Matanuska River swells, eroding section of Glenn Highway near Sutton

In an update from the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (DOT&PF), crews have been making progress over the past weekend on the emergency repairs to the Glenn Highway near milepost 63.6 near Sutton, after erosion from the Matanuska River undercut a section of the highway, forcing closures and traffic diversions.

“Saturday at 2:00 pm, my husband called 9-1-1 due to being approximately less than 8 feet and eating the sand away quickly. By about 6:00 pm, it breached the road and started undercutting the asphalt,” said Melody Houser, who lives nearby.

The DOT&PF says that the highway is now restored to two lane traffic after many hours in which contractor rock trucks and side dumpers brought in material around the clock to create a new embankment, as crews worked to reestablish a shoulder.

This comes after videos and social media posts emerged showed the might river had been eroding the section of land near Chickaloon, coming dangerously closer to the Glenn Highway right up until Saturday as more and more of the river took out part of the roadway.

“It shows you the power of water,” said Jerry Hess, who drove his ATV along the roadway, taking videos that show the progression of the erosion.

On Sunday morning, Representative George Rauscher, whose district includes Sutton, posted that crews worked through the night to create a detour that would allow traffic to continue to move through the impacted area.

Residents have voiced frustration that it took so long to see any action divert the Matanuska River away, or even set up barriers before the waters reached the highway and that perhaps this could have been prevented.

“It is very sad they took so long, and then had to spend so much more money to fix it which they are still doing because they didn’t use large boulders,” said Houser, who said she had reached out to DOT last week, days before the river had reached the highway.

She also voiced concern for an elderly, disabled neighbor who is the only resident on the riverside left on the mile stretch of highway.

This is not the first time the Matanuska River has shown her might, having encroached on properties for years and swallowing up homes that dotted the riverbank for decades. Most recently, in 2018, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) awarded the Mat-Su Borough a grant funding the acquisition of land and structures for five homes in the same stretch that were marked as being at severe risk for flooding and erosion damage along the Matanuska River. It was part of a bigger grant that included properties and land in the Butte along the river that were also being lost to the glacier-fed river.

People driving through the area will be flagged through while the highway is open to one-lane. DOT&PF says that future work to the damaged area includes building a shoe-fly ramp and establishing a new traffic pattern that will allow vehicles to continue to pass through safely.

The DOT&PF will continue updating as information becomes available. This is a developing story.