Wendie Marriott and Bern Savikko lost their house — and a forested acre with a Lynn Canal view — in the Beach Road landslide two years ago. Now the state has granted them a new plot of land.
Citing a little-known statute, officials at the Alaska Department of Natural Resources (DNR) approved a land swap with Marriott and Savikko on Oct. 25. In exchange for their Beach Road property, Marriott and Savikko received an undeveloped acre on Prince of Wales Island.
“We totally lucked out,” Savikko said. “I’m very happy with what happened. But I’m very saddened that others in a similar position were not able to take advantage of (the land swap). I really wish the program would have been able to help others that were in a similar position to us.”
The land swap program — which the state had applied to only two disasters in its history before the December 2020 storm — has strict eligibility requirements. Although about 10 properties were directly hit by the massive Beach Road slide, the state deemed only three eligible for a swap.
The state received two applications for an exchange and approved only one, as outlined in a final decision by the Alaska Division of Mining, Land and Water.
Two provisions in the statute, which is officially called “Grants of Land After National Disaster,” restrict eligibility. To qualify, the land in question must have been rendered completely “unusable” by a natural disaster, and it has to have had a residential structure on it with a mortgage fully paid off.
The state denied an application for a property that is owned by Todd Blum, whose primary address on Haines Borough Parcel Viewer is in Sacramento, California. The majority of that 0.72-acre was in the direct path of the landslide, but the state denied Blum’s application because the property didn’t have a structure on it before the slide. (Blum could not be reached by press time.)
The other two lots that the state deemed eligible are owned by Jeffrey Messano, whose house was ripped off its foundation and severely damaged by the slide, and the family of David Simmons, who died in the disaster.
At an August meeting with DNR representatives, several residents voiced disappointment in the program’s stringent requirements. “I’m finding it a hard pill to swallow that there is not going to be any compensation for that property, and to hear that there’s not any recourse. I’m flummoxed and upset,” said Moira O’Malley, who owns a waterfront property on Beach Road that was buried by the slide but doesn’t qualify for the state swap because it didn’t have a house on it.
Marriott and Savikko initially were split on whether they wanted to apply for the program. What swayed them was learning that the borough likely wouldn’t allow them to develop their property in the slide path.
Planner Dave Long said the borough had been waiting for the state’s determination before allowing development in the slide area.
“It’s a really touchy area for the borough to deem a property useless,” Long said. He said DNR’s conclusion that Marriott and Savikko’s property was “unusable” made it unlikely for the borough to permit improvements on it.
Knowing he wouldn’t be able to develop the lot, Savikko said he came around to the land swap idea. He researched the 15 parcels that the state had made available — none in Haines because all of the state’s land here is locked up in the state forest, bald eagle preserve and parks.
Land granted by the state “must be of equal size, or value, or of equal utility to the land that is rendered unusable,” according to the statute and DNR’s decision. Equal in value means the land’s assessed value “must be within 10% of the 2020 Haines Borough assessed land value,” and equal in size means within 0.10 acres of the land rendered unusable, the decision said.
Savikko and Marriott narrowed their choice down to parcels equal in value near Sitka and equal in size near Hollis on Prince of Wales Island. They chose the latter because it had better access and could be more appealing to potential buyers; the land near Sitka could be reached only by boat or helicopter.
“This was kind of nerve-wracking for us because we don’t ever do real estate transactions sight unseen,” Marriott said.
The couple’s plan is to sell the Princes of Wales lot and invest proceeds into land they recently bought on Beach Road, just a few lots down from their old house. Both Savikko and Marriott said they were happy the program worked out the way it did for them but that they have mixed emotions.
“I’m kind of relieved for us. But I’m just bummed that it sounds like it’s only us,” Marriott said.
Borough staff sent a letter in September to property owners affected by the December 2020 storm requesting information that would help determine who might be eligible for disaster-related buy-outs through two FEMA grant programs. Borough staff are still deciding whether and how to move forward with applications.
As with the state’s land swap program, the FEMA programs have strict eligibility requirements, such as being current on mortgages.
“Any disaster relief programs, whether at the federal or state level, are limited by their enabling statutes. We cannot shape these programs into something they are not. As we have learned, these programs have severe limitations,” borough manager Annette Kreitzer wrote in her letter to affected residents.