[env-trinity] Yurok environmental program honored

[Tom Stokely]

http://www.times-standard.com/local/ci_5685845

Yurok environmental program honored
The Times-Standard
Article Launched: 04/17/2007 04:15:16 AM PDT



KLAMATH -- The Yurok Tribe's Environmental Program will be honored this week with an award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

”The Environmental Achievement Award is a marker of the environmental program staff's recent accomplishments in ecological and cultural protection,” said Maria Tripp, the tribe's chairwoman. 

YTEP is a multifaceted program, shaped to protect and restore the tribe's natural resources and maintain a high community health standard. 

The EPA gives this award to agencies that have accomplished significant achievements in the protection of public health or the environment and in advancing the agency's strategic goals. Among the criteria is an outstanding contribution to environmental protection through a single action, or by an ongoing action over an appreciable period of time. 

The tribe's environmental program focuses on water and air quality, solid waste management, cultural resource protection and information management. 

YTEP has made large strides in its responsibilities, a tribal press release said, including the creation of the first and most extensive network of real-time water quality monitoring stations in the Klamath Basin. 

”The monitoring stations serve to inform a large group of stakeholders and the public of the effects of water management decisions made on the Klamath and Trinity Rivers,” said YTEP Director Kevin McKernan. 

The Yurok Tribal program has also developed real-time air quality monitoring stations to alert the region's residents of air quality hazards during the fire season. 

The tribe has also been the lead on successfully acquiring clean up funds from the U.S Department of Defense to assess and remediate underground storage tank contamination from an old air force base on the reservation currently occupied by the National Park Service. 

”Without the tribe's involvement, this contamination would have existed for many more decades,” McKernan said.

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