State takes measures as decades-old dam deteriorates

WASILLA — That knock on the door Friday from Verne Rupright was not the first-term mayor politicking to retain his seat. For residents on Lake Lucille or Lucille Creek, he was there with an important message.

The 40-plus-year-old wooden dam spillway at the west outlet of the lake is nearing the end of its useful life. It’s rotting, one of its four supports has failed and is on the verge of partial or total failure. That’s a message Rupright had hand-delivered to affected residents.

“Well, I did that because, when you mail stuff, a lot of times people go ‘we didn’t know,’” he said. “I figured the direct, personal touch on this, especially when you’re talking about letting the lake drain and drop a number of feet, would seem to me to have an adverse affect on property values.”

In fact, the dam’s condition has deteriorated to the point that the state Department of Fish and Game today is installing flood control below it on the creek, said James Hasbrouck, Southcentral Region supervisor for Fish and Game. Hasbrouk was peppered with questions Monday by Wasilla City Council during its regular meeting.

The bottom line, Hasbrouk said, is the dam no longer fits in Fish and Game’s mission and the agency would rather decommission it and return the lake to its original level.

“We don’t need it to complete our mission,” Hasbrouck said. “There may be (another) need for a dam there, but I don’t know if there’s a need to Fish and Game. … Long-term, Fish and Game doesn’t have money to (replace) the dam and wouldn’t want to.”

But that’s just what the city wants and has been asking for the state to do for years, Rupright said. The city doesn’t own the dam, which is located on property owned by Harlan Wold. Wold said his deed doesn’t list ownership of the dam either. Furthermore, the state hasn’t allowed the city to repair or replace the dam itself, the mayor said.

What’s also monkey-wrenching the situation is Fish and Game also says it doesn’t own the dam, Hasbrouck said.

“Well, we don’t own it and they won’t let us touch it,” Rupright said. “That dam’s on private property and belongs to the state. They put it in. In fact, I spoke to (former Fish and Game Commissioner) Denby Lloyd about that two years ago and they never denied it.”

Because the dam is in poor repair, the Dam Safety and Construction Unit of the state Department of Natural Resources is now overseeing the project, said Charlie Cobb, the agency’s dam safety engineer.

His agency also doesn’t own the dam, he said.

“Well, somebody’s got a dam problem,” a frustrated Rupright said Monday afternoon prior to the city council meeting. “There has to be some kind of compromise here. They can’t just breach that dam and let it drain down to its natural level.”

Doing that, he said, would greatly affect 200-some property owners around Lake Lucille and in the creek basin. When the dam was first built (the city says that happened in 1964, Fish and Game pinpoints it at 1967), Wasilla was much smaller and Lake Lucille was not the developed residential area it is today.

If the lake were returned to its natural level, the water would drop about 2 feet or more, Rupright said, which would leave many lakeside homeowners high and dry. Their docks with boats and floatplanes tied to them would be dry or have very little water, and there would be a severe mud problem.

Although the dam is small and raises the level of the lake by a couple feet, that’s still a lot of water, he said. Calculating the 362 acres of the lake, lowering it that much “is like Walmart filled to the brim four times. That’s a lot of water.”

Allowing that much water to go down the creek could put the basin in a 100-year flood situation, Rupright said. As to when the dam might fail, that’s as much a mystery as who actually owns the rotting structure, he said.

“It could be as we’re speaking and it could be next year,” the mayor said. “It’s up in the air. I’m just praying there’s no earthquake, and most of all that somebody doesn’t hit it with a boat.”

Fish and Game would prefer to remove the Lake Lucille dam, and Cobb said the Dam Safety and Construction Unit originally came to the same conclusion. After talking to city officials, he’s changed that stance.

“My recommendation now is that the dam is replaced,” Cobb said. “It’s a very popular public facility, so there’s more interest involved than just the property owners. I don’t know the state has any obligation to step up to the plate. I think the city of Wasilla may be the natural entity to be involved.”

Wasilla would be glad to do just that, Rupright said. If the state were to build the dam (estimated costs run about $150,000), the city would agree to take over all of its future management and upkeep.

Without clear direction of ownership, however, the state needs to be careful in managing the dam, Cobb said, adding he believes the owner of the property may also own the dam.

“Fish and Game built the current structure,” he said. “There was a dam there before, but it appears the land is private, that it belongs to a property owner, so the dam is on somebody else’s land.”

That somebody is Wold, who bought the land from his father-in-law in the early 1980s. And his father-in-law owned the land since the 1950s before that. Although the dam is on his property, Wold’s deed doesn’t list the dam as part of what he owns. He also has other evidence that someone else should lay claim to it.

“The city wrote me a letter five or six years ago and asked if I wanted the dam,” he said. “I didn’t want it because I knew what kind of shape it’s in. Nobody wants to own it now because it’s rotten. I own land on both sides of it, but I don’t own the dam.

“Fish and Game is the one that put it in there. I guess Fish and Game owns it. They’ve been the ones to come out and check it for years. Now nobody wants to do anything, they’re just passing the buck back and forth.”

Councilman Steve Menard said he also shares Rupright’s frustration over the dam and that he’s been asking about it for years.

“For many years we’ve known it is rotten,” he said. “My frustration is I know how government works, and it takes until (it) collapses for us to get off our asses and do something.”

In a Monday news release, the state Department of Fish and Game said it does not have the funding or authority to replace or manage the dam.

Menard asked why Fish and Game didn’t plan for the dam’s cost knowing for such a long time it was heading toward failure.

The short answer, Hasbrouck said, is because Fish and Game doesn’t want the dam.

If that’s the case, there needs to be more evidence to back that up, said Councilwomen Taffina Katkus and Dianne Woodward.

Katkus said she lives in the affected area with Lucille Creek running through her 40 acres. Some days the creek level is fine and other days it’s so low fish are left “flopping in the creek.” She wants the state to study if there really is a need for the dam or not.

That’s something Woodruff also wants to know.

“How do we know it’s not needed for habitat?” echoed Woodruff.

Ron Cottle built his home at Lake Lucille in 1967 and was one of the homeowners who received a hand-delivered letter from the mayor. He feels the issue is important enough to hold a public meeting about it.

“What we need are some statistics and numbers,” he said. “Now, we’re not talking just on the issue of the dam or no dam, but there’s a lot of mud in there.”

Ultimately, there’s no reason a solution can’t be found, Cottle said. “Man made it, man can solve it.”

If it’s a matter of getting landowner permission, Wold said that’s no worry. He wants a new dam.

“If the dam went out, the lake would lower about 4 feet and there’d be nothing but mud in front of our cabin and houses,” he said. “It would be a disaster at our end of the lake. It would be a mud hole for 1,000 feet.”

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