Last week the Haines Borough Planning Commission made a recommendation to the assembly to allow major resource extraction in residential areas with a conditional use permit.

A dozen people turned up for Tuesday night’s assembly meeting to share their thoughts on the issue.

For two years, the Haines Borough planning commission has been trying to figure out how to regulate resource extraction in residential areas of the borough. While some landowners want to be able to harvest trees and extract gravel on their land, many feel it would have a negative impact on adjacent properties where homes have been built.

At a meeting Tuesday, Assemblyman Tom Morphet addressed frustrations about the lengthy public process that has yet to result in a clear set of rules for resource extraction.

“It’s an explosive issue because it pits the rights of individuals trying to make money against the rights of people who have invested everything into their property, into their home,” Morphet said.

Recently, the planning commission recommended the borough allow conditional use permits for major resource extraction. This would allow residents and non-resident landowners to extract more than 30,000 board feet of timber and 1,500 cubic yards of gravel over a three year period. The proposal has seen a backlash from dozens of Mud Bay residents.

Rob Goldberg lives in Mud Bay and sits on the planning commission. At the assembly meeting Tuesday, he said that homeowners in Mud Bay bought land there specifically because it was protected from resource extraction.

“Residential zoning protects a homeowners investment by ensuring that you will not be impacted by industrial uses,” Goldberg said. “I do not think that these hundreds of residents who have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars or decades of sweat equity into their homes will sit idly by when they realize that the borough assembly has suddenly changed 33 years of established zoning code to allow gravel mining on a lot next to them.”

The planning commission decided to recommend allowing major resource extraction at a meeting two weeks ago when Goldberg was absent. He says major resource extraction would contradict the zoning of Mud Bay. It is defined as a rural residential area intended for single-family dwelling and cottage industries. However, there is currently nothing in code that expressly prohibits resource extraction.

Several Mud Bay residents have criticized the borough’s conditional use permit process. Laurie Dadourian suggested that it would not be a barrier to large scale resource extraction.

“The planning commission almost always grants conditional use permits, so this amendment would in effect open up resource extraction in Mud Bay.”

While the majority of people who spoke at the meeting Tuesday favored restricting resource extraction in Mud Bay, several spoke in favor of opening the area up for logging and mining.

The Alaska Mental Health Trust owns 750 acres of land in Mud Bay. David Griffin, a land manager with the trust, said that prohibiting major resource extraction would prevent the trust from generating revenue on that land.

Roger Schnabel spoke out against requiring a conditional use permit to harvest timber on 150 acres of land he purchased in Mud Bay nearly twenty years ago.

“I purchased, in essence, the timber values with the piece of property with the intent of developing it and using the timber to recover the costs of development,” Schnabel said. “Mr.Goldberg, he’s right on target. He’s on target when he states people invested in this area. They have a right to be able to recover from that investment, and I’ve done no differently.”

Mud Bay resident Sylvia Heinz has been a proponent of major resource extraction by conditional use permit. There is a gravel pit located on her property that she would like to make use of. She defended the permitting process as an effective tool to ensure the type and scale of resource extraction would not cause conflict.

“The conditional use process can allow us to regulate on a case by case basis to lower impacts for all residents. I think we need to audit the process, fix the process and use the process to regulate resource extraction in Mud Bay,” Heinz said.

Ultimately the assembly voted to send the ordinance to the Government Affairs and Services Committee for review.

The committee will discuss the issue further during its meeting in April.

Corrections: A previous version of this story indicated that the resource extraction regulations only applied to Mud Bay. The regulations apply to the entire borough but have seen resistance from Mud Bay residents. The story also incorrectly stated that Rob Goldberg chairs the Haines Borough Planning Commission. Don Turner III is the chair of the planning commission. In addition, the date of the Government Affairs and Services Committee meeting has been corrected.