Borough considers ice house rules

PALMER — Standing as we are at the tail end of some nearly unprecedented warm weather, ice fishing is probably the farthest thing from your mind right now.

But then you’re also very likely not a member of the Mat-Su Borough Planning Commission, which declined June 17 to endorse a plan to tighten up regulations regarding ice houses.

The new regulations would have done two things. They put limits on where a person can set up an ice house — 75 feet from the shoreline and 30 feet from another ice house — and require that folks not leave trash or human waste behind to fall into the lake when the ice melts.

In turning down the regulations, planning commission members expressed opinions as varied as a desire not to overburden borough staff and concerns and that adding regulations to lake management would interfere with lake management plans already in place.

But Assemblyman Jim Colver, who is pushing for the new regulations, said it’s not done.

“I’m supportive of the idea and I intend to move an ordinance to the assembly,” Colver said.

The issue came to him from a constituent, Angie Stephl, who lives in his district — Hatcher Pass and its surroundings — but has a place on Big Lake.

Stephl, Colver said, had trouble with an ice house put up at the end of her dock by a person who wasn’t keen on moving it. She and other residents have also grown weary of debris — trash, but also whole floors made of two-by-fours and carpeting — left behind to fall into the lake.

“My job is when we have problems out there and folks ask for help is not to say no we can’t do anything,” Colver said.

In his view, there’s a lot of space out there on the ice.

“There’s no reason why we have to be having conflict out there,” Colver said.

As for objections from the planning commission — specifically that lakes like Big Lake have management plans and that regulations are properly introduced through changing those plans within the community— Colver said he thinks that’s just not how management plans work.

The plans, he said, don’t implement regulations, they just suggest them. Regulations come from the assembly.

“A plan is not a regulatory document, it’s a document that discusses some of the issues,” he said.

Colver said there are already regulations in place. Ice houses on certain lakes require a permit and a visible registration number on the outside of the shelter. The idea was that borough employees could read the number, match it to a permit and have a phone number to call to ask the ice house’s owner to come retrieve their stuff before it goes into the water.

“This is simply tuning up an existing ordinance to make it better,” Colver said. And the goal isn’t to lock out ice fishermen, it’s to send the message.

That message, Colver said, is, “sure go ahead and enjoy the lake, but not to the detriment of others so they can’t use it.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or

andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.