Sleeping Mat River will return for the Old Glenn

Mother Nature is bigger than all of us. No matter how powerful and in control we feel, she is in charge. On the Eastern seaboard, hurricane Sandy delivered this message with terrible clarity this week.

Closer to home, we’ve had our own tangle with the force of nature. Many Mat-Su Valley families and businesses are still working to recover from flooding along the region’s major rivers and streams in September. The deadline to apply for disaster relief is Nov. 20.

This assistance will help people who qualify cover some of their losses and replacement costs. But for at least one local family hard hit by this disaster, this assistance doesn’t seem like an option. So far, Daina Mirsch-Wenner and her husband, Chris Wenner, have been told they likely won’t qualify for aid because they were forced to evacuate July 23 before the official disaster was declared in September.

For the Mirsch-Wenner family, this slow moving natural disaster started at least a decade before they ever lived in Alaska.

They purchased a property built years earlier along the Matanuska River and moved there in 2009. But erosion problems here are well-documented at the state and local levels.

As early as May 1991, the Mat-Su Borough was working with the state and had hired an Alaska engineering firm to study solutions. At one point, an erosion control district covering the area adjacent to the Matanuska River near the Butte was formed by the borough. “However, after this erosion control district was established, it was dissolved through a borough referendum,” according to a May 20, 1991, letter from Gov. Walter J. Hickel.

Current Assistant Borough Manager Don Moore was the Mat-Su Borough manager at that time. It’s his name and signature that are on many of the letters and studies tracing the decades-long history of erosion along the Matanuska River.

There is plenty of blame to go around here concerning why obvious issues are still unresolved. But mere finger-pointing offers no direction forward. .

A disaster has been declared. Winter is here and, for now, the hungry river is sated.

But the Matanuska River won’t be quiet forever. When the river wakes to feed again, this time it will be nibbling at the edges of the Old Glenn Highway.

We believe it is incumbent on our Mat-Su Borough Assembly, mayor, manager — and assistant manager — to work with state and federal agencies to revisit these old studies and muster the political will to tackle this issue.