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<DIV class=articleTitle>Yurok environmental program honored</DIV><!--subtitle--><!--byline-->
<DIV class=articleByline>The Times-Standard</DIV><!--date-->
<DIV class=articleDate>Article Launched: 04/17/2007 04:15:16 AM
PDT</DIV><BR>
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<P>KLAMATH -- The Yurok Tribe's Environmental Program will be honored this week
with an award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
<P>”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.
<P>YTEP is a multifaceted program, shaped to protect and restore the tribe's
natural resources and maintain a high community health standard.
<P>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.
<P>The tribe's environmental program focuses on water and air quality, solid
waste management, cultural resource protection and information management.
<P>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.
<P>”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. </P>
<P>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.
<P>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.
<P>”Without the tribe's involvement, this contamination would have existed for
many more decades,” McKernan said.<BR
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