River nibbles away at dike

MAT-SU — Sutton homeowners had trouble with the Matanuska River earlier this summer and now it’s Butte’s turn.

The Matanuska River has swept away the end of a dike constructed in the 1970s about 1,500 feet from where the Old Glenn intersects with Maud Road. The erosion destroyed part of an access road and flooded out a parking lot.

According to a letter Butte resident Christine Nelson is circulating to government agencies and media outlets, the dike has been steadily eroding for years. This summer, though, it is approaching a crisis point.

“Additionally, 15 feet of the northern dike (which is constructed of large rock) has now washed away,” Nelson wrote.

It’s a scene somewhat familiar on the other side of the river farther north. Earlier this month, erosion undercut Forrest Blubaugh’s home in Sutton, dropping part of it into the water. Blubaugh has since moved out of the area.

The fear, Nelson wrote in her letter, is that the water will enter a nearby drainage ditch, then wash out the Old Glenn Highway and eventually make its way into Bodenburg Creek.

Frankie Barker, a planner with the Mat-Su Borough, said she’s been out to see the river and confirmed much of what Nelson wrote in her letter, at least as it pertains to what has happened thus far.

“That’s something that’s been ongoing for years and this year it just broke through in a couple of spots more dramatically than before,” she said.

One of the nearby businesses is the Rival Park Motocross track. Tyra Blanchard owns the track along with her husband, Ralph Blanchard.

Tyra Blanchard said that the river is within feet of their facility.

“I think we’re within like 30 feet of getting washed out,” she said. If the river eats away much more of the bank and leaves them unable to race, she said, it could be a fatal blow.

“Our business would be gone,” she said. “We’d do our best to try and rebuild.”

Asked what it would entail if she were to have to start again from scratch, Blanchard said building the track in the first place involved months of work clearing dense forest.

As far as what can be done, Barker said that work with rivers can get somewhat complex. Rivers belong to the state. Federal agencies often fund or oversee work in them.

She said the dike Nelson spoke of in her letter was one of several installed initially on an emergency basis. In her letter, Nelson said they were put in under Gov. Wally Hickle.

“There was never any plan to maintain it,” Barker said.

This summer has been worse than years past, she said, because there has been so much rain. Usually the river rises when warm weather melts the glacier. The river can generally handle a lot of rain, Barker said, but this year’s rainfall was overwhelming.

She said another area in Butte, the Circle View subdivision, has banded together to form a service area and agreed to a tax to put dikes in near its portion of the Matanuska. So far, she said, that area of Butte has not had any erosion problems this year.

“The thing about erosion is you need to do a lot of preventative things,” Barker said.

And considering that those preventative things all involve work in the river, for the borough to jump in and help people like Nelson and her neighbors, they would need to form a similar service area.

“We need a service area to work with if we’re going to work in any part of the river,” Barker said.

She said she’s talked to some people near Maud Road about signing on with Circle View. The thing about service areas, she said, is that they can also get federal and state money to do a lot of the work that’s needed.

The borough planning commission has also passed a river erosion management plan that is due before the borough assembly next month. It can be reviewed at the borough’s website — matsugov.us — under the planning department section.

Barker said that the Matanuska isn’t the only river that acts this way. The Susitna is making new channels all the time. It’s just that there are more people and businesses along the Matanuska that are threatened when the river changes course.

“We have more developed property along the Matanuska,” Barker said. “The problem is when people’s houses and properties intersect with the river.”

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