Appreciates forward thinking

I read with interest your editorial in Tuesday’s Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman headlined “When progress isn’t progress,” and in some aspects I must disagree with your words.

The Mat-Su Borough should have a ferry. It should have a bridge across the arm. It should have a railroad that runs to tidewater. It should have a viable, useable port and it should have some sustainable renewal source of power.

Current economics not withstanding, the future-viewing, dream-promoting and possibility thinking people involved in these projects are to be commended. Every enterprise worth its value takes time, money and creative thinking to come to fruition. We here in the Mat-Su area are short on both time and money, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t go forward with some or all of these projects.

Do you remember when the Colony schools were built? We did not have enough students to fill them. They were not opened for a couple years and were used for storage. People grumbled about the costs of construction and the “waste” of money. Then, as if a switch had been turned, the schools opened, were filled to overflowing and more schools were needed. If those schools had not been built we would have been in a tremendous hurt in regard to education, not to mention the added costs of their construction.

This Valley is on the verge of another (if not still the same) burgeoning growth period. I hate that fact as well as the next longtime Valley resident, but I cannot stop it.

That being the case, let’s see what we can do to keep our Valley from becoming a cesspool of knee-jerk construction and policy. Let’s look at how the projects mentioned in the second paragraph can help us rather than just hurt our pocketbooks.

Ferry

So, Anchorage doesn’t want to work with us to develop a port that we can use to ferry folks and cars across the inlet, huh? Well then, let’s just use the ferry for local scenic cruises in the inlet for ourselves and the myriad of tourists who come here each year.

Tourists from all around the world would eat it up. We are already a tourist destination; let’s capitalize on that. We could have cruises around Cook Inlet with fabulous views of the Anchorage and Valley skylines, and sail on down along the Kenai Peninsula and back up along the west side of the inlet with views of the mountains of the Aleutian Range. Maybe we could cruise down to Kenai or Homer and back, and to Williamsport and back.

Maybe when those communities see our beautiful ferry near their harbors they’ll want to figure out a way to have some of our passengers maybe spend some time with them and they’ll build a dock for our ferry. Maybe they’ll have small transports meet our ferry and take passengers to their smaller docks for a short visit to their towns before we head back up to our beautiful port and dock at Port MacKenzie.

Knik Arm Bridge

Yes, it is going to cost a lot of money, more than we can even imagine. So, what else is new?

The bridge is needed, if not now, soon. If you have not been down Knik-Goose Bay Road toward the Point MacKenzie area I suggest you do so. The growth is staggering, and it is not going to stop even if the Mat-Su Borough does nothing to promote it. The eastern residents of our Valley may not use the bridge, but they should be promoting it so the relative quiet they now enjoy can be preserved by sending more traffic to Anchorage that way instead of along the Glenn Highway.

Are there challenges with building a bridge across that short span of high-tide movement inlet? Of course, but we have the ingenuity to figure out solutions.

Railroad

Ah, the railroad, lifeline of Interior Alaska to tidewater for nearly a century now. Why wouldn’t we want to build the railroad from Port MacKenzie north so the freight trains taking the resources we sell to other countries to tidewater could go that way? And we could have a reliable, fast commuter train go from Willow along the current route to Anchorage.

Port

Duh. We already have the dock. We have a beautiful small terminal. We are ready for business (or we will be when they get some good road work and rail work done from the port to the Parks Highway and some patron amenities in the vicinity of the port). Now we just need some place for smaller boats to dock and berth.

Power source

Wow, this has been a contentious issue since the coal mines closed. Since I don’t have a lot of knowledge about all the options being proposed, I won’t elucidate on the topic except to say that we are setting ourselves up for servitude and higher personal energy costs if we don’t do something to get our energy sources closer to home.

So, even if you are not in favor of any of these projects, please realize that this Valley cannot sustain any high quality of living in this beautiful area if we don’t start tackling the looming challenges coming our way. And we need to thank and encourage the people who are trying to look forward and find some solutions. I, for one, thank them.

Margaret Heaven lives in Wasilla.