Planning commissioners approved a new resource extraction ordinance and abandoned a vote on an amendment that would have added major resource extraction to the Mud Bay rural residential zone as a conditional use, but did allow it in Lutak.
The amendment came during a public hearing at the planning commission last month for an updated resource extraction ordinance that changes where resource extraction is allowed, how it’s defined and limits the quantity of resources a property owner can extract based on their lot size. The draft ordinance breaks down resource extraction into two categories: major and minor. Minor resource extraction allows the owner of a one-acre lot to remove 15,000 board feet of timber or 1,000 cubic yards of material such as gravel beyond their property during any three-year period. Those amounts change depending on the lot size.
“In Lutak and Mud Bay, there are changes (to the status quo),” borough planner Holly Smith told the planning commission last month. “In Lutak, where commercial logging is already allowed, we suspect that it would be fine to have major resource extraction allowed as a conditional use. In Mud Bay, that was much more difficult.”
Last May when the University of Alaska proposed a timber sale in the Mud Bay rural residential zone, many of the area’s residents opposed such a harvest in a residential area. The university notified the borough of the sale when the commission began discussing changing its definition of resource extraction when a Mud Bay property owner wanted to sell timber from his property.
“We heard a lot of testimony, over a year of testimony, with the majority of people saying they do not think that major resource extraction should be allowed in that zone,” Smith said. “They also think it goes against the intent of that zone which is residential in nature.”
The draft ordinance prohibits major resource extraction in the Mud Bay rural residential zone as a conditional use. Commissioner Donnie Turner made an amendment to allow such extraction as a conditional use, an amendment he said would treat large landowners more fairly.
Commission chair Rob Goldberg said he wanted to keep major resource extraction out of Mud Bay, and asked Turner why he wasn’t advocating for a conditional use permit in other residential areas. “If you go ahead and say I want resource extraction major to be allowed in Mud Bay, why aren’t you calling for it to be allowed in single residential and multiple residential, too,” Goldberg asked. “There are large tracts of land in those zones also. Why are you singling out Mud Bay?”
Turner said the residential area in Mud Bay is small compared to the entire land mass in the area, and that there is land that could be logged that wouldn’t affect the residential property owners. He also said preventing such extraction would lower property values.
Commissioner Sylvia Heinz said she was split on the motion, because a conditional use permit would allow flexibility in the long term. “There’s 15,000 acres out there in Mud Bay, but only 700 acres are currently developed…We don’t know what the community is going to want in 30 years,” Heinz said. “Right now, I cannot see how a conditional use permit could pass for major resource extraction in the Mud Bay area because there’s so much opposition.”
Commissioner Diana Lapham agreed with providing for a conditional use permit, saying it would allow for more flexibility.
“Every situation is going to be a custom fit. Not everything fits into the A-hole, perfectly,” Lapham said in a garbled statement that eased the tenor of the debate.
Turner eventually withdrew his motion because he said the assembly was likely to reject the ordinance anyway, and he didn’t want to spend any more time on the discussion. “It’s not going to pass the assembly anyway, so I think we’re wasting our time to a certain point,” Turner said. “This assembly is going to throw it away.”
Lapham agreed. “If he’s withdrawn the motion, as far as I’m concerned, the topic’s dead,” Lapham said. “And he’s right, it won’t even pass the assembly. They’ll chew it up and spit it out.”
The assembly will consider the draft ordinance at its Jan. 22 meeting.