A pair of bills were submitted to the State Legislature which would help move forward a proposed land exchange between the United States Forest Service and the state Mental Health Trust Authority.
House Bill 155 was introduced by Rep. Dan Ortiz (I-District 36) earlier last week, with Sen. Bert Stedman (R-District R) submitting Senate Bill 88 shortly after.
An agreement to initiate the swap was signed by both services in June 2015, which followed approximately eight years of negotiations that included input from a wide collection of communities, tribal organizations and environmental groups. Parcels to be transferred to the USFS in Wrangell would total 1,071 acres, including 308 acres of upland parallel to Zimovia Highway, between Heritage and Shoemaker Bay harbors; 63 acres of land near Shoemaker; and 700 acres around Pats Lake.
Larger sections would be traded around Petersburg and Ketchikan, with Mental Health Trust lands amounting to around 17,341 acres. In exchange, the USFS would transfer over 20,500 acres of federal lands it manages in the Tongass National Forest. The exchange will be based on appraised value for value, rather than for acreage. The federal exchange process includes environmental and cultural review, title and survey work, public notice and appraisal procedures as outlined by statute.
Stedman and Ortiz’s bills would approve the transfer from the state’s end, as outlined in federal legislation put forward by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) last fall. Additional legislation was introduced by the senator, colleague Sen. Dan Sullivan, and Rep. Don Young in January.
“Basically it allows them to exchange some of the land they have with Forest Service land,” Ortiz explained. “In order for that land exchange to go forward it has to happen both at the federal level and the state level.”
The two state-level bills would take effect if the Alaska Mental Health Trust Land Exchange Act of 2017 was passed with similar terms by the 115th United States Congress and enacted, and that the heads of both resource management agencies approve the transfer on or before January 1, 2024.
Ortiz and Stedman have been in communication on the issue since the start of the session, he said, and the exchange should help assuage concerns from constituents about logging projects a little too close to home.
“The Forest Service land is land that would be better for the Mental Health Trust to log,” Ortiz said. “Right now they (AMHTA) own land in proximity to Deer Mountain in Ketchikan and they own land in proximity to the Petersburg community. And there’s been a huge concern put forward in our different communities about the potential of the Mental Health Trust logging those lands. The land exchange bill would make it so they wouldn’t have to log in those lands.”
He explained the exchange, while preserving forested lands valued by those communities, would allow Mental Health to continue supporting its primary mission to develop timber and mineral resources. Founded by Congress in 1956, AMHTA is a state corporation set up to assist the state in funding its mental health program. The trust manages lands for revenue generation that support these mental health services, and its assets include timber, coal, oil, gas and minerals.
Support for the sale has come from other entities. The Wrangell Borough Assembly also approved a resolution last September offering conditional support for the Alaska Mental Health Land Exchange Act of 2016 put forward by Murkowski. The city’s resolution requested that 115 acres of developable parcels near Pats Lake and Pats Creek be considered for alternative use.
Reader Comments(0)