State to convey over 2,000 acres to the Haines Borough

Over 2,000 acres of land south of Haines will come under borough ownership next month. Borough administrators have been waiting ten years to get the land conveyed from the state.

At a meeting Tuesday, interim Borough Manager Alekka Fullerton announced that the state will transfer several parcels of land that it owns within the boundaries of the Haines Borough. 

“We have received confirmation from the Department of Natural Resources that they have conveyed 2,196 acres to the Haines Borough. It will take 31 days in fact to convey it,” Fullerton said. “That was really good news. We have been waiting since 2010 to get those municipal entitlements conveyed to us.”

The 2,000 acres are broken up into 5 parcels. The largest is a 1,400-acre swath of land west of Lincoln Island in the Lynn Canal. The other parcels are in Excursion Inlet. 

Municipal entitlement lands are intended to provide newly formed boroughs with land to develop public facilities and use for other purposes such as recreation, private development and habitat. The state awarded Haines 2,800 acres of municipal entitlement land in 1978, and the borough received an additional land allotment of 3,000 acres in 2010. The Haines Borough is entitled to nearly 6,000 acres of state land, but it hasn’t yet reached that quota even with this latest transfer. 

Fullerton recommended the assembly schedule a meeting to discuss future selections. 

“We have the opportunity to choose more land, and I suggest that we should do so,” Fullerton said.

The state didn’t transfer all the land that was requested by the borough. The Alaska Department of Natural Resources rejected its request for about 300 acres of land in William Henry Bay. Interim manager Fullerton also said the Department of Natural Resources postponed considering an additional 1,300 acres of land requested by the borough. 

“It may be that those are ultimately conveyed to the Haines Borough, but it also may be that that is part of what I have reported in the manager’s report about the landless communities in Southeast Alaska. We believe there is some overlap in those two programs.”

A coalition of 5 native communities in Southeast Alaska that were not included in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act are working to take ownership of lands in the Lynn Canal. Over the years there have been several attempts to introduce federal legislation to allow that to happen, but no bills have been passed. 

Some of the land selected for conveyance by Alaska Natives living in Haines lies near some parcels that the Haines Borough had been pursuing. However, According to Haines Borough Lands assessor Dean Olson, there does not appear to be any overlap between the land selections.