Property owners deserve more than bureaucratic tangle

Frontiersan editorial board

Property owners in the Butte area face a tough dilemma. They're monitoring the land in the area they live, watching it get gobbled up by the Matanuska River in 20-, 30-, 40-foot chunks each day. They've called the borough, the state, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and no one is taking action.

There are property owners in the area who built with the knowledge that the river has a history of eroding. Others purchased their homes more recently from Valley real estate agents, but were never told the area was prone to erosion. Still others purchased their land decades ago, when their land was well out of the way of potential erosion. They've watched it fall away, chunk by chunk, into the river, year after year, with little outside attention being paid to the erosion during mild years, and sporadic help during years when the river binged on Butte farmland.

Four dikes were installed to stem erosion more than 10 years ago. Four more were promised, but funding ran out. Maintenance on the dikes tapered off, and discussions about the erosion tapered off as well, only rising to the surface when the river swelled with runoff and glacial meltwater. Tuesday, property owners addressed the Mat-Su Borough Assembly, pleading for help in addressing the problem. Frustration with a historical trend of promised help only half-fulfilled from local, state and federal agencies resonated through the comments.

Mat-Su Borough officials at the meeting were equally frustrated. Phone calls were placed with state agencies, hoping to secure an order identifying imminent threat from the governor's office. Such an order, Borough Manager John Duffy said, would make $100,000 available for a solution. Duffy said although he hadn't spoken with the governor as of Tuesday, he'd been told by members of the state administration an executive order wasn't likely to materialize. The Division of Emergency Services referred Duffy to the Department of Community and Economic Development, who said they don't work with erosion issues, only floods. Calls placed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency were as fruitless -- the agency addressed issues of flooding, Duffy was told, but again, not erosion. Although union members from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 302 have offered time and, possibly, equipment to help address the project immediately, the Army Corps of Engineers has not granted a permit for the workers to rechannel the river.

If only the river moved as slowly as the agencies controlling it. We hope that, somewhere in the endless chain of bureaucracy governing the river, someone takes responsibility, breaks the levee and concrete action is taken to fix the problem, not just provide another Band-Aid solution.