The Haines Borough has received multiple complaints regarding commercial helicopters using the temporary heliport at 26 Mile. Complaints and borough responses are posted on the borough website.
In response to eyewitness testimony, it appears the borough expended great efforts to disprove citizens’ observations, rather than to fairly evaluate which of our laws were broken, when, and by whom.
Examination of data shows Southeast Alaska Backcountry Adventures helicopters consistently violated flight rules, state law, and conditions of their conditional use permit and commercial ski permit.
SEABA helicopters never attempted to attain their required minimum flight elevation. Instead, they skimmed the ground contours from heliport to mountaintop, subjecting wildlife below to dangerous sound pressure. This kept their “cone of sound” artificially contained, invalidating a $42,000 noise study, and cheating citizens of honest results we paid for. Rather than enforce compliance to its laws, the Haines Borough responded with skewed maps, incomplete data, incorrect metrics, charts with bad math, upside-down legal logic, and (not surprisingly) came to erroneous conclusions.
Citizens are left to wonder: If this is an example of ineptness, which highly paid officer authored these documents? If this is an example of corruption, might this constitute fraud?
If you wish to do the math yourself, start with the fact that their maps are in meters, not feet (as they claim). Look at the helicopter drop-off points if it is still not clear. If they were actually dropping clients off at 1,500 feet, this winter they would have had no snow to ski on.
Nicholas Szatkowski