Mat-Su Borough ambitious with erosion money

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough is hoping it can stretch the $2.5 million it got to address river erosion across five projects.

Assistant Borough Manager George Hays said the borough has solicited proposals for work in Sutton and the Butte and is planning to solicit proposals for work in Talkeetna and yet more in the Butte area.

“I think we can do that within the scope of what we have,” Hays said.

But even the request for proposals that’s already on the street is relatively nebulous. Hays said the idea is to address erosion problems along the Matanuska River from Sutton to the Butte. That could be accomplished in a few ways.

The proposal is for two projects since one of the things the borough wants addressed is two dikes along the river — one near the confluence with Kings River, the other in the Butte near Ye Olde River Road — both of which were breached during the fall flooding in 2012.

But, Hays said, proposers could choose to address the project in other ways. They could focus on channelization — dredging gravel out of the river to direct its flow. Or propose putting in boulders — also known as armor rock — to protect areas currently in danger.

Or the proposal could be for some combination of the three — dike repair, channelization and armor rock. Whether all that will be feasible will be a determination the borough will make, he said.

“The problem may come in that this may be continual maintenance if we get into the river and do some dredging for instance or even if we put armor rock up,” Hays said.

The borough is looking at two more projects in Talkeetna. The idea is to repair dikes there and repair damage done to another river control system near the intersection of Yoder Road and Kenny Boulevard.

The fifth and final project is to repair damage to the dikes in the Circle View and Stampede Estates. The neighborhoods there along the western bank of the Matanuska River pay special taxes to maintain their dikes and fared very well in the 2012 flooding. They could still use some repair, though.

Though it seems like a tall order, Hays said he thinks the borough can probably address all five issues, so long as the work is relatively targeted.

“If they come back and propose some major thing that they want to dredge the river from Butte up to Kings River, probably not,” Hays said. Also, “I don’t think there’s enough money to put in new dikes for instance if we might want to put in new dikes up in Sutton.”

The timeline, he said, is to seek proposals this fall and have construction begin next summer.

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