State gives bypass plan a push for Sterling Highway
'I started this (fight) when I was 35. I'm now 72,' says Dodie Wilson
Published: December 4, 2006
Last Modified: December 4, 2006 at 01:37 AM
COOPER LANDING -- It's been a long, long time since the State of Alaska said it would fix a winding, tortuous section of the Sterling Highway that passes through here.
Think back to the days of the construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. Trucks rumbled by Hamilton's Place gas station on the Sterling day and night, and it was then that road planners first came by and told owner Dodie Wilson they needed to make some changes in Cooper Landing.
Back then the plan was just to widen the road and give pedestrians some room, but by the mid-1970s planners told her they were dropping that in favor of a straightened bypass. Wilson fears that plan would draw motorists away from her store and most every business in town, but she has grown tired of fighting it.
"I was concerned about this for so many years," she said. "I can't believe it. I started this (fight) when I was 35. I'm now 72. I can't see any more that's been done.
"They talk about it just to spend money."
She would prefer that the state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities go back to the old plan and improve the road they've got, for millions less.
The department says the action is about to commence, for real. This month road planners released a new "scoping" document identifying the issues at stake, from bear habitat to traffic safety, and it doesn't include an option to keep the existing roadway as the main highway. A new environmental study is due out for comments in 2007, with a decision also possible next year.
Department project manager Miriam McCulloch said the bypass has a long history because it is more complex than most road studies. One of three options, the Juneau Creek alternative that would swing north of Cooper Landing and the Kenai River, bisects the popular Resurrection Pass Trail and cuts through a sliver of designated wilderness on the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge -- which would require congressional approval. The other two options to the south, along the river and Cooper Creek, run through private property and have historic and archaeological issues, not to mention the river.
"You've got every possible issue here," she said.
A previous study led to improvements from Mile 37 to Mile 45, but never reached a decision on the tougher issues in the rest lying from there to Mile 58, McCulloch said.
To date the department has spent about $6 million studying the bypass proposal, she said.
As part of the federal highway system, the road has to be designed for travel at speeds of 55-65 mph, McCulloch said. Doing that on the existing, curving roadway would require paving five lanes, something the state will not consider. Today, the road, pressed between mountains and river, is posted at 35 mph in Cooper Landing.
The settlement is a string of roadside stations and tourist stops, some decades old. Homes are tucked along forest roads, many of them north of the river and across from the highway's trouble spots.
The new study is renewing debate in the sportfishing enclave on the upper Kenai River. For Wilson, it means another round of defending businesses that rely on highway visibility.
"If all these businesses were built because of the highway -- to service the highway -- then you're taking away the reason for the businesses," she said.
But others see a new economy emerging in this hamlet of 344, and it isn't necessarily driven by chance tourist stops.
Dominic Bauer isn't the typical road booster. Yes, he wants a bypass for faster and safer traffic through town, and he says the Kenai Peninsula needs better infrastructure and access as the population southwest of Cooper Landing grows. He's a driftboat fishing guide by profession, though, and his prized possession is a clean, productive Kenai River.
He has seen hundred of soda cans bobbing in the river where a delivery truck driver misjudged the corner by the bridge near the outlet of Kenai Lake and spilled the cargo. He also recalls a tractor-trailer wreck on the bend near Gwin's Lodge by Mile 52, which sent a sheen of spilled diesel through a culvert to the river. It frightens him to think what could become of the trophy trout fishery he works.
"No matter how well you engineer it, can you guarantee me that one truck with sulfuric acid from the canneries won't go in the river?" Bauer said.
"Our whole economy is built on that river."
Anglers who find their way to Cooper Landing don't stop on a lark when they see a road sign, he said. This is their destination, and it would remain so after a bypass is built.
Bauer and his wife, Shannon Meredith, are raising two young children in Cooper Landing. Safety is an issue, especially when roads are icy.
"Those corners are deadly," Meredith said. "People pile up on them all winter long."
Bauer said he drives the posted speed limit through Cooper Landing and is routinely passed by people going 50 mph or faster. Later, while driving the road to point out its problem spots, a speeding pickup passed him in a no-passing zone, as if to underscore his point.
"People don't realize it's a town," Meredith said, explaining the constant speeders.
Cheryle James, president of the town's chamber of commerce, used to want a bypass. But it has taken so long to materialize that now she wishes the state would just fix some trouble spots and let everyone move on to other issues.
Two of the state's three alternatives don't even bypass the corner near Gwin's, which she said is the worst spot. The Juneau Creek alternative does go beyond Gwin's.
"Why not fix Gwin's corner, since that's where we have accidents anyway?" James said. "It would be easier to just fix the problems we've got."
McCulloch said the state plans to "soften" the curve at Gwin's regardless of which alternative it builds.
James owns Wildman's liquor, convenience store and laundry. A bypass could pull business away, she acknowledged, though overall the effect may be neutral. She said a more pressing economic issue is the winter economy. She is working with investors and extreme skiers on a plan to bring a ski lift to the Cooper Lake area, she said.
As it is, she said, few businesses are open in winter to feel the effects of a bypass, and plenty of people would still cycle through in summer. "It won't hurt in summer," she said. "You've got so much traffic here anyway. People are going to come down to the river."
McCulloch said it could take two or three years to design the highway following next year's decision and any required congressional action.
Cooper Landing bypass options named
STERLING HIGHWAY: Planners whittle routes to three possibilities.
By TOM KIZZIA
Anchorage Daily News
(Published: October 21, 2003)
Gone is the least expensive alternative, once favored by state transportation officials but vehemently opposed by environmental groups for its impacts on wilderness, bears and the Resurrection Pass Trail.
Also gone is the option favored by environmentalists, which would have straightened the existing Kenai River route with monumental road cuts and retaining walls.
Planners have also eliminated the option that nobody loved: a route that would have put a bridge over fly-fishermen's heads on the Russian River, cutting past a popular U.S. Forest Service campground and continuing through a rich archeological zone.
That leaves three Sterling Highway alternatives for consideration in the planning process. The state Department of Transportation is expected to come up with a preferred option in another year.
With highway improvements elsewhere already finished, Cooper Landing represents the last traffic bottleneck on the road between Anchorage and Homer.
The sharp riverine curves of the existing route are dangerous to trucks in winter and frustrating to lines of tourists in summer. But it's taken planners more than a decade and the intervention of a mediator to find acceptable alternatives in the narrow, scenic valley.
Of the three remaining alternatives, two are on the north side of the Kenai River.
One would climb the north side of the valley, cross Juneau Creek canyon on a bridge several hundred feet high and then angle back downhill to the existing highway just west of the Russian River ferry at Sportsman's Lodge. This nine-mile route, known as the Juneau Creek F Wilderness alternative, would cost an estimated $70 million to build.
A second, the G South alternative, would start up the same route but turn south sooner, crossing Juneau Creek where the canyon is wider and then crossing the Kenai River on a new bridge. This six-mile option would cost an estimated $92 million because of its two expensive bridges.
The third option would follow the existing route across the Kenai River at the mouth of Kenai Lake, then climb the south side of the valley to miss the curviest and most settled part of Cooper Landing. This 3.5-mile route, known as the Cooper Creek alternative, would cost $85 million. It includes a long curved bridge across the Cooper Creek canyon before the route rejoins the existing highway.
Both the G and Cooper Creek options would include straightening parts of the existing highway.
Cooper Landing residents have expressed a wide range of preferences in the past.
The Cooper Creek option is the one now preferred by environmentalists, said Bobbie Jo Skibo of the Alaska Center for the Environment. She said environmentalists were unlikely to push for the fourth option, the do-nothing choice required in all environmental impact statements.
"I feel everybody's participated in this process long and hard and we all want to see something done," Skibo said.
Transportation planners once indicated a preference for a so-called Juneau Creek Falls route, which would have climbed high on the north side of the valley and crossed above the creek's canyon at a waterfall. That 11-mile route had been estimated to cost only $50 million.
"I think a lot of people will be surprised about the high alternative being dropped out," said Mark Dalton, a consultant with HDR Alaska, which is helping the state with the plan.
He said one drawback with that route was that it was steeper and longer and didn't handle traffic particularly well.
The route was also strongly opposed for its potential impacts on brown bears and for cutting off a long stretch of the Resurrection Pass Trail.
The Juneau Creek Falls route would also have opened an unsettled area to a new subdivision by the Kenai Peninsula Borough, Skibo said. Environmentalists prefer seeing a new borough subdivision along the Cooper Creek route, arguing that it would keep homes away from a salmon stream and brown bear habitat.
The option once preferred by some environmentalists along the existing right of way was rejected because of engineering concerns about 180-foot-high retaining walls, Dalton said.
Skibo said environmentalists still dispute some of the engineering findings about those walls.
"That's something we're going to have to still look at," she said.
The F alternative still in play includes a political wrinkle. The route crosses a small corner of designated wilderness in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge and may require a special congressional exemption.
Reporter Tom Kizzia can be reached at tkizzia@adn.com or in Homer at 235-4244.
