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

New details have emerged about a citizen's complaint that ultimately led to a federal agency suspending funding for restoring the Porcupine Trail Road, potentially putting the borough on the hook for more than a million dollars of construction on a road primarily used by a mineral exploration company.

In September, CVN reported that funding for the $1.4 million project had been put on hold as a result of apparent construction outside the original scope of work approved for the project. Federal Emergency Management Agency officials visited the site at the end of August following a citizen's complaint, but shared few details.

Emails shared with CVN last week show Haines resident Derek Poinsette raised concerns to FEMA officials about unauthorized road widening and fill being pushed into Herman Creek and Cave Creek, both salmon streams in the area.

"Mainly, I was just concerned they were just going to move ahead with a big project without any concern for impacts to fish and wildlife habitat," said Poinsette, who is the director of Takshanuk Watershed Council, a nonprofit that works to steward the area's waterways.

Poinsette emailed FEMA with his concerns at least as early as August.

"The contractor removed the riparian vegetation that used to surround these crossings in order to make the road wider, and road bed material is spilling into the stream around the sides of the culverts. There are two anadromous crossings that are impacted, Herman Creek and Cave Creek," Poinsette wrote to FEMA officials on Aug. 2. He attached photos showing the road up to 35 feet wide, more than the 22-foot width that was authorized by FEMA.

FEMA had approved up to $1.4 million for the work. That funding was "de-obligated" — FEMA's word for suspended — after the August site visit pending an investigation.

Borough officials said they hoped the matter would be resolved soon and said it was unlikely to affect future work if it is resolved before the next construction season. But FEMA officials said the investigation will make funding the new, rescoped project more difficult, and said it carried a risk that the project won't be fully reimbursed. FEMA officials declined to say how likely that would be.

Borough manager Annette Kreitzer denied the allegations made by Poinsette. She said road widening had never been approved by the borough, and said ditch-clearing work may have made the road appear wider than it was before. Garrett Gladsjo, a project engineer, questioned whether the photos were taken at the location near Herman Creek.

This project is complicated - both by environmental factors and also financial ones.

Phase I began and was completed this summer. It is supposed to restore the road to its original condition before flooding in 2020. But borough officials said getting through that first phase was complicated because some of the road restoration work was paid for by Constantine Metals. The company had been pressuring the borough to fix the road for years, emails show.

Constantine is the primary source of traffic on the Porcupine Trail Road where it explores the Palmer Project, a copper, zinc, gold, silver and barite deposit. In April of 2023, Constantine sent a proposal to the borough for work on the area, near 2 Mile of Porcupine Trail Road to “support more effective use of the road until funding for a more permanent fix is available.”

“The work is located in the Borough’s Phase 2 area (not yet funded by FEMA). There is no overlap with current FEMA funded projects,” wrote Liz Cornejo, an official with Constantine in an email to borough officials.

After consulting with the borough’s attorney, manager Annette Kreitzer gave the go-ahead for the project, emails Kreitzer shared with CVN show. Work was done by Southeast Road Builders, the same company that did later pieces of the road restoration for the borough. Constantine paid Southeast Road Builders directly, according to Kreitzer’s emails.

Constantine’s work, as well as the borough’s first phase of the project, was completed earlier this summer. But, there was little public notice of the project, other than a meeting in December.

Poinsette, who was recently elected to the planning commission, said he felt work on the road was kept mostly hidden from public view. Based on his reading of borough code, the project should have gone before the planning commission. Under borough code, most projects, except for routine maintenance, are supposed to be considered by the commission.

Poinsette sent several emails asking for details of the project to borough public works manager Ed Coffland and others, but didn’t receive replies. And, he said a public records request for emails and other documents related to the project took months to fulfill.

He said he doesn’t believe the work Constantine did was illegal, but he has concerns borough leadership kept it quiet because they were worried about public backlash.

“It’s not against the law to work with a big industrial user to make things easier on them, it’s just unpopular,” Poinsette said.

Borough officials said concerns Poinsette raised about the width of the road work resulted from pre-existing road conditions that weren’t accurately accounted for by FEMA.

Garret Gladsjo, a project engineer for the borough, said in an email that FEMA had used a measurement made “at a single location” to establish a standard width for the entire, 7.5-mile road. But, he said, in some cases, the existing ditches were already more than 35 feet wide.

“With [four-to-eight foot] wide shoulders, one could easily measure an edge-of-shoulder to edge-of-shoulder width greater than 30 [feet],” Gladsjo wrote.

Poinsette said he is skeptical, but acknowledged he doesn’t have proof of anything.

“That road is way bigger than it used to be – I’ve been driving that road for 15 years,” he said.

Poinsette said the improved road and the steep ditches down to the streams allowed dirt to slide down, partially obstructing the area. Bill Kerschke, an environmental officer for FEMA, said the runoff into the stream would be considered during its evaluation of the work.

Poinsette said luckily, no permanent damage has been done to the streams, which have gotten hundreds of thousands of dollars of improvements to increase chum salmon productivity. But he said he hoped the borough would be more careful going forward.

Currently, officials say they are working to combine the project, originally scheduled to be worked on in three phases, into a single project. That would align with FEMA’s usual practices and to avoid confusion if third parties pay for additional work.

One option for the next phases could be moving Porcupine Trail Road higher above the floodplain. That would mean the crossing of Herman Creek, which Poinsette said could have big impacts on hydrology of the spring-fed creeks.

“When you build roads above springs, you can alter the groundwater and cause pollution from runoff from the road. There’s a myriad of detrimental effects we’re worried about,” Poinsette said.

Kreitzer said she was looking forward to discussions with Poinsette and the planning commission.