Former senator leaves tangible legacy in Mat-Su

MAT-SU — In all the memorials to former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens this week, one thing everyone has been quick to note was the senator’s prowess in wrangling federal dollars for the state.

Most everyone noted this is probably Stevens’ greatest legacy, one that touched every corner of Alaska.

It’s hard to quantify exactly how much of the Valley was built with Stevens’ help, but there is one big monument to him, one that makes thousands of local commuters happy every day heading to and from Anchorage — the Glenn-Parks Interchange.

“That was a big deal. That was something on the order of, I think, $40 million, $45 million,” said former Mat-Su Borough Manager John Duffy.

News reports from the time placed the credit squarely at Stevens’ feet and pegged his earmark at $50 million. It was a special appropriation from Stevens that Duffy said came at a time when there was little hope the project would ever get built.

“That thing was completely stalled and then Uncle Ted came through,” Duffy said.

Cost was probably the main reason the project was stalled. Duffy said it was a costly endeavor mostly because the intersection is so complex. Because salmon move through waters near the interchange the whole thing had to be elevated. There was also a railroad crossing to deal with.

The project was long enough ago — the interchange opened in 2004 — that Duffy had trouble recalling at first what was there before. It was a traffic signal.

“Long queues and left-hand turns, all that nonsense,” is how he remembers it.

The interchange was the final piece of what has become a non-stop commute from Wasilla to Anchorage.

Duffy said Stevens didn’t stop there, though. He and U.S. Rep. Don Young worked in tandem to bring money to the Valley to upgrade the Parks Highway. Some of those projects have been completed, some are in the works.

Stevens helped on a number of other projects. He scored the borough money to do the environmental studies needed to build an agricultural products processing plant, a project that is still in the works.

Duffy said Stevens also kept money flowing for the ferry the borough plans to run between Point Mac-Kenzie and Anchorage. The ship would not have been built and would not now be floating in the waters near Ketchikan were it not for Stevens, Duffy said.

And really, Duffy said, even though Stevens was out of office for two years before his death, the state is still in a lot of ways living off his legacy.

“On the ferry alone we’ve probably got about $6 million bucks left,” he said. “I know Kenai’s got $10 million for one road that they haven’t even spent yet.”

Which, he said, is to be expected when talking about a man who an economist once described as personally responsible for a third of the state’s economy.

“Once those earmarks go away, then I think people are really going to start to feel the effect,” Duffy said. “The day is coming when that money’s going to be gone and it can’t be replaced.”

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