Print version
 
Home   News   Events   Obituaries   Social   Sports   Letters   Weather

Butte flooding woes have residents riled
December 18, 2013
Recent flooding in Butte has area residents up in arms and feeling abandoned by Mat-Su and state officials. Pat Huddleston took this photo this morning, and says that with warming temperatures, water could cross the Glenn Highway today.
By Mike Weland

Residents in Butte woke up to a rare sight December 12 as rising waters from the Matanuska River crept into their yards. One home took on water, and crews spent much of the day digging trenches and filling sandbags to keep the frigid water at bay.

It's a problem some residents believe could have been resolved had borough officials only shown a bit of foresight. Today, they're watching floodwater rise again.

"I spent a lot of time with the Mat-Su Borough, getting nowhere," said Butte resident Larry Thorpe, a marine engineer who said he came close to brokering a deal that would have benefitted not only Butte, but flood prone areas state wide, only to see it fall apart due to borough recalcitrance at the 11th hour. "They're typical bureaucrats, they have no conception of others' grief, for which they are responsible."

Late last winter, Thorpe said, he agreed to use his contacts, built over more than 20 years dredging rivers and working flood control projects across the nation, to trade the $78-million M/V Susitna ferry, an expensive albatross around the borough's neck, for dredging equipment that could be used to alleviate flooding issues around the borough and the state.

Working with Custom Dredge Works, Topeka, Kansas, he said he found a buyer for the ferry and worked out a deal that would have paid the borough $6-million to pay off the borough's existing obligations on the ferry and brought the borough dredging equipment worth over $5-million custom built for use in Alaska.

"All the borough had to do was get in touch with the buyer to make payment arrangements," Thorpe said. "They never made the call."

The borough signed a purchase agreement in early May, but within days, the borough, saying they couldn't find information on the company and that the promised down payment hadn't been made, said it was considering a lawsuit for compensation for time lost.

"When I read that in the Frontiersman, I was more than a little POd," Thorpe said, "and I let the assembly know it."

Meanwhile, he said, the ferry sits, unused and costing borough taxpayers considerably, once again with no buyer in sight. He was asked in August to see if he could revive the deal, he said, but he refused, saying he would not again put his reputation on the line.

With the dredge, he said, the borough could have moved five to seven million cubic feet of the Matanuska on the Butte side where its eroding, and built a relief channel to accommodate 75% of the volume of spring melt water.

Instead, he said, the borough remains content to throw money at studies.

He said he had worked with the Army Corps of Engineers, whom he said agreed with his plan, but that the borough was more concerned with what it would have cost to operate the equipment.

"It would have made possible federal funds for land renourishment and erosion control," he said. "The assembly can't put their minds around what could be accomplished, they have no foresight, and people keep losing their homes to the river. The people of Butte are being treated like second class citizens, and the state is letting it happen. People are losing homes and those responsible are patting themselves on the back and telling themselves what a good job they're doing."

Now, he said, ice bands are forming, causing the river to flood even in winter.

Butte resident Pat Huddleston, the unofficial spokesperson and founder of the BUTTE FLOOD INFO MILE 13 TO 15 OLD GLENN HWY (she is partial to caps lock) on Facebook, warily keeps an eye on the river while tirelessly exhorting borough officials to accept and assume the responsibility it has for protecting its citizens.

"What is failed to be mentioned many times over from the Borough is that this whole ordeal is not so much the Rivers fault it is man's fault," she writes today. "The Lord put us on this earth to protect what we change and alter of his design.

"They (Borough) fail to mention the fact that when the Higher Government (STATE) gave the Lower Government the Borough the responsibility to manage and maintain areas in their jurisdiction to prevent harm to their residents, property and well being.

"The monies from the Emergency Funding in 1985/1986 from the studies of 1984 and previous which brought these funds to construct a dike system. The Borough was given the money, they went and met with land owners, land owners gave acreage of their land up in order to do the dike project, the Borough that the contractor to do the project.

"The money ran out after the project started at mile 16 and ended at mile 13.5 approximately. The Corps of Engineers shut down the project be fore it made it to the next section of bedrock. 'OUT OF MONEY.'

"The projected cost of maintenance that is stated yearly in every report hired out, studied, transcribed and printed in book form suggests the cost needed for yearly maintenance the Borough will need to save up for, request and adjust tax mil rates for yearly maintenance.

"They fail to mention this was put on the back burner, while other purchases, projects, and other areas of lucrative revenue generating areas were renewed, built up and maintained."
Comments? Click here to Email!