Matanuska River erosion: Residents in erosion’s path have long seen this coming

BUTTE — At first glance, the Matanuska River’s onrushing rapids and erosion ravenously eating its way to the shoulder of the Old Glenn Highway, looks like a natural disaster in process.

But for the people of the tiny town of Butte, and all along the Matanuska between mile posts 12 and 15, this week’s alarm is anything but newsy, even as borough emergency staff encouraged residents to plan for evacuation Monday night.

Since 2010, resident Pat Huddleson has been perhaps the loudest voice calling for a long-term solution to the meandering river, which changes its direction of flow, seemingly whenever it feels like it.

“This is something that has to be done and if they don’t people are going to get hurt and die,” Huddleson said. “There’s always somebody who wants to stay behind… But people have to understand, this is serious stuff; you can’t play with this anymore.”

Huddleson counts 1971, 1994 and 2012 as years of major flooding, but given the day-to-day speed with which the erosion is claiming dry land, she believes there’s a chance the 2016 edition could be all she wrote for the parcel of land she’s called home for the better part of her 59 years as an Alaskan, and where she and her husband run an auto body and repair shop.

She said the fault lies with the Mat-Su Borough for not maintaining the dikes put in by the Army Corps of Engineers years ago.

“If this goes through, there ain’t gonna be much left. It’s a 50-foot drop to the blinky light (at Bodenburg Loop) in Butte — it could be very hazardous to them, also,” she said. “I’m praying to God (authorities) get off their rears and not just put a band aid on this. If they don’t do anything about this — it won’t be too long. It depends on the river, the river could change. A couple of years ago we had an earthquake — that changed it, shifted the river back over.”

Borough Assembly member Jim Sykes, who’s been on the forefront of the issue since he began sounding the alarm on the receding shoreline over the last three weeks, said the Matanuska has a reputation for having a mind all its own.

“Everybody has stories here, and they may all be true… Mother Nature is the main thing — this is the glacial stream… Basically, this is what the river does. It’s been doing it for thousands of years,” Sykes said. “The history of the river is basically it can hit any object and then change (direction). It attacks the bank for a while, then goes for a while. But this has been attacking the bank and hasn’t left.”

The erosion has left an elbow of forest at Maud Road, bulging out into the stream, in danger of being uprooted. It’s from that area a couple of years ago that Huddleson and her neighbors fashioned temporary dikes by sawing trees them down and laying them across the river to divert the flow.

Sykes said Monday afternoon that the worst-case scenario if the river breaks the riprap, which sits directly behind that forested elbow, could be significant.

“If the main current goes through, it’s all downhill and it’s going to wipe everybody out on this side of the highway,” he said. “It may even wipe out the highway and even go to the flashing light at the Butte.”

He said the best-case scenario would involve successfully rechanneling the water, and over the long haul, depopulating the area by having homeowners accept buyouts from FEMA, offers which, he said, should come in by month’s end.

“By far and away, that’s the plan that’s been recommended for 30 years as the most effective solution. What we have here is basically people living on a massive floodplain,” Sykes said. “The river wanders — that’s what it does. This entire river is in my district, the 75 or 80 miles of it. When you get river build-up, the water seeks the lowest level and the reason it’s here is this is the lowest level. It switches back and forth and does so very quickly.”