Borough planner Holly Smith and residents on both sides of the aisle asked the Haines Borough Assembly to hold off adopting an ordinance that would allow small-scale resource extraction in the Mud Bay zoning district until concerns are worked through.
On Tuesday, the assembly referred a resource extraction draft ordinance, approved by the planning commission, to the Government Affairs and Services committee for refining.
Smith asked the assembly for a couple more months to address administrative errors in the draft, public feedback and a pending complementary ordinance on site development.
On Feb. 26, the planning commission voted 4-1 to amend the resource extraction draft ordinance and allow conditional use permitting for property owners seeking to develop their land commercially.
The proposed amendment comes at the end of the planning commission’s nearly two-year process to define major and minor resource extraction and designate allowed uses. The efforts began in May 2017.
Commissioners worked with the public to define minor resource extraction as 30,000 board feet of timber or 1,500 cubic yards of gravel removed from a three-acre property over three years. Major resource extraction is defined by volume larger than that.
After four public workshops and 10 public hearings, the majority of public comments are against major resource extraction in the Mud Bay zone.
“The planning commission’s recommendation contradicts public testimony and contradicts borough code,” Rob Goldberg, a Mud Bay resident, said at the assembly meeting.
On Tuesday, seven Mud Bay landowners spoke against large-scale resource extraction under conditional use; while four supported it.
Liz Cornejo, president of the Haines Miners Association, said the miners would like to see the planning commissions conditional use permitting process included in the ordinance. “A total prohibition of major resource extraction would restrict business opportunity,” Cornejo said.
David Griffin, resource manager for the Alaska Mental Health Trust office, said the code change would prohibit the state agency from developing their 750 acres within the Mud Bay Rural Residential Zone, and its subsurface mineral rights.
Smith told the assembly that subsurface extraction can’t be regulated by the borough, since mineral rights are state owned, which will be an amendment to the proposal.
Assembly member Tom Morphet called resource extraction a “complicated and explosive issue” and said, “It’s going to take a lot more time to get to the bottom of it.”
The Government Affairs and Services committee will discuss the resource extraction ordinance in March. The meeting date is undetermined.