A new Government Peak connector trail has hit an indefinite stall

After reportedly nearing initial approval from the state’s Department of Natural Resources in late September, a trail connecting Government Peak with Hatcher Pass has hit a red tape stall as officials also decide the fate of a separate proposal.

The roughly 12-mile bike trail is meant to connect Government Peak Recreation Area (GPRA) with Skeetawk and the 16 Mile area of Hatcher Pass. It’s also slated to be part of the Alaska Long Trail project, a long term, 500-mile trail development effort aimed at connecting Seward with Fairbanks.

At issue is a trail easement request initially submitted by the MatSu Borough in 2018, which must be OKed by the state before the proposal can open for public comment, approved, surveyed, funded and at long last constructed. But a separate and largely unrelated application for a hydro-electric project that would utilize Fishhook Creek and originally filed in 2006 would share the easement area. Department of Natural Resources officials say they need to deconflict the two applications.

“Adjudication of the MSB request is currently on hold until a Final Decision is reached and it is determined if it is in the State’s interest to authorize the requested/modified lease infrastructure,” AJ Wait, a natural resource manager for DNR said in an email.

“I do not have an estimate of when this project will go out for public notice,” he said.

A statement that the approval would come through in “about a month” from DNR spokesman Dan Saddler, who has since left the agency, was a miscommunication, Wait said. Instead, the application that would permit a hydroelectric project proposed by Anchorage-based Fishhook Renewable Energy, LLC received long before the trail application must be processed first, Wait said.

Both Borough officials who originally proposed the bike trail and local trail advocates say they know about the proposed hydroelectric project, and don’t anticipate it creating any major conflicts after construction.

That the initial approval is delayed is frustrating but not surprising, given the application workload, process inefficiencies, staffing shortfalls and budget woes at DNR, said Chris Beck, principal at the Agnew Beck consulting firm in Anchorage and program coordinator for the Anchorage-based nonprofit Alaska Trails, which is working on the Long Trail project.

“The story here is that the Department of Natural Resources in general … is unable to carry out a lot of the actions that are needed,” Beck said “And why is that? It’s because they are probably understaffed, and the demands for their work are substantial and a lot of the tools and protocols they have tend to slow things down. And I think no one would ever claim that the strength of government is efficiency in any category.”