After a year of research and several geotechnical studies, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources (DNR)’s department of Mining, Land, and Water has come to a decision about which properties in the Beach Road landslide area will be eligible for a land swap with the state.

The department hasn’t released its decision yet, but representatives gave a presentation on Wednesday to explain the criteria they used to judge eligibility and outline next steps for people who want to proceed. All of the state’s land in the borough is locked up in the eagle preserve or the state park, so applicants would be trading their parcels for land of “equal size, value or utility” elsewhere in the state.

“The statute does not say that we have to offer land in (the same) community,” explained DNR land conveyance section chief Rachel Longacre. Successful applicants “can take the land (in another community) or sell it and walk away. It’s your land after that.”

The presenters seemed braced to receive anger and disappointment from the community. “We have a decision that’s ready to be issued, but we know you’re going to have questions,” they said at the beginning of the meeting. They also repeatedly stressed that the statute in question – officially called “Grants of Land After National Disaster” – has only been used to compensate earthquake and flood victims, and it’s poorly suited to landslides.

Haines Borough planner Dave Long said he thought only three or four property owners would likely turn out to be eligible. Two provisions in the statute impose serious limits on eligibility. First, the land must have been rendered completely “unusable” by the slide. (The DNR reps pointed out that usability is much more difficult to determine after a landslide than after a flood.) Second, it has to have previously held a residential structure whose mortgage has been paid off in full.

This second stipulation surprised even some people who had been involved in the process for months. Haines Borough clerk Alekka Fullerton, who last year began pressing the state to look into the option for Haines, didn’t know about the structure requirement before Wednesday’s meeting.

“I was thinking that (the land swap) could be one of the few options for somebody who didn’t have a structure on their property, since it was about land,” Fullerton said.

She said the two other relief programs through FEMA — the Building Resilient Infrastructure in Communities (BRIC) program and Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) — will also only compensate for land that held commercial or residential structures.

The structure provision also means that even from the standpoint of strict monetary value — setting aside the question of whether property owners would want an equally-priced parcel in Sitka or Fairbanks — no one can be made whole by the program.

Property owners who didn’t have a house will suffer a financial loss because they won’t be able to apply for a swap. Property owners who did have a house will suffer a financial loss because — best case scenario — they’ll be recouped only for the value of the raw land and will have to eat the cost of the lost structure.

At the meeting, Moira O’Malley also expressed indignation and disillusionment about the structure provision. O’Malley’s waterfront property sits in the middle of the active slide zone, but because it didn’t have a house on it, it’s ineligible for a trade.

“I did not have anything on my property — it’s for my retirement, for when I retire in two years, so I have no recourse,” she commented at the meeting. “I’ve been a resident since 1980, I’ve had that property since ’94 and I’ve paid taxes on it. 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.”

She told the CVN that in the year before the slide, several people had approached her about buying her property, which has beach access, with one person offering $100,000 for the acre.

“If it’s a property swap, then it’s a property swap. It shouldn’t matter if you have a structure on there,” she said.

Jeffrey Messano may or may not be eligible for the program — his house was torn from its foundation but is still standing. However, he shares O’Malley’s disillusionment with the state’s disaster response and likely won’t pursue the option even if it’s open to him. “I think the land swap is a scam,” he said. “It sounds like a waste of time … They’ve been nothing but sham artists, so why would I suddenly believe in them now?”

Even Wendie Marriott, who led the push to research the statue’s possible applicability to Haines — and has, along with Fullerton, been nagging the state about its progress — isn’t positive that she would take advantage of the option.

Marriott and her husband Bern Savikko likely will be eligible, since their cabin was swept away by the landslide, along with a bathhouse and some boats “and about 17 years’ worth of stuff.”

But Marriott and Savikko disagree about how to proceed. Savikko loves their waterfront property and wants to keep it, even though the borough likely won’t allow them to build another cabin there because of its location in the active landslide zone. He thinks it would be worth it to keep the land, even if all they can put there is a pergola or a kayak shack. Marriott herself, though, “definitely would like to take advantage of the land swap.”

“What I loved about the property is gone,” Marriott said. “The trees, the beauty. Now it’s just — I associate it with sadness.” She and Savikko bought another lot four lots away, in the non-slide zone. She says she could imagine going forward with the land swap, selling the parcel of land outside the borough, and then using the proceeds to develop their new lot.

Beach Road resident Amber Winkel won’t be eligible, but she expressed more unequivocal support for the program than her neighbors did. “The landswap is fantastic,” she wrote to the CVN. “It helps neighbors who lost structures in the slide and also turns that land into park land that benefits us all and could be a much needed memorial for those lost (in the slide).”

Long shared Winkel’s optimism, albeit more tentatively. He said he was grateful that the state ‘brushed off (this old statute) and revisited it to see if they could make it apply for Haines.”

He said he thinks the program has the potential to be more helpful than the FEMA programs, which don’t apply to damaged property at all, he said. “That doesn’t help practically anybody.” A FEMA buyout could also take six to seven years to be finalized, which Long called “pretty depressing.”

By that standard, the timeline of the land swap program is refreshingly short. After DNR issues its preliminary decision — which Longacre said should happen before the end of this year — eligible property owners will have up to 30 days to decide whether they want to pay a $280 processing fee and apply for a swap.

The preliminary decision will identify parcels that have been deemed “unusable” and also show which state-owned parcels are available for exchange.

All applications will be approved or disapproved within 30 days of submission. At that point, approved applicants might have to pay up to $405 to reimburse the state for costs it incurred in developing the parcel. The state would not pay applicants for costs they incurred in developing their land.

The land swap statute was drafted in 1967 in response to an earthquake and has been used only once since then, in the 1992 Matanuska River flood. In that case, two property owners were granted trades.