Committee hears bill to let Anchorage maintain Canyon Road through Chugach State Park

Senate Bill 47, presented to the Alaska House Transportation Committee on March 20, 2025, would authorize an easement allowing the Municipality of Anchorage to maintain a short, currently unmaintained section of Canyon Road that crosses Chugach State Park and provides access to the Rabbit Lake and Flat Top trailheads.

The proposal matters to Anchorage residents and visitors because Chugach State Park is the state's most visited park, drawing about 1,500,000 visitors annually, and the park fee station generates nearly $600,000 a year, Senator Kathy Giesel, majority leader, told the committee. "The Glen Alps Flat Top access point actually brings in . . . $117,000 of that income per year," Giesel said, describing the road section in state parkland as narrow, with poor drainage and steep slopes.

The bill is intended to address one intermediate segment of Canyon Road that passes through state parkland, then municipal land, then parkland again. Giesel and Paige Brown, legislative aide to Senator Giesel, said the municipality cannot perform grading, winter plowing or small improvements on that park-owned segment without a change in the legal authority the bill would provide. "Until this legislation is passed, none of that $4,000,000 is eligible to be spent in Chugach State Park land. It's only able to be spent in municipal land," Brown said, referring to a $4 million bond Anchorage voters approved for Canyon Road improvements.

Committee members pressed for details about scope and statutory responsibility. Co-chair Representative Kerrick asked whether the $4 million bond could be used on the park section without the bill; Brown replied it could not. Representative McCabe asked whether adding the easement would expand the Department of Transportation's maintenance responsibilities. Brown and Senator Giesel noted that existing statute already assigns some road-maintenance responsibility in Chugach State Park to DOT and that the draft moves that language; they said the bill focuses on the narrow easement and not on adding new park roads to DOT's duties.

Ricky Giese, director of the Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation, and Christopher Orman, assistant attorney general in the Department of Law's Natural Resources section, participated online and answered technical questions about maintenance responsibilities and statute. Giese offered to provide the committee a written list of other state parks or park roads that DOT currently maintains.

Roger Marks of the Glen Alps Road Service Area board of supervisors was listed as invited testimony but the committee was unable to connect him by phone during this meeting.

No formal action or vote on SB 47 occurred at this session. The committee recessed further consideration to a continuation meeting. The committee scheduled public testimony and continued consideration of Senate Bill 47 for the House Transportation Committee meeting on March 25, 2025, at 1:00 p.m. in Room 124; the committee also noted it would meet March 27 to discuss House Bill 26, the Statewide Public and Community Transit Plan.