Borough Assembly repeals wetland mitigation measure

At their regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday night, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly passed a controversial Resolution to repeal a previous Resolution that the Assembly had passed in August of 2019.

Resolution 19-074, which passed a little over fifteen months ago, tasked Borough agencies with developing provisions for wetland mitigation on Borough owned land.  The provisions would have only applied to large-scale development projects that impacted salmon habitat in the Borough.

It was determined in 2019, that the US Army Corp of Engineers was creating a minimal baseline for protecting fish habitat, leaving further protections up to local government.  Since the Mat-Su Borough had expressed a commitment to protecting salmon and the sport fisheries that depend on it, the 2019 resolution was created and passed.

Since that time, Borough staff has worked, through a public process, to identify which large-scale projects might adversely impact local salmon habitat, and how to mitigate potential damage.  According to a Borough staff member, the process was 90% complete and they were prepared to bring their work to the Planning Commission in early January.

But at Tuesday’s meeting, a new resolution was introduced to repeal the effort, and this resolution mandated that Borough staff “direct efforts elsewhere”.

Multiple people testified against repealing the original resolution at Tuesday’s meeting.  According to Assembly Member Tam Boeve, who voted against the repeal, close to thirty people wrote in to support the wetland protection work.

Most of the objections to repealing the 2019 directive, centered around the fact that valuable work has been done, and the work should be brought to completion.

Previous Assembly member, Jim Sykes reminded the Assembly that their advisory groups, the Fish and Wildlife Commission and the Board of Fish both support the wetland mitigation project.

Assembly Member, Jim Hale objected to the way the resolution to repeal the effort was introduced, appearing in the consent agenda instead of being put out for public comment.  He described it as “Shortcutting the public process.”

According to Assemblyman Jesse Sumner, who introduced the measure, “The only way this can possibly protect wetlands is that it makes projects un-economical.  It makes no sense to kill projects that create jobs at this time.” Despite the extensive testimony in favor of seeing the Borough wetland mitigation efforts continue, the Assembly voted 4-3 to adopt the new resolution, thus stopping the wetland mitigation efforts, and mandating that Brough staff direct their efforts elsewhere.