Erosion eats away at residents

PALMER — In the October election, some Butte residents might be asked to decide on a plan the Mat-Su Borough has proposed to help mitigate erosion.

Here’s how the plan would work:

Currently, there is a service area set up in the Circle View area along the Matanuska River to build and maintain a series of dikes to keep the river at bay. The plan proposes to extend those service area boundaries to include homes along the Old Glenn Highway where severe erosion ate away land last year, sending at least one residence into the river.

At its meeting Tuesday, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly will decide whether to put the issue on a ballot and who will be able to vote on it — whether just the people seeking to join the area will vote, whether it will be both aspiring members and the current members, or whether it will be both groups separated into two voting groups that both must approve the change.

Whether the measure will pass is an open question.

“We’ve already got some concerned residents that say, ‘I don’t want to be included in this’ or ‘there’s no way that we’re going to vote yes on this,’” Borough Manager John Moosey said Monday.

But it’s an option the borough thinks should be extended to the residents. There’s money in hand from the state Legislature to address erosion issues. The service area isn’t the only way to use that money to help, but it’s one way.

“We will be able to do more within a service area to assist people. That is why the question is being asked,” Moosey said.

It’s a tough issue to address, Moosey said. The borough really doesn’t have authority to protect private property. There are also concerns about work done upstream causing problems to homeowners downstream

“We’re trying to be in a position of helping a problem we have with something that is really not a borough service that is required to be performed,” Moosey said.

Meanwhile, state crews have already been out there this summer working to shore up the state’s defenses of the Old Glenn Highway. Erosion near the former home of Chris and Daina Wenner — where a rental home already went into the river last year — had come perilously close to the road.

On the borough end, Moosey said there have been numerous ideas for how to help. One included trying to swap the borough’s ferry, the M/V Susitna, straight up for a river dredge. Moosey said that idea was proposed but there was a big, $6 million problem.

“We have to use this ferry for a ferry in the Cook Inlet or else we owe the federal government $6 million,” he said.

There are exceptions to that rule, but trading the ship for a dredge is not likely to be one of them, meaning the borough would be on the hook for that money.

“There are so many ideas with this, how to use this boat, but the problem is that nobody comes up with any legitimate financial way to make this happen,” Moosey said.

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