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

The roads in Excursion Inlet have a lot of potholes, and the boat harbor has few pilings. But not all upgrades would be welcomed by all local residents.

Haines Borough officials visited the outpost last week to hear community concerns and to discuss infrastructure needs.

The handful of locals that live in Excursion Inlet — a smattering of widely spaced, forested homes that formed around a cannery at the borough’s southwestern edge — are split over potential capital improvement projects, such as an upgrade to the community’s makeshift boat harbor. Among their worries are a tax hike, user fees, government overreach and an influx of visitors.

“I kind of like the status quo to be perfectly honest,” said lifelong resident Gary DesRosiers.

Haines Borough Mayor Douglas Olerud, manager Annette Kreitzer and a handful of borough staff flew by chartered plane June 15 to the remote inlet at the southern end of the Chilkat Mountains, about 10 miles east of Gustavus.

They met with about a dozen locals, visited the “small boat harbor,” as locals call it, which has no public floats and drains at low tide, and toured the community with longtime OBI Seafoods plant manager Tom Marshall.

Fewer than 20 people live in Excursion Inlet most of the year. About five times as many own property there. The property tax rate is about half as much as in the Haines townsite.

The roads are gravel, some overgrown with alders. There is very limited phone service, and no public dump, but there is at least one stop sign where the road crosses a gravel airstrip. The cannery incinerates burnable waste and barges out the rest.

This spring, three residents submitted proposals to the borough through its new capital improvement plan program to improve Excursion Inlet’s boat harbor.

Accessible only by boat and plane, the community doesn’t have a place to moor during storms. In summer, the cannery puts out floats, but there’s no breakwater to protect them. There is a year-round seaplane float, but boaters aren’t supposed to use it.

“In the wintertime here, it’s a raging sea a good part of the time, and it’s so important to have a place to hide if you come in here,” resident Jack Campbell told the CVN last month.

The borough manager, approved by the assembly, included a $25,000 feasibility study of the harbor on the borough’s capital projects list, although she said the project could change to reflect community members’ input. Borough staff planned their visit in part to see the harbor and scope ideas for upgrades.

Borough harbormaster Shawn Bell was one of four staff members who visited, including clerk Alekka Fullerton, planner Dave Long and assessor Dean Olsen.

Located a few miles south of the cannery, the boat harbor is a protected cove, about the length of a football field, with a breakwater but little else. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers started to construct it in the 1940s but never finished, DesRosiers said.

A couple old pilings jut up from the cove. They were built several decades ago to store the cannery’s floats, not to tie up boats of year-round residents.

At low tide, boats can’t access the harbor. At high tide, a skipper is better off beaching his or her vessel than tying up at one of the few, failing floats. At most tides, a large fishing boat would best not enter the shallow cove.

The only functioning float in the harbor was built by DesRosiers, whose family has stored a boat there since the 1950s.

He said about three people use the harbor regularly. And even if improved, it would see “very little” boat traffic.

DesRosiers said that he’d rather see public funds spent on road repairs than on upgrading the harbor.

Harbormaster Bell asked DesRosiers about Excursion Inlet’s future. Might more people from Juneau visit the area if it had a functional harbor?

“I thought this place would be a little town by now, and (that) hasn’t happened,” DesRosiers said.

At a public meeting after staff visited the harbor, residents voiced reservations about borough projects in the community. They said they didn’t want to pay more taxes.

“This is all going to cost people a lot of money,” said Maureen DesRosiers, Gary’s sister. She said she’s not in favor of improving the harbor if it would cost residents moorage fees. She asked to put the idea to a vote.

Mark Warner, manager of Doc Warner’s Alaska Adventures, a fishing charter lodge in the inlet, said he opposes projects that could lead to higher taxes. “When we talk about doing new things, that’s dead on the doorstep,” he said.

In addition to the harbor, some residents said they would like to see expanded cell service in case of emergencies, road repairs and scrap metal removal.

“I have to go six miles down to the cannery to get phone service,” said Paul Burk, who lives on the north end of the community. He suggested installing a repeater antenna.

A 2016 murder in the community was reported by handheld radio to emergency services in Hoonah. Borough staff said residents in the short term should consider using Garmin inReach satellite communication devices, which can send and receive texts without cell service.

Another area of concern among residents is the OBI Seafoods cannery.

In the heyday of Southeast Alaska’s salmon fisheries, hundreds of people converged on the inlet for summer work at the cannery. Of seven fish processing plants established in the past century in the Icy Strait district, the one at Excursion Inlet, owned by Seattle-based OBI Seafoods, is the only one left.

This summer, though, the cannery and its bunkhouses are empty. For the second straight season it isn’t processing fish due to a decline in pink and chum salmon returns.

Plant manager Tom Marshall said OBI Seafoods is making decisions about the plant on a yearly basis and hasn’t decided whether to operate in 2023.

The company still is sending tenders to the Lynn Canal and providing basic services at the plant for tenders and fishermen — ice, net storage, fuel, a winter watchman — but only four people are working there this summer. The tenders are shuttling fish to the company’s cannery in Petersburg.

Two years ago, the Lynn Canal chum salmon fishery collapsed and the pink salmon run was poor. The plant processed only about two million pounds of fish that year.

Historically, Marshall said, a poor season might’ve seen about 12 million to 15 million pounds come through the plant. A good year might’ve seen up to 30 million.

Now, year to year, OBI is waiting for fisheries managers to issue their pink salmon run forecast before announcing decisions about the plant’s future.

Resident Mary McConnell asked what would happen to the community if the cannery stays closed. The plant manages mail, sells fuel and operates the only store in town.

Marshall said OBI plans to continue to offer services to residents. Although the plant isn’t operating right now, mail still comes three times a week in summer and once a week in winter.

For the time being, it seems, life for the permanent residents of Excursion Inlet will proceed much as it has for years.

“It’s nice down here,” Burk said. “We don’t have the borough involved, and I think everyone loves it that way.”