Haines Borough code prohibits residents from keeping more than two unregistered vehicles on their property, yet hundreds of unusable, discarded cars are lying around Haines.
There is little enforcement in part, borough staff say, because there is no place in Haines to dispose of vehicles.
“It’s really difficult to find a barge even to take them,” said Ed Coffland, the borough’s public facilities director. “I’m not sure there are any companies right now that are willing to come here and do that.”
The borough is trying to acquire or lease a state-owned parcel near Lutak Dock to use as a scrap yard. The Haines Borough Assembly amended the 2022 budget on Tuesday to allocate $70,000 to prepare the storage site for use.
In the past, the borough collected unwanted cars for $50 at the public works shop on Union Street, where staff removed tires and batteries, drained the vehicles of fluid and crushed them. “It really makes it difficult to operate for us with a big pile of junk cars,” Coffland said, adding that the borough receives calls “almost every day” from people wanting to dispose of vehicles.
Barge companies have sent ships to Haines no more than once or twice a year to collect the junk. When a barge wasn’t available, the borough historically would ship cars out on Alaska Marine Lines to sell at a salvage yard in Washington, but “it’s not a money-making deal,” Coffland said. The borough usually spent more on shipping than it made from scrap sales.
A Hamilton Construction barge came to Haines in June from Skagway but retrieved only metal that had piled up since the summer of 2019, the last time the borough coordinated a disposal drive. “I think we shipped out 140 cars,” Coffland said, adding “it’s extremely difficult to coordinate barges and that it took three tries to get the Hamilton ship into the dock.”
Haines residents pay a $22 tax when they register a vehicle. That money, which usually amounts to about $27,000 a year, goes into a fund allocated for junk car disposal. The 2022 budget predicts the fund’s bottom line will be $12,237.
Borough planner Dave Long said he has sent out multiple letters in recent months to people who either have accrued “a junkyard level of nuisance on their property” or have abandoned vehicles in the public right-of-way, but so far he has refrained from administering fines in an attempt first to educate residents.
“Citizens need to be educated, or re-educated, that this rule exists,” Long wrote in an email to the CVN. Vehicles strewn in the public right-of-way can impair emergency response and snow removal. The lack of proper disposal and a collection site have hampered enforcement, Long said.
Bigfoot Auto Service has accepted junk vehicles in the past, for a fee, but their pile grew and grew. “You can’t get rid of them,” said Brian Clay, a Bigfoot employee. The business temporarily stopped acquiring vehicles to clean up the junkyard but still has eight to 10 vehicles that didn’t fit on the last barge out of Haines, Clay said, adding that Bigfoot will accept cars case by case and for a to-be-determined fee.
Scrapping metal is also a challenge for other Southeast Alaskan rural communities, which have had varied success with junk car disposal programs.
Like Haines, the Wrangell Borough has very limited space for collecting scrap metal. “It has been a huge challenge for us, and there really are not a lot of good options,” said Tom Wetor, Wrangell’s public works director. Wrangell has relied on barges for scrap metal collection but, as in Haines, timing can be inconsistent.
“We kind of hold on to them, and we have quite a stack of them,” Wetor said, estimating that there are currently about 40 junk cars at Wrangell’s waste transfer station. Wetor said the borough still accepts vehicles on a case-by-case basis but Wrangell’s disposal fee is about six times more than Haines’ $50 charge.
The Petersburg Borough appears to have a more-or-less successful system in place. The borough collects and stages scrap metal near their municipal landfill and ships it out on barges that have been more reliable for them than for Wrangell or Haines. Petersburg’s public works director Chris Cotta said they can store up to 300 tons of scrap metal, significantly more than Haines can fit at its public works facility. Customers in Petersburg have to process vehicles themselves or pay a fee in addition to the $75 disposal charge.
“We have a functioning program. It’s not perfect, but we’re pretty happy with the way it works, for the most part,” Cotta said.
For both Wrangell and Haines, a lack of space seems to be the largest obstacle to proper disposal — although, as Haines resident Joe Parnell remarked, “There’s plenty of space in the new harbor parking lot.”
Parnell recently reported junk cars on Alaska Indian Arts property to the borough.