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Officials, residents weigh Matanuska River gravel extraction as erosion control
Summary
Borough staff reviewed decades of studies on Matanuska River erosion and past gravel-extraction proposals; residents and industry urged exploration of winter extraction and public–private partnerships, while staff and the Army Corps’ prior work say long-term maintenance, permitting and costs make extraction uncertain.
Alex Strahan, the borough’s planning director, told a joint meeting of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly and Planning Commission that the Matanuska River is a state-managed navigable water and that proposals to extract gravel to address erosion have a long, mixed history.
Strahan summarized studies dating to the 1950s and said the Army Corps of Engineers and other analyses in recent decades repeatedly found gravel extraction would require large up-front work and recurring annual maintenance. “If you want it to stay there, you have to keep doing it every year,” he said, noting a 1992 U.S. Army Corps cost estimate that would translate into hundreds of millions over a multi-decade horizon.
The technical and regulatory hurdles drew questions…
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