Scouts help shore up Lake Lucille dam

WASILLA — While city and state officials wrangle over who’s responsible for replacing a crumbling wooden dam on Lake Lucille, a group of industrious boys are taking action.

Nearly 20 Boy Scouts from Troop 300 spent Thursday afternoon filling 1,000 sandbags to place at the dam as a stop-gap in case the rotting structure should fail. The empty sandbags were courtesy of the state Department of Fish and Game, which will place the filled bags at the dam Aug. 9.

Along with the Wasilla Public Works Director Archie Giddings, Mayor Verne Rupright spent part of the afternoon working with the Scouts. As the city continues to appeal to state and national agencies and lawmakers to get the dam replaced, the mayor said he was impressed with the boys’ effort.

“I think it’s great,” he said. “They’re serving the community. They understand the problem. These boys decided to step up and get in here and get these bags filled up.”

The sandbags are only another temporary measure to minimize impact to properties downstream from the dam along Lucille Creek, said James Hasbrouck, Southcentral Region supervisor for Fish and Game. Earlier this month, Fish and Game installed about 20 tons of rock and chicken wire as gabion structures, which are also designed to help mitigate flooding should the dam fail.

Hasbrouck also praised the Scouts.

“Filling those sandbags is no small chore,” he said. “It was a matter of concern that the gabion structure itself was not supporting the dam structure, so further measures were needed. … One idea was to put sandbags along the downstream face of the dam.”

Fish and Game will handle that part of the project, Hasbrouck said, because of safety concerns with Scouts working in close proximity to the dam.

Who owns the 40-plus-year-old wooden dam spillway at the west outlet of the lake has been hotly debated. The city contends Fish and Game owns it and says the state should pay to replace the dam, Rupright said. Although the city is willing to take on management and maintenance of the dam after it’s replaced, Wasilla shouldn't have to pay for that replacement, the mayor has said.

“Well, our opinion at this juncture is this was a state-created problem,” Rupright said, adding that the suggestion for the city to pay for it up front and wait for a state reimbursement doesn’t hold water. “That’s just shifting the responsibility from a state agency that created the problem to a city government.”

Some of the Valley’s legislative delegation spoke with state officials about the Lake Lucille dam on Wednesday, the mayor said. There has been some progress, but it’s been slow, he said.

“They’re bantering back and forth,” he said. “Fish and Game is saying, ‘We don’t have the appropriations. We might have to wait until the next legislative session.’ That’s not correct. There’s a thing called forced funds for emergencies.”

Hasbrouck said Fish and Game doesn’t have money it its budget to replace the dam, and the department argues replacing the dam isn’t necessary for the agency to continue to fulfill its mission of providing sport fish recreation at Lake Lucille.

“There are a lot more lakes available now then when it was built in the 1960s, or even the 1950s when the original dam was built,” Hasbrouck said. “We can produce products we couldn’t back in the ’50s and ’60s. With the new hatchery coming online in Anchorage, we don’t have to stock just fingerlings. We can stock catchable trout, which we couldn’t do in the 1960s.”

One thing all parties can agree on is that the current dam is an accident waiting to happen, and both the city and state are recommending the dam be replaced. Who’s going to do that, Hasbrouck said, “is sort-of the million-dollar question.”

In the end, Rupright said he’s confident the dam will be replaced in the near future.

“I think we’re going to work it out,” he said.

In the mean time, 12-year-old Dayton Ravellizsa, a Second-Class Scout with Troop 300, said he’s proud to help out his community until the city and state can figure out a permanent fix.

He admits filling sandbags “is not really fun, but I guess it’s good for you. This is to fix the dam and just help out.”

If he wasn’t attacking a large pile of sand with a long-handled spade Thursday, “Maybe I’d be playing basketball outside,” Ravellizsa said. “Or, I don’t know, sitting inside watching TV or something.”

Holding the empty bags as Ravellizsa filled them, 11-year-old Brennan Easley said if he had to choose between the bags and video games, “I’d probably pick video games.” He also said he feels proud for helping out with something as important as flood mitigation.

“I think it’s pretty fun to know you might have saved a life from flooding,” he said.

As the boys plowed into the sand pile, Scout leader Mark Mobley said the effort is simply Boy Scouts doing what Boy Scouts do best.

“That’s part of what Boy Scouts is all about, community service,” he said. “We helped at the Fourth of July parade picking up trash, and really anywhere these guys have an opportunity to help out, that’s what Scouts is.”

Watching the boys fill the sandbags on the eve of the political season, where Rupright is seeking re-election, the mayor admitted the Scouts are more adept at wielding their shovels than seasoned politicians.

“I’d have to give that one to the Scouts,” he said. “Of course, they’re just shoveling sand.”

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.