Mat River battle continues

BUTTE — A local resident faces a third round of citations from the borough stemming from what he says are efforts to protect his property.

Bruce Derstine completed construction July 27 on a berm-and-canal system designed to channel encroaching water from the Matanuska River around his house, located on property in the flood-prone Butte Area between miles 13 and 15 of the Old Glenn Highway. Borough code enforcement officers cited him shortly thereafter.

Derstine already faces citations from earlier construction without a permit, and has been ordered to pay $145 on that construction. He has four existing citations for the latest round of construction, court records show.

Derstine’s property was hit hard in the fall and winter of 2012 and again in spring of this year.

He has applied for a permit for that construction, but said the borough office has refused to grant that permit without an engineering assessment of the property, which he says he can’t afford.

A small line of piled soil and bagged sand was the only thing protecting the edge of his property Saturday from the encroaching Mat River, which roared a short distance away. Small pools of water were already forming inside the soil dike where the water seeped through. An adult of average height could stand within six feet of the dike and stare into the swirling heart of the river’s main channel.

“Right now, you can see the water’s pretty high,” Derstine said. “It would be flowing right down my road if I didn’t have this bag in place. When the water seeps through, you know it’s high.”

About 100 yards toward Old Glenn Highway, a railroad-tie dam now lines one side of his driveway, forming a protective canal from a drainage ditch to edge of a nearby Alaska Department of Transportation bike trail.

“This is basically to divert any water from coming to my house,” he said. “Any water that floods will go out and around.”

Derstine’s legal strategy has also evolved. He now intends to argue this construction could be covered under an existing permit issued in 2012, reportedly valid for two years.

Residents here have struggled with repeated incursions by the river dating as far back as 1971, and watched the river carry property value away, to the Knik Arm and eventually the sea. A series of dikes constructed in the mid-1980s was viewed as a potential solution, as were dredging efforts in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when borough officials obtained the necessary government permits to conduct dredging, but didn’t.

Officials now say there is little they can do but buy the remaining properties in the river’s path at fair market value, though that likely won’t happen until 2015 at the earliest.

A crowd-funded effort lead by a neighbor, Pat Huddleson, had covered most of the expenses associated with maintaining a lapsed dike along the edge of their property, though the project — titled “Plug the Hole” — was still accepting money to help offset the costs of planned future maintenance.

Donations were being accepted through account 133781 at the Mat-Su Valley Federal Credit Union.

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269 or brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com.