August 10, 2020 — On Wednesday, August 5, the Cordova City Council unanimously passed a resolution encouraging the state and the federal Secretary of Commerce to declare fisheries disasters for two years: the 2018 Copper River Chinook and sockeye salmon runs and the 2020 Copper River and Prince William Sound Chinook, sockeye and chum salmon runs. The resolution also urges state and federal governments to declare a “condition of economic disaster in Cordova as a result.”
The fishing town of Cordova, located in South-central Alaska between the Copper River to the east and Prince William sound to the west, is the home port for nearly 800 vessels, most of which are the first to harvest returning salmon in Alaska every spring. The town of 2,500 is now the first, of what will likely be at least one or two others, to ask for a fisheries and economic disaster declaration in 2020.