Before any more lawsuits between neighbors, the Haines Borough needs to identify and acquire access to popular public beaches and waterways.
In the past three years, longtime users of Chilkoot River and Viking Cove have faced off in court against property owners and the results have been disastrous.
They’ve been disastrous to residents’ pocketbooks, to neighborhood relationships, and to our faith that in a small town, we can resolve our differences. To lawyers, they’ve been a boon. For those who have won in court, they’ve been pyrrhic victory, an expensive piece of paper that grants certain rights but provides little peace of mind.
To my thinking, it’s also disastrous that neighbors feel compelled to seek a court resolution while the Haines Borough – the logical mediator of these disputes – has sat on its hands and not even tried to bring peace.
Here’s the issue: The public – represented by the State of Alaska – owns and has rights to use our inlets, rivers and lakes. But access to those waterways sometimes is blocked by parcels of private land.
At Viking Cove and Chilkoot River, subsistence fishermen and recreationists for years crossed private property to reach the water. That worked well enough when owners of those properties lived far away and didn’t know or care if others were crossing their land.
But in the past 30 years, many private waterfront parcels have been purchased by people who want to live here and who, very legitimately, assert their private property rights. Long-time users, including Alaska Natives, assert their rights established by long-time use.
These disputes can be resolved at least two ways:
- People on each sids can hire a phalanx of lawyers to dig into historic uses, cultural uses, property rights, grandfather rights, Native rights, squatter’s rights and adverse possession and spend months and thousands of dollars making arguments to a judge; or,
- The Haines Borough can create public access corridors so the public can get to its waterways.
Method #2 works without starting wars in our neighborhoods. Years ago it was accomplished by Hawaii and countless other states and municipalities facing similar conflicts. The public needs a way to access the water. Representing the public, the government acquires access.
It’s really that simple. About five years ago, before Chilkoot and Viking Cove went to court, I wrote an editorial suggesting the borough pursue Method #2 before these cases went to court. I was told by Haines leaders that such a move wasn’t necessary and that “neighbors could work it out amongst themselves.”
How that worked was ugly, damaging, expensive and unnecessary. And at Viking Cove, public access was lost.
This is what could have happened: The Haines Borough could have offered to buy an 8-foot pedestrian corridor at Viking Cove and a 12-foot vehicle corridor at Chilkoot from private landowners. The borough holds about $8 million in its permanent fund from land sales it could tap – with approval by voters – to buy small, essential tracts of land to protect long-time public use.
As an assembly member, this spring I’m pushing the borough to identify corridors and approach private landowners to acquire critical public access to waterfront. With some public pressure, the borough could put such acquisitions to voters in the October municipal election.
This one’s not rocket science. It’s not even the heli-ski map. It’s a proven method for the public to preserve access to its waterways, it’s fair, and it works.
Please support this effort.