Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

A court decision last week against the Juneau Access Project is a victory for the towns of Haines and Skagway, a Lynn Canal Conservation spokesman said this week.

"We have three hardware stores in Haines. Do you think we’d have three hardware stores here if there was easy access to Juneau? I don’t think so," said Scott Carey of Lynn Canal Conservation.

"This is a huge victory for upper Lynn Canal fisheries and the community’s businesses," Carey said.

Chamber of Commerce president Ned Rozbicki said he wasn’t aware that the business group has a position on the state’s most recent plan for improving access, a road extension from Juneau that dead-ends at Katzehin.

"It’s been over a decade since the membership was polled on that question. At that time, the overwhelming sentiment was the road project would not be beneficial for Haines businesses," Rozbicki said. That may have been when the state was planning for the road to connect Skagway and Juneau.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled May 4 that state and federal agencies failed to adequately consider improved ferry service as an alternative for improving access to Juneau in an environmental impact statement.

The statement, completed in 2006, established an east Lynn Canal road to Katzehin as the state’s preferred alternative for improving access, after plans to extend the road to Skagway were scrapped in 2005.

Brenda Hewitt, chief communication officer for the state Department of Transportation, said Tuesday the state has yet to decide its response to the ruling. Options include filing a court appeal, writing a supplemental EIS or dropping the project.

The EIS was started in 1994, and the state so far has spent about $10 million on the project including $1.2 million on studies, $8 million on bridge piles and $635,000 on steel culverts, Hewitt said. The expense figure doesn’t include the state’s court costs.

The appeals court reaffirmed a 2009 U.S. District Court ruling that also found the EIS inadequate.

DOT officials said this week they believed they could submit a supplemental EIS more fully examining ferry system improvements, but that would also likely include updating the costs of other access alternatives.

LCC’s Carey said group members were instrumental in finding the flaws in the document. "A big part of the court case was based on our analysis of the EIS."

He characterized the ruling as a major setback for the state. "I wouldn’t say this is a nail in the coffin, but I’d say it’s pretty close. It’ll be tough for DOT to come back on this, and when they do come back, they’re going to have to have numbers a lot more solid than they had in this EIS. It’s going to be harder to prove that a road financially makes sense."

The Federal Highway Administration, which signed off on the EIS, removed itself from the lawsuit after the district court decision.

The road to Katzehin posed threats to area fisheries and to the economics of the ferry system, Carey said. The system generally makes money between Juneau and upper Lynn Canal communities.

"We feel the ferry service is an important piece of life for Southeast Alaska and this road would have made the system less viable," Carey said.

Every fish from Chilkoot Lake travels along the east wall of Lynn Canal, Carey said, and ocean-bound Chilkat Lake fish cross over to the east side before Berner’s Bay, he said. "Roads and fisheries never mix. The road corridor would have decimated the fisheries, I think," Carey said.

"I hope the communities in upper Lynn Canal understand the hard work we’ve done and that it was for the communities," Carey said.