Anchorage Daily News
Published: April 4, 2006
The federal government has killed the proposed extension of Anchorage's coastal trail south to Potter Marsh.
After nine years of study, the project lacked the necessary endorsement from state and local decision-makers, said David Miller, Alaska chief for the Federal Highway Administration.
"Projects can be restarted," Miller said. "But for the time being, we certainly can't advance a project that is not supported by local decision-makers."
Miller signed a decision in favor of "no action" Thursday and released it publicly Monday.
The Tony Knowles Coastal Trail runs mostly near the shore or along the coastal bluff, 11 miles from downtown to Kincaid Park. The proposal was to continue the trail an additional 14 miles from Kincaid to Potter Marsh, at an estimated cost of $26.5 million.
Thousands became involved in a communitywide argument over whether to build the southern extension. In opposition stood those who felt it was a waste of money or the wrong priority, those worried about disturbing wildlife, and those who felt it was flat-out wrong to forcibly buy pieces of any homeowner's property for a trail.
Supporters said the extension would become a world-class community asset. In the course of a few days in 2002, more than 2,000 signed petitions backing a new trail along the coastline.
Mayor Mark Begich pushed to get the trail approved and spent months trying to engineer compromises to make the project acceptable to more people.
He's disappointed, he said, and feels that the community will need to reassess the project's worthiness.
"There's pieces of this that are not controversial" and could still go, he said. "The ones that are controversial are dead right now."
Two local government bodies did not support the project: the Anchorage Assembly and AMATS, the state-local committee that oversees transportation projects in Anchorage. AMATS is composed of two Assembly members, the mayor, and two state officials.
The Assembly voted 7-3 against the extension in November.
A majority on the AMATS committee voted in December to delete the project from Anchorage's long-range transportation plan, saying it cost too much, would take federal money from other trail projects, and would require taking private property from people who live on the route.
The state Department of Transportation, which initially favored the southern extension, had also turned against it, based primarily on the opposition of AMATS, said state project manager Jim Childers.
Attorney Jeff Parker, who represented Friends of Potter Marsh and the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge and also some individuals, said the trail would have been a huge earth-moving project.
Regarding Miller's decision, he said: "What it amounts to is a major victory for wildlife, fish and game, property owners, the Assembly, and for AMATS. I think it is a defeat for those who tried to personalize the opposition as simply a few selfish NIMBYs."
Parker said the trail was originally envisioned as being on top of the bluff, which would have had less effect on coastal wildlife. It was a mistake to move parts of it to the tidelands below, he said.
Dave Norton, a leader of Friends of the Coastal Trail, said the project had broad community support but unfortunately got caught up in politics among the Assembly, the mayor, the governor and the Legislature.
National trails advocate Troy Duffin told business people at the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce on Monday that developers and property owners Outside are fighting to get trails into their projects and neighborhoods, because they're seen as amenities and attract buyers, Norton said.
"At the same time he was giving his spiel, we're turning our back on it," he said.
The effect of the trail on the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge was long a point of contention. The Highway Administration in a February report said it intended to assert the trail would have only minimal effect on the refuge.
For the highway agency to make that decision, the state Department of Fish and Game would have to agree, under federal rules. The highway agency thought it had done so.
But in March the commissioner of Fish and Game told project officials the trail would hurt the refuge.
Commissioner McKie Campbell, in a letter, said Fish and Game had only agreed that plans for the trail to cross corners of the coastal refuge in two places would be OK, but that overall the department believes the trail would damage the refuge.
The final route report underestimated the effects of having a trail near the refuge, Campbell said in the letter.
Loons, grebes, snow geese, sandhill cranes, woodpeckers and other birds could be disturbed, according to a document backing up his letter.