State talks water rights at Mat-Su Borough meeting

PALMER — State Department of Natural Resources Deputy Commissioner Ed Fogels said he thinks people are misinterpreting a bill his department has proposed for the Legislature.

House Bill 77 does a number of things, but the piece that has been most controversial in the Mat-Su deals with in-stream flow reservations. A flow reservation mandates that a body of water maintain a certain water level. Someone with a flow reservation can block a permit application from a person or business seeking to remove so much water from the body as to drop below that level.

The legislation would restrict those reservations so that only government bodies and agencies could apply for them. As it stands now, anyone — individuals, a corporation or a nonprofit — can apply.

“There is a gross misconception out there that water reservations are the things that protect the fish,” Fogels said.

But the state Department of Fish and Game is tasked with making sure that any application to remove water from a water body doesn’t impact fish. All of those applications require Fish and Game’s blessing.

“That’s how we protect fish in the state of Alaska,” Fogels said.

He was speaking at a meeting of the Mat-Su Borough Assembly. The meeting had been called specifically to hear from him. Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss had sent a letter to the governor contradicting a letter the borough’s Fish and Wildlife Commission had written in opposition to HB 77. In the wake of that the assembly had called on the state to present its case directly to the assembly and the commission.

Members of the commission did not seem convinced the state would protect fish without the reservations.

Commissioner Larry Engle said that when Fish and Game makes its determinations, it doesn’t have the data collected during a flow reservation application. That data is collected in a water body over the course of five years.

“It sets a benchmark,” Engle said.

He said that without a benchmark, it’s easier for behind-the-scenes political maneuvering to influence the decision-making process.

“Yeah, there are other tools that can help protect the fish, but this is a very important one,” Engle said.

Fogels said Alaska is one of the few states in the nation that allows individuals to apply for flow reservations.

He also said that part of the impetus for the change came from applications and lawsuits surrounding the Chuitna Coal Project. An applicant for a flow reservation on a stream there had sued the state, claiming that during the five-year process of collecting data for the application no one should be allowed to apply to take any water out of the stream. A recent court ruling sided with the state, saying that it could issue permits to take water out of the stream in those five years.

In light of that, Fogels said, the flow reservation change is “not as big an issue today as it was maybe a year ago for us.

He said there are talks of a compromise, or maybe not making the change at all. That will be part of what’s discussed in the Legislature this year when the session resumes Jan. 21.

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

What: Public meeting about House Bill 77.

When: 6 to 8 p.m., Jan. 21.

Where: Palmer Depot, 610 S. Valley Way.