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

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is reopening its public comment period on a state plan to push 134,000 cubic yards of slide material into the Chilkat River near 19 Mile Haines Highway.

After discovering there was "elevated local interest" in the issue, the Corps decided to reopen the permit for comment, said agency regulatory specialist Michael Setering.

The Department of Transportation's proposal has raised concerns about potential impacts to fish habitat and disturbance of cultural sites.

DOT applied for a Corps of Engineers permit last fall to deposit 134,000 cubic yards of rock, mud and silt into 8.5 acres of the Chilkat River over a five-year period. The material would be stacked 15 feet high.

The original public comment period was open for 30 days and ended Dec. 3. Setering said he expects the public comment period will be reopened sometime next week.

According to Jane Gendron, DOT's environmental coordinator who submitted the application, the state only would be placing new material from the 19 Mile slide area into the river.

"The permit is only for movement of new slide material. We are not proposing to take the existing stockpile material and push that in the river," Gendron said.

According to DOT, debris slides at 19 Mile have been occurring on nearly an annual basis since the 1960s. In 1967, a slide containing more than 70,000 cubic yards of material closed the highway, burying it under 12 feet of rocks and mud.

In 2013, the Takshanuk Mountains dumped 40,000 cubic yards of material across the highway, the second-highest amount since the 1967 slide.

For decades, DOT has been removing debris from the road and piling it in the state's right-of-way, said local DOT foreman Matt Boron. DOT previously pushed material into the river, Boron said, but more recent regulations prohibited that practice.

"What we are trying to get permitted is, allow us to mimic Mother Nature," Boron said. "We are dumping it in the river because Mother Nature brought it to us. If the highway didn't exist there, it would go into the river just like it had for 20,000 years."

Now, DOT has run out of area for stockpiling the material next to the highway, he said. "We have nowhere to put it, but we still have to keep the Haines Highway open, so now we're down to what do we do?"

Gendron said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service told DOT it can't cut down any more trees to make room for the material. "It's heightened concern over the Haines Highway (Expansion) Project," she said.

In addition to the Army Corps of Engineers permit, the state also must secure permits from Fish and Game and the Department of Natural Resources.

Part of the DNR permit process requires the Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve Advisory Council to comment on the project. The council will meet at 9 a.m. Thursday, March 12, to discuss DOT's proposal.

Members of the Haines ANB are attending the Thursday meeting to express concern over the project's impact to the area, site of the historic Tlingit village of Klucktoo. According to local history, a mudslide destroyed the village in the 1890s; however, recent research indicates it may have remained inhabited until 1919.

ANB board member Bob Duis said the project would desecrate the village site and its remnants that lie beneath the ground. "What they are doing now basically is changing the whole shoreline where that village was," Duis said.

"That area is a community that was buried by a landslide. There was a cemetery, there were artifacts," Duis said. "We ought to preserve that, not mess with it."

Duis said the board was particularly upset about the lack of public notice for the project. The notice wasn't posted around town, or in the local media, he said.

Setering said the notice was posted electronically and sent out to "hundreds of individuals and entities, including federal, state (and) local agencies."

Duis said the ANB also is concerned about the impact on fisheries habitat.

Retired Fish and Game habitat biologist Ben Kirkpatrick, who has served on the Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve Advisory Council for about six years, said he isn't terribly worried about how pushing the slide material in the river would impact fish habitat.

"From a habitat perspective, it's really not that big of a deal," Kirkpatrick said.

But Kirkpatrick said he'd like to see several modifications to the Army Corps permit application, including yearly monitoring of how the slide material is affecting the ecosystem. "Putting it in the river could actually create spawning habitat. It may not, too, but that is why you need to monitor it and modify what you are doing."

The permit application also plans to fill a vegetated area, which should be avoided, Kirkpatrick said.

While agencies typically are required to provide compensatory mitigation after filling waters or wetlands, DOT is arguing it shouldn't be required to because the fill has been entering the river for hundreds of years prior to the existence of the highway.

Kirkpatrick disagrees with that assertion. "They need to provide compensatory mitigation," he said.

According to the permit application, DOT would put up to 26,800 cubic yards of slide material in 1.7 acres of the river annually, a total of 134,000 cubic yards in 8.5 acres. It would also place up to 13,200 cubic yards per year near the river – above the mean high water mark – a total of 66,000 yards over five years.

Environmental coordinator Gendron said DOT doesn't have a plan for the piles of debris that have lined the highway for years. The material in all likelihood can't be used for the impending highway expansion project, she said.

"The material is not conducive to anything but very few uses. It's probably going to be there for a while unless there is another option that comes to light," she said.