A process that has dragged on for years for the borough to receive full ownership of about 9,000 acres of state land has reached another step.
The borough, which has already received the patent for its state lands selection of 2,000 acres on Zarembo Island, Zoning Administrator Carol Rushmore said March 7, has received from the state “survey status” of all the other entitlement parcels. Only the 2,500-acre Sunny Bay parcel south of Deer Island has been surveyed by the Department of Natural Resources.
Final transfer of the lands from the state to the borough cannot occur until the parcels are surveyed and the maps recorded with the state.
The borough is waiting to take ownership of the remaining 7,000 acres or so: In addition to the Sunny Bay acreage, about 1,300 acres are at Thoms Place (on Wrangell Island), 460 acres at Olive Cove (Etolin Island), 700 on Wrangell Island West, nearly 900 on Wrangell Island East, 900 at Earl West Cove (Wrangell Island), 405 at Crittenden Creek (on the mainland), 150 in Mill Creek (on the mainland),
Rushmore said the borough received the survey status on March 8, after a meeting with the department commissioner. She found it surprising that Sunny Bay, south of Deer Island, was the only parcel surveyed.
“Sunny Bay is in a remote area and they hadn’t had timber plans for there, so having it surveyed surprised me,” Rushmore said last Wednesday. “But it was likely surveyed way back because at one point it was selected by the University of Alaska for revenue-generating lands, and in order to transfer to the university it would need a survey. I thought a few other areas would have been surveyed because of state timber sales in the area, or plans for remote home subdivisions.”
But even the transfer for the Sunny Bay patent could take a year, Rushmore said.
In order to receive patents for the unsurveyed land, the borough will have to follow specific survey requirements issued by the state and submit the surveyed plats for state approval, she said.
Rushmore said the borough has set aside about $300,000 for the survey work, part of the money the state provided when Wrangell became a borough to help with its organizational requirements, “but (it’s) likely not enough,” she said.
Meeting their requirements, she said, will be a “very spendy project and time-consuming.”
Once surveyed, the borough could get patents over the remaining areas, as it has for the land on Zarembo Island by St. John’s Harbor which is heavily used by Wrangell residents for hunting and recreation.
Potential uses for the Zarembo Island property are farming, pastureland, residential living, private and commercial recreation, and smaller residential lots along the shoreline. Dividing the acreage into tracts of 20 to 40 acres could be possible, according to the borough’s 2016 preliminary land-use summary.
Earl West Cove and Crittenden Creek were highlighted with potential for residential development.
“There was huge interest by the community to select the state lands (on Zarembo Island),” Rushmore said. “We were denied the first time. The second time, after the state completed their timber sale and got their revenue off the land, they then said ‘OK.’”
Wrangell was able to select state lands when it became a borough in 2008.
“We were allowed to select 9,006 acres of certain state lands within our borough boundaries,” Rushmore said. “You go through a long selection process with the state.”
The borough’s selection was finalized in 2016.
While the borough has management authority, it can’t develop or sell the selected lands without a patent. The state has transferred the patent on only the Zarembo Island parcel.
A patent is the primary land document that transfers title and functions much like a deed, Rushmore said.
Getting the status report back from the state and learning what areas remain for the borough to survey took three years, Rushmore said. “Changeover in staff, COVID, losing our request, etc. etc.”
DNR is very slow and backlogged issuing survey instructions, she said.
Rushmore in January said they were told they should have seen a status decision in February, then it came through this month.
Even if it takes a while to get all the land surveyed and patented, the planning and zoning commission wants to get a plan in place for what to put on it.
“At some point, the land will be ours,” planning and zoning commission member Don McConachie Sr. said. “We need to have some thought process, even if it changes, before we actually have it. We all know these areas. Not everybody is familiar as much as others. You need to be prepared, because it will happen, at some point. Who knows who will be on planning and zoning? Heck, we may all be gone by the time it gets done. It would be easier, for the people who have taken over, to see what the thought process was.”
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