The most contentious topic at the July meeting of the Talkeetna Community Council board of directors was an application for a floatplane dock on Fish Lake. While docks do already exist, this case involves a number of factors that make it more complicated. KTNA’s Phillip Manning has more:
Aviation is an integral part of Talkeetna’s history, and numerous air services currently operate out of both the Talkeetna State Airport and area lakes. The most recent application for a new floatplane dock of Fish Lake has caused a stir, however.
Before we go too deep into the details of the current situation, here is some background. Above Alaska Aviation, the company trying to build the new dock had a lease from the Mat-Su Borough for a floatplane dock on Christiansen Lake. Drew Haag, owner of Above Alaska, explains that the Christiansen permit became unavailable.
“Obviously, through a lot of other research, that permit never should have been issued, but that was ours…”
Essentially, because of the way that the Christiansen Lake special land use district rules are written, when the old lease on the dock lapsed, it should have no longer been available for commercial use. Above Alaska Aviation then tried to find a way to access Fish Lake, which already has a number of commercial floatplanes based on it. With no lease or ownership on private land, and with the borough designating a substantial portion of the shoreline as parkland, options are limited. Haag says that attempts to find other legal means of access were difficult.
“This is basically what it’s left—I’ve tried to work with the [Talkeetna] Community Council, and this is where it’s left us. We’re fighting to stay in business.”
Now, Drew Haag has applied for a permit to access the shore via a section line easement. The borough granted that permit. He also needs a permit from the state Department of Natural Resources to build the dock on a navigable waterway.
The landowners on either side of the section line easement are not happy with that plan. Jerry Sousa owns one of the adjacent lots on the shoreline. He says the dock, if permitted, would interfere with the use of his property.
“In our golden years, our retirement plan is to set up little rental floatplane slips to offset our supplemental income with our retirement. If you put that dock out there, you’re blocking my right to set up personal floatplane slips to lease out to private owners or whoever I want.”
According to Jeff Green, who is handling the permit at DNR, permission from the upland owner is not required by statute in a case like this, but it is the department’s policy to ask for it. In a letter dated May 4th, Green told Drew Haag that the department could not allow the placement of the dock “in a section line or elsewhere along the shoreline without consent of the affected upland owner.” The letter also states that the application would be closed if permission were not received by June 4th. At the council meeting, Jerry Sousa says the fact that the application process continued is confusing.
“And now, here we are having a comment period, so I’m confused. I’m the directly affected upland owner. He does not have my permission, nor will he probably ever get it.”
A number of people spoke at the meeting regarding the dock permit. Many say they want to make sure that public access along the easement is maintained, since access routes to Fish Lake are rather limited. Some, like Chamber of Commerce President Beth Valentine, says that the situation represents a potential loophole, but that it is still a legal means to attempt to access the lake.
“I feel like, as a business member, [Drew Haag] has the right to pursue any avenue available to him that he can get a permit for. If it’s going to be against the law, no it’s not going to go through. But, if it’s available to him, doesn’t he have the right to go through these permits?”
The precedent of the permit was discussed in more than one context, and the discussion got heated at points, with Council Chair Whitney Wolff bringing the meeting back to order more than once.
Local businessman Sassan Mossanen says that, while he believes that the landowners’ objections in this case should be sufficient to stop the permit application by Above Alaska Aviation, there should be other avenues to conduct commercial business on area lakes.
“It’s about shaping the future of Talkeetna and how we want to approach it, and if you want to be able to get a floatplane operation, I’d like to see the future of that succeed in Talkeetna.”
After over an hour of conversation, the Talkeetna Community Council voted four-to-one to comment to DNR opposing Above Alaska Aviation’s permit application. The comment period ended the next day, and the application will now go through an adjudication process. Jeff Green with DNR says that the longest that business and property owners will have to wait for an answer on whether the dock will be permitted is about six weeks.
