Borough mulls use of funds to stem erosion

BUTTE — With any luck, sometime next month the Mat-Su Borough will receive a deposit of $2.5 million from the Legislature to start addressing erosion, mostly along the Matanuska River.

So, is there any word yet on how that money’s going to be spent? Not quite yet.

“We’re meeting constantly on those issues trying to find the best way on making an impact with those dollars,” borough manager John Moosey said.

Though there were other areas just as hard-hit in the flooding last fall, and erosion along the Matanuska River has lately been voracious, pulling in more than one home along its banks and devouring acres of property.

But addressing the erosion problem isn’t a simple matter.

“Part of the challenge that we have is that the borough does not have authority to do some of the things that need to be done,” Moosey said.

What kind of things?

“We cannot be in the river because we don’t have authority to be in the river,” Moosey said.

He said the borough is looking at the possibility of expanding service areas that build and maintain dikes in some areas along the river. That could help the borough gain permission to do some of the work needed. Or, the borough could pass the funding to state agencies that are allowed to work in the river.

“The money that we’ve got — the $2.5 million — we can use some of that money to assist or to cover those costs,” Moosey said.

So the borough is seeking to partner in the state Department of Natural Resources and Department of Transportation and Public Facilities.

“We’ve had meetings with DOT. DOT has been very cooperative,” he said. “We still are working on trying to get a meeting with DNR and with state emergency management folks.”

He said those guys switched gears this summer when flooding hit Western Alaska.

But how far will $2.5 million go toward a fix?

One of the ideas is to “channel” the Matanuska River by dredging out gravel that has built up and diverted its flow.

“We had a meeting with someone who wanted to do the channeling in the Matanuska and their price was over $10 million,” Moosey said. “We said, ‘that’s great we have a fourth of that.’”

So the borough is essentially trying to figure out the wisest possible uses for that money.

Moosey said that a small part of the money will be used up north to help with flooding in the Talkeetna and Willow areas.

Longtime area resident Brit Lively said that she hopes when the borough does something that it won’t be another study. She said there have been enough studies already. Many are posted to a website she helps maintain, buttealaska.org. Many are also available through the borough. About a decade ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, she said, did a study and made recommendations that involved extracting some of the gravel, but also included placing a lot of riprap — big rocks to keep banks from eroding — and building dikes.

“In 2013 dollars, if the recommendations that the corps had were followed it would in today’s money be like $10 million,” Lively said. “Amortized over 50 years it would be something that could be absorbed and could be done if they are going to do something like this. That makes the most sense.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or

andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.