In new lawsuit, Alaska attempts to claim portions of its most-visited tourist attraction

The State of Alaska sued the federal authorities one week earlier than Election Day, searching for possession of a part of Alaska’s most-visited vacationer vacation spot.

Filed Tuesday at U.S. District Court docket in Anchorage, the case asks a federal decide to award possession of the land beneath Mendenhall Lake and Mendenhall River to the state. Situated in Juneau’s residential Mendenhall Valley, the lake rests on the base of the Mendenhall Glacier, throughout the Tongass Nationwide Forest, and is seen by greater than 700,000 vacationers yearly, greater than Denali Nationwide Park and Protect.

The lake is at present underneath the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service, and a profitable lawsuit might deliver important modifications. For instance, motorboats and (in winter) snowmachines are barred from the lake. 

The state has no ban in place, and earlier this yr, Gov. Mike Dunleavy instructed the state would legally defend somebody who makes use of a motor vehicle within the space.

The Forest Service can be planning a main growth of customer amenities on the web site. It was not instantly clear whether or not that growth will probably be postponed by the lawsuit.

Erica Keene, a spokesperson for the Forest Service’s Alaska area, stated the company can not touch upon matters underneath litigation and that the federal authorities will reply to the lawsuit in court docket.

State officers, who introduced the lawsuit by e-mail, stated it’s a part of a broader marketing campaign by Dunleavy, whose administration filed the same lawsuit over waterways in Lake Clark Nationwide Park and Protect earlier this yr. One other lawsuit was filed in October 2021. 

The broader marketing campaign, introduced as “Unlocking Alaska” in 2021, is a multimillion-dollar effort to assert state possession of areas at present managed by the federal authorities. 

Critics, together with a few of Dunleavy’s opponents on this yr’s election, have stated the marketing campaign quantities to state-paid grandstanding forward of this yr’s vote.

Prior governors have directed comparable instances, together with one involving the Chena River, which runs by means of downtown Fairbanks. The state received that case.

Tuesday’s lawsuit is the primary within the Unlocking Alaska marketing campaign to contain a river working by means of a significant metropolis.

Environmental teams have expressed concern concerning the initiative; administration officers stated in 2021 that the state plans to hunt possession of river bottoms alongside the route of the proposed Ambler Highway and different growth initiatives in an effort to hurry their progress. 

Officers on the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council didn’t have a right away touch upon this week’s lawsuit.

A unanimous 2019 U.S. Supreme Court docket determination acknowledged Alaska’s proper to handle navigable waterways, however the federal authorities and state authorities proceed to disagree on the definition of navigability. 

Tuesday’s lawsuit, and the instances which have preceded it, hinge on that definition.

If a river or lake was navigable on the time of statehood in 1959, possession of the land beneath it ought to have been transferred to state management, until it had already been transferred to a different proprietor. 

In Tuesday’s lawsuit, the state claims each the Mendenhall River and lake haven’t been improved to permit higher transportation since statehood, and that since they’re navigable right this moment — able to “use by picket and pores and skin boats, log and inflatable rafts, energy and jet boats, and canoes offering transportation for people and provides, for subsistence and leisure guided and non-guided looking and fishing actions,” they need to be thought of navigable.

The swimsuit additionally claims that although the adjoining glacier has retreated, exposing extra of the lake since statehood, the court docket ought to award the whole lake, together with parts that stay beneath the glacier. The glacier is anticipated to soften previous the lake’s edge someday earlier than 2050.

The federal authorities has but to answer to the lawsuit, however within the October 2021 case, which offers with parts of the Koyukuk River and two tributaries, it sought to dismiss the case, partially on the grounds that the rivers weren’t navigable at statehood. 

Decide Sharon Gleason rejected many of the federal authorities’s dismissal request on Aug. 16, apart from small parts of rivers that circulate by means of Native allotments. 

That case, together with the case coping with Lake Clark and Tuesday’s newly filed case, stays unresolved.

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