The Haines borough assembly attended a workshop about the Porcupine road project. The project recently lost its funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the borough may be on the hook for the work that has already been done.
The newly elected members of the Haines borough assembly are busy catching up on the issues they will have to make decisions on. Last Thursday they attended a workshop about the Porcupine road rebuilding project. The session provided an opportunity for the new leaders to question borough staff and the engineer overseeing the project.
The road sustained some damage in the 2020 storm event, and the borough applied for assistance from FEMA. The agency agreed to fund repairs on the road, and the borough contracted Southeast Road Builders to complete the first phase of the work, at a cost of $1.4 million. But recently FEMA walked back its commitment, leaving open the question of who will pay for that work. Mayor Tom Morphet opened the workshop with a confirmation of the news.
Morphet:: “We just got word verbally from FEMA that it seems they are currently de-obligating their funding for work that we did this past summer, for various reasons that we don’t have yet, we haven’t been provided that documentation, we just have that information verbally, and we are waiting for a written explanation of that decision.”
The project is controversial and, like so often in Haines, opponents’ objections revolve around the Palmer Project, the proposed mine in the Chilkat watershed. The porcupine road is the access road to the Palmer Project, and mine workers are the main users of the road.
Critics point out that the borough requested as much FEMA funding for the Porcupine road repairs as for all other damage incurred in town during the storm event. They say using federal funds to fix what is essentially an access road for a private company amounts to corporate welfare, and they question the ethics of applying for emergency funds that could be needed in other parts of the country.
Morphet asked about the scope of the project.
Morphet: “It just seems like what we were asking from FEMA went way beyond repairs due to the 2020 landslides. And it seems like there is evidence that the 2020 landslide damage to the road was not particularly significant..”
Borough Facilities Manager Ed Coffland explained the borough’s argument to FEMA.
Coffland: “The initial damage on Porcupine road was two or three different landslide areas where the road had slid out, and actually slid out all the way down to the river a couple hundred feet below. And those are visible on photographs that were taken the day or two after the event had actually occurred. And so that’s why FEMA listed it as a damaged site.”
Coffland says more damage was found in the spring when the snow cleared. He talked about why FEMA funds were requested for damage that happened months after the flood event. He said in August, they noticed some additional damage. He says he then went through the snowpack records kept by the weather service..
Coffland: “It clearly indicates that during that three day storm event, there was a huge increase in the water content and in the snow pack. And that same volume of excess snow carried on throughout the year.
Coffland say all that snow melted late in the season, in a relatively short period .
Coffland: “And so, we made the case to FEMA that that snowpack that had built up on those two or three or four days there during December of 2020, actually caused all the excess damage because of the excess runoff in the spring.”
Assembly member Kevin Forster said he worked at the Palmer Project over ten years ago, and often saw flood damage to the road.
Forster: “And I remember at that time that every year the roads washed out. And I feel there was moderate contention over using borough funds to continuously fix the road at the time, and I remember roadbuilders would come out and grade it and put a bunch of effort in fixing it every year. I kind of lost track between 2011 and 2018, but at least since 2018, it seems like it washes out every year.”
Forster said the 2020 event may have provided the perfect excuse to fix a chronic problem with emergency federal funds.
Forster: “It feels like when this event happened, we thought this could be an opportunity to, one, fix it better, and then potentially move it up a little bit out of that flood plain and keep this from happening every year, and really improve this thing,and turn it into a really nice road.”
Participants asked staff why FEMA pulled its support from the project. Garret Gladsjo is an engineer who was contracted by the borough to manage the project. He said shifting leadership at the agency is likely one element.
Gladsjo: “We’ve had I think we are on our third cycle of FEMA representatives we are working with, so there has been quite a bit of turnover at the funding agency, so conversations and understandings that may have been in place, for example the understanding that the snow pack was what contributed to the damages in the spring, probably has gotten lost with FEMA in the last two years.”
Gladsjo said another element is environmental impacts from what is called connected actions.
Gladsjo: “What FEMA considers a connected action is, regardless of who is paying for it, regardless of the work being performed, if you have a FEMA damage site and somebody comes in there and does work, that is a connected action.”
Gladsjo says even if the work doesn’t involve FEMA, the agency considers the connected actions in its environmental review. He says some work has been performed that falls into this category.
Gladsjo: “There was a third party who performed work prior to the phase one, in which they placed fill and raised the road near the three mile wash out.”
Gladsjo refers to work Constantine, who owns the Palmer Project, did to the road. The company did more work in the fall of 2022.
Gladsjo: “The road at three miles was again washing out, there had been attempts to temporarily stabilize it by adding more material, moving the road slightly inland, and so in that area there was some material placed in Waters Of The US to stabilize the roadway along there. There was a fish habitat permit obtained from Fish and Game, and approval to do that, I’m not sure what other type of approval FEMA may have felt was needed for that.”
Gladsjo says this work may be one cause of FEMA’s withdrawal. Assembly members asked if the work had been cleared with the borough, and deplored that FEMA had not been consulted.
Borough Manager Annette Kreitzer said she checked with the borough attorney when Constantine approached her.
Kreitzer: “Yeah, we gave them permission, based on the advice of our attorney, that they had to do the work up to borough standards.”
The exact cause of FEMA’s withdrawal has not been determined yet. FEMA may have taken issue with the connected actions, or some aspect of the work that was completed as part of the approved work. The borough is waiting for a formal letter from the agency.
Kreitzer: “There was verbal announcement that FEMA was determining that our application is ineligible for reimbursement because work beyond the approved scope was completed without FEMA environmental compliance review. FEMA will provide a termination memo in the next few weeks.”
FEMA officials declined to attend the assembly workshop, and the borough has little hope of recouping the $1.4 million that have already been spent. Once borough officials find the content of the termination memo, they will decide whether to appeal the agency’s decision.
