The Haines Borough Tourism Advisory Board (TAB) voted 4-1 on Oct. 28 to support the borough assembly’s proposed ordinance removing a limit on heliksi tour permits for one year.
The assembly introduced the ordinance on Oct. 26. There will be two public hearings, on Nov. 9 and Dec. 14., before the assembly votes on the code change.
The board’s discussion echoed several points that have been repeated at assembly and committee meetings over the last few months. Amid arguments from local operators and some residents about safety, environmental impacts and other issues that are unique to heliskiing, the board members in favor of changing code argued that heliskiing should be regulated like other tourism industries in which any operator can apply for a permit.
The board’s chair, Andy Hedden, cast the lone vote of opposition. Hedden said the borough’s decision to deny Stellar Adventure Travel a permit last year because there were already three permitted operators in good standing was “the code working as it was written, as it evolved over 20 years as a compromise.” Rewriting code reactively to meet Stellar’s request, Hedden worried, would further destabilize an industry that has rarely seen stability since it was established two decades ago.
TAB member Diana Lapham said that borough code is fluid and constantly needs to be revised. “It changes every meeting,” Lapham said, adding that she supports the assembly’s draft ordinance because she wants to see how the code changes play out.
Sean Gaffney, TAB member and president of Alaska Mountain Guides (AMG), one of the three current heliski tour operators, recused himself from the vote due to a conflict of interest but said his biggest concern with adding a fourth operator is safety. Another operator would lead to more helicopters, he said, and more helicopters could lead to more conflicts and safety risks.
When AMG applied for a third permit in 2011, the two permitted operators voiced similar safety concerns about allowing a third. Gaffney acknowledged this in an interview with the CVN but noted that the amount of usable terrain has decreased since AMG applied for its permit. Gaffney also pointed to a recent U.S. Forest Service decision to permit only three operators in an area of the Chugach National Forest near Cordova that exceeds the heliskiing area near Haines by more than 100,000 acres. The Forest Service declined to comment on its decision until a public objection period ends on Nov. 15.
Board member Lori Smith suggested, and others agreed, that permitting a fourth company to operate in Haines would require expanding the permitted heliski area in Haines. The borough’s heliski terrain map was drawn several years ago after a lengthy public process, including input from Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologists who have extensively researched the borough’s mountain goat populations and cited studies that show helicopters can negatively impact goats.
In addition to removing the permit cap in 2022, the proposed ordinance also would require the borough manager to allocate skier days earlier in the year; it would mandate that operators pay skier-day fees before the season and file wildlife observation reports every two weeks instead of at the end of the year; and it would facilitate the borough’s collection of GPS data from operators.