.
Led by the Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition (SAWC), a coalition of diverse partners is now working to showcase how watershed-based approaches can restore Jordan Creek. This coalition intends to make Jordan Creek the first salmon stream removed from the state’s impaired waterbodies list.
In 2019, member groups of the Southeast Alaska Fish Habitat Partnership (SEAKFHP), including the Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition, Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and Alaska Department of Fish and Game, teamed up to address urban stormwater pollution and support efforts to address water qualify impairments, including instituting protection measures for Jordan Creek. This work was funded through the Alaska’s Clean Water Actions (ACWA) program, a program established by the Governor’s Office and Alaska’s resource agencies to prioritize waterbodies for stewardship actions and to better coordinate resources and agency efforts to protect and restore these waterbodies. With funding from the ACWA program, SAWC completed a watershed action plan for Lower Jordan Creek in the spring of 2021. The plan identifies sources of pollutants and other stream impairments and recommends site specific actions to address stormwater pollution and riparian health.
With a new ACWA grant received in 2021, SAWC is implementing four green stormwater infrastructure projects recommended in the action plan. The projects, which are located on private and public land, will restore riparian areas and treat stormwater runoff to help reduce flooding and prevent pollutants from reaching the stream. In addition to the environment benefits of these projects, these actions have spawned a new collaborative working relationship between a major landowner (City and Borough of Juneau), a major land manager (Alaska Dept. of Transportation and Public Facilities) a major funder of watershed stewardship actions (Alaska Dept. of Environmental Conservation), SEAKFHP members, and private landowners. This partnership will be leveraged in the future to help make watershed restoration actions a proactive part of infrastructure planning and design.
In addition to the stormwater pollution projects, on-the-ground improvements are improving the habitat for fish. A recently completed assessment of riparian conditions in lower Jordan Creek, conducted by the Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition and US Fish and Wildlife Service revealed impacts to riparian vegetation from snow storage, land development, and the removal of vegetation at several locations. These impairments can alter the vegetation’s ability to filter out pollutants and provide nutrients and habitat for fish along the stream. A partnership with Super 8 Motel and Jordan Creek Center will restore and protected riparian on private property along Jordan Creek. Invasive species treatments are eradicating reed canary grass, European mountain ash and European bird cherry from important riparian habitat along the stream, and a joint effort between the Juneau International Airport, St Vincent DePaul’s Society and Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition is cleaning up and stewarding a greenbelt important for fish and wildlife.
Human Interest/Community Benefit:
Jordan Creek flows through a highly urbanized part of Alaska’s Capitol, and improving water quality, riparian areas, and fish habitat in Jordan Creek will provide many benefits to local residents and visitors. Further, community engagement and education are key to successful restoration at Jordan Creek. Partners are working together to foster land stewardship and connect youth and underserved community members to nature. For example, the Lower Jordan Creek Greenbelt is designated as a natural area park, but illegal camping, trash dumping, vandalism, and illicit activity had degraded the Greenbelt, damaged habitat, and discouraged legitimate public use of the area. The Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition teamed up with the Juneau International Airport and the residents of a neighboring St Vincent de Paul Society housing unit to improve recreation infrastructure and opportunities through a new trail system, increase garbage cleanup and safety patrols, provide nature-based outdoor education opportunities for youth through regular school programs at the Greenbelt, and restore fish and wildlife habitat by planting native species.
Community members have pitched in through trash cleanups. Scout Troops, Trout Unlimited members, and other community volunteers have planted native plants along the riparian area of Jordan Creek.
The upper Jordan Creek watershed is a popular recreation area. Residents hike, bike, ski and view salmon along the 1.3-mile long Under Thunder Trail, which parallels Jordan Creek. Professional naturalists and teachers from Glacier Valley Elementary School use the upper watershed as an outdoor classroom to study aquatic insects, salmon life history, wildlife ecology, and hydrology. In the lower urban reaches of the stream, people working in streamside offices and businesses and hotels guests enjoy salmon viewing and greenspace in the narrow riparian corridor.
Numerous wildlife species, including many that depend on healthy salmon runs, live in the Jordan Creek watershed. Some of the resident mammals include beaver, river otter, black-tailed deer, snowshoe hair, porcupine, and even wolves. Beaver ponds provide important rearing habitat for juvenile coho salmon and other fish species. Jordan Creek is an important system for supporting anadromous fish populations due to its availability of spawning and rearing habitat and has historically supported populations of wild coho (Oncorhynchus kisutch), chum (Oncorhynchus keta), sockeye (Oncorhynchus nerka) and pink (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) salmon, Dolly Varden (Salvelinus malma), steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss), and coastal cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki clarki).
Project Timeline:
August 2021-
-Complete Constructed Wetland / Stormwater Treatment Area at Jordan Creek Greenbelt.
September-October 2021
-Engaging stakeholders and landowners in stewardship
March 2022:
-Construction of Nugget Mall Stormwater BMP
-Construction of Stormwater BMPs on Crest St.
June 2022:
-Trout Street Ditch Storm Water BMP Constructed
-Rating curve for Jordan Creek gage site
-Stream Discharge Measurements and Water Quality and Sediment Sampling.
July-August 2022: Riparian restoration at Jordan Creek Center.
September 2023: invasive plant control
Ongoing
-Engagement of landowners and stakeholders
-Implementation of Stormwater Pollution projects identified in the Lower Jordan Creek Action Plan.
“Economic impact models have been developed to track the expenditures made in local communities and estimate the local economic activity generated as a result of expenditures made from restoration projects. Model results specific to the efforts to improve water quality and habitat conditions within Jordan Creek during 2019 and 2020, show an investment of $168,000 (not including other in-kind project support) supports 3.3 jobs in Juneau and generates roughly $332,185 in total sales, $198,000 in value added and $162,283 in incomes for this local community.”
Project Partners:
Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition
Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation
Alaska Department of Fish and Game
Super 8 Motel
Discovery Southeast
Juneau International Airport
Tongass Chapter Trout Unlimited
Society of Saint Vincent De Paul
Cub Scouts
Local landowners
City and Borough of Juneau