Posts along Haines Highway intended to mitigate Bald Eagle habitat loss. (Jeremy Reed photo)

The mystery of the upside-down trees planted alongside the Haines Highway has been solved, plus crumbling culverts, a Mud Bay commercial events ban, and new funding to keep the pool open through most of the summer. KHNS’ Mike Swasey spoke with Chilkat Valley News reporter Max Graham for a look at the newspaper’s latest issue.

Swasey – Max, let’s start off with a massive, ongoing infrastructure project. What’s the latest happening on the Haines Highway?

Graham – Yeah, so in this week’s paper, we have two stories about the highway project, kind of two different aspects of it. One is about the dead tree stumps that had been planted on the river side of the highway between 13-mile and 16-mile, which have sort of befuddled motorists driving up and down the National Scenic Byway, through the Bald Eagle Preserve. 

They are part of the project’s bald eagle habitat loss replacement and mitigation work. So they were put in there as replacement bald eagle perches for cottonwood trees that were cut down during the construction of the road. But I still had lots of questions about the design and sort of why they’re located where they are. I talked to a bunch of different officials about it. And the bottom line is the origin of stumps is still a little bit mysterious.

Swasey – Oh, they’re mystery stumps, is what you’re saying.

Graham – They’re mystery stumps. 

Swasey – Okay. 

Graham – Yeah. It’s kind of one of those things where lots of different agencies had input. Lots of people are saying they’re not quite sure exactly who designed them. 

The other story we did on the highway is about concrete crumbling beneath the big culverts at 19-mile, and the landslide area there. As part of the project, the highway was raised up above the landslide area. In the past, that slide area had been discharging lots of debris over the highway. But it turns out, there are some issues with the concrete.

Swasey – Are those relatively new culverts then? 

Graham – Yeah, the culverts were built last year, (at) the 12.2 to 20-mile construction work, which is sort of being done right now.

Swasey – Do they have a plan to replace the crumbling culverts?

Graham – Right now DOT is evaluating why they’re crumbling and have said that once they have their evaluations finished, they’ll have a plan for repair.

Swasey – Moving on to the Mud Bay saga. For those people not in the know about it, the assembly, a couple of meetings ago, moved to eliminate any commercial events out at mud Bay.  Then they were like, well, maybe we shouldn’t have done that and they’ve reconsidered (the ban). What did they come up with?

Graham – It’s kind of an interesting technical issue here where the assembly actually voted three to two to reconsider the action to ban commercial events. One Assembly Member, Katie Kirby, had an excused absence. But even though they voted three to two, the reconsideration failed because the assembly needs four votes to pass a motion. So that ban on commercial events at Mud Bay holds. 

Swasey – And finally, also on Tuesday night at the latest assembly meeting, they passed a new budget. What are some of the highlights from the new budget?

Graham – Amendments to the budget would allocate extra funding to the pool, one would allocate extra funding to the Haines Sheldon Museum. The pool, with that funding, could stay open 11 months of the year and the museum could hire a professional curator position that they’ve said would help them stay accredited. So it’s about $35,000 in extra funds going to the pool and $60,000 extra going to the museum. And those funds are coming from Federal Coronavirus Aid. The assembly also directed $82,000 to nonprofits, so some money to the Haines Avalanche Center, some money to Becky’s Place, and some money to Southeast Alaska State Fair.

Swasey – Max Graham from The Chilkat Valley News. Thanks for giving us the lowdown on what’s coming up in the latest issue. I appreciate it.

Graham – Thank you, Mike.

The online version of the paper can be found at chilkatvalleynews.com.