SUTTON — State road crews are laying out massive sandbags on the bank of the Matanuska River after erosion has brought the waters dangerously close to the Glenn Highway.

Jack Fullerton, chief of Maintenance and Operations for the Central Region of the state’s Department of Transportation said the road has always been somewhat close to the river. At Mile 63.5 — the spot where they’re laying sandbags — it was probably 12 or 15 feet away.

That changed this week.

TODD DISHER/Frontiersman It took heavy equipment to place these large sand bags Friday morning along the bank of the Matanuska River near Mile 63.5 of the Glenn Highway.

“We had some kind of massive erosion there, probably due to the higher water coming down from the snowmelt,” Fullerton said. “Now we’re only about a foot or so back behind the guardrail.”

He said the spot — which he pegged as just north of Sutton — has been one that the department has kept a wary eye on. Implementing some kind of permanent solution to the problem has been on their improvement lists for years but never received funding.

But the erosion seems to have forced the issue.

Fullerton said the sandbags, being laid down in large so-called super-sacks are a temporary fix. The state also has somebody watching the river overnight in case the road gets washed out.

“If we have to close down a lane or something, we want to have a person there,” Fullerton said.

A permanent solution, likely involving large “armor rocks” is in the works. Fullerton said he hopes to have a proposal together in the next seven to 10 days. He said the rocks will probably push the water back to where it was before this most recent spate of erosion began.

The problem isn’t one that can be solved by simply moving the road.

“Basically you’ve got the river there, the road and then a cliff of a mountain,” Fullerton said.

And this isn’t the first time the river has threatened the highway. Fullerton said that years ago DOT completed a series of erosion control measures all along the river.

“That’s been taken out by the erosion of the water in the area as well,” he said.

The Matanuska River has something of a reputation for wreaking erosion-related havoc in the Sutton and Butte areas. This summer, the borough has been conducting public meetings as it attempts to put together a management plan for the river.

“We have been using a Band-Aid approach thus far to address erosion issues,” Borough Environmental Planner Frankie Barker said in a borough press release from early in the summer. “The river is not going to change its behavior, so it is time for us to look at better ways we can learn to live next to it.”

Out in Sutton, residents tend to keep a wary eye on the river, watching as it erodes its way into their yards.

“There’s quite a few people down there that have lost a lot of property,” said Tasha Hobbs, a clerk at the Sutton General Store. She said she counts her parents among those who’ve lost out to the river. “The state right-of-way (on the river bank) keeps getting closer and closer to their house,” she said.

Residents have been talking about the most recent erosion. Local residents depend on the highway to get to jobs and shopping in the state’s more populated regions. A washout could leave residents stranded on the other side.

“What would they have to do, get in boats, cross the river and then go to town?” Hobbs said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.