Success Story: CRWP
Organization: Copper River Watershed Project
ACF Support in FY2006: $23,000
Project: "Salmon Soil"
Ever wonder what happens to the rest of the salmon when you see fillets neatly packaged in cellophane or canned salmon sitting on the shelf in the grocery store? What becomes of all the heads, skins, guts and bones? When you think of the millions of salmon and halibut commercially processed in Alaska each summer, the amount of refuse is staggering. Typically, this material is considered rubbish and discarded back into the ocean…until a pioneering group like the Copper River Watershed Project (CRWP) gets involved.
CRWP provides a different approach to conservation than traditional environmental groups. Working to put sustainable development into practice, its mission is to maintain the Copper River watershed’s vibrant salmon economy and protect one of the last, great, wild places on Earth. Through this mission, CRWP provides residents of the watershed with a forum to consider and implement innovative approaches for achieving balance between a diverse economy and healthy ecosystems while maintaining their quality of life and cultural heritage.
As part of their charter, CRWP must adhere to a strict set of criteria before taking on any project. Each project must feature at least one community partner; strive toward tangible, feasible results; and enhance at least one form of community capital – economic, social/cultural, natural resource – without diminishing the others. Last year, through the small grant program, ACF awarded $1,000 to CRWP to construct an in-vessel aerobic composting vessel. This innovative project turns salmon and halibut offal from fish processors into marketable, organic soil perfect for gardening.
ACF support was used to purchase materials and labor needed to build a rotator drum vessel. This in-vessel aerobic composting system can turn fish offal into soil in less than a week, about 20 times faster than an aerated system. The vessel was constructed on site with local labor from mostly salvaged parts, including the motor that rotates the device. Recently completed, this project serves to reduce the amount of waste processors discharge into Orca Inlet and also generates an additional revenue stream for CRWP. Selling Copper River Salmon Soil has brought in $4,500 in local Cordova sales for CRWP to continue its groundbreaking work in the Copper Basin.
“We’ve been working with Cordova’s processors on ways to turn ‘trash into cash’, and it occurred to me that we could, on a smaller scale, lead by example and do it ourselves,” said Kristin Smith, reflecting on how the project got started. “This venture has introduced us to Cordova’s gardening community, and I get comments regularly about how much people’s rhododendrons love the fish nutrients in our Growing Wild salmon soil.”
The idea for the Copper River Salmon Soil project grew out of an ACF funded community roundtable in 2001 that looked to address the economic potential of waste. In addition to creating soil, CRWP has parlayed a $2,000 small grant from ACF in 2001 into $83,012 of additional funding from NOAA to explore other uses of fish processing by-products. Fish scraps can be processed into fish oil for the nutriceutical market, fish meal for animal feeds, and “digests” for fertilizer products, capturing greater value from the Prince William Sound seafood harvest. CRWP is pursuing a pilot project in partnership with a Cordova seafood processor that would produce both fish meal and fish oil. The resulting bio-diesel fuel produced from fish waste will be sold to the Cordova Electrical Cooperative and used to generate electricity from renewable resources.
To learn more about the work of CRWP, please log on to their website at www.copperriver.org.
- Story by Matt Rafferty
