Daily Sitka Sentinel

Land Trust Tries to Clear Way for Housing

By ABIGAIL BLISS
Sentinel Staff Writer
    The Sitka Community Land Trust’s efforts to create affordable housing represent an ongoing uphill battle for the group.

Utilities are in place for seven building lots on the old city shops property on Halibut Point Road, but house construction can't begin until contaminated soil excavated during the site prep work, pictured under plastic, is removed. (Sentinel Photo)

    In 2015, the city turned over a 62,000-square-foot tract of vacant land on Halibut Point Road to the nonprofit organization as a site for building affordable housing. Progress came to a halt when excavation for water and sewer lines revealed contaminates in the soil, the result of the site’s long use for the city public works shops and a diesel-powered generating plant.
    Since then, the trust has been searching for both a way to remedy the problem and the money necessary to cover the associated costs, said project manager Randy Hughey.
    Originally formed in 2006 as the Sitka Community Development Corporation, the trust aims to address the high cost of housing for young families created by the scarcity and high price of buildable land. Under the CLT concept, purchasers of the houses that would be built on the site would pay for the house, but not for the land on which it’s built, which would be held in trust by the CLT. There would be limits on the profit a homeowner could make on later sales of the house, and the CLT would get a percentage.
    “That younger population, people in their twenties and thirties, are really important for our economy, for helping it to work well, never mind the fact that many of them are our children and grandchildren,” said Mim McConnell, CLT’s executive director. “Those are all really good, sound reasons for creating permanent affordable housing.”
    She added that since Sitka’s senior population is growing, those younger residents’ role in providing services to the elderly is increasingly important.
    The trust has secured two parcels of land from the city, with the intent to obtain a third, the CLT website explains. It hopes to secure an additional parcel of land from the state.
    For the moment, however, the organization has its hands full with its land at 1306 Halibut Point Road, which was dedicated for affordable housing under terms of a referendum passed by voters in 2006.
    Hughey said the CLT signed a waiver assuming responsibility for the site when the city sold it to the group for $1 in 2015, relying on a 2007 report by a city environmental consultant and approved by the Alaska DEC saying the soil had been adequately cleaned up.
    “Based on that report, it said, you know, the site is ready to go – no further environmental cleanup is proposed,” Hughey said. “I read, ‘Oh cool, clean site!’”
    The CLT had to sign off on the waiver as a condition of the transfer, but Hughey said, in retrospect, it may not have been prudent to agree so readily.
    The city and state “missed some things, and we discovered them when we put the utilities in,” Hughey said.
    Further investigation of the soil revealed the presence of contaminates, perhaps residue of cleaning solvents, that under state and federal regulation must be removed before housing can be built on the site. The contaminates came to light during the CLT’s $250,000 site preparation, installing water and sewer lines for the seven small houses planned for the site.
    The contaminates themselves don’t pose a threat to human health, Hughey said; their removal is simply a regulatory requirement.
    The standards for soil are high, “thank heavens,” Hughey said, going above and beyond the most basic safety needs. He said a DEC engineer said she would happily live on the site, and other expert consultants confirmed that the site was safe for children.
    “Is this site safe for children? Can they eat the dirt?... They all say yes,” Hughey said. “Sometimes those standards are set to a level where there’s no danger to human existence, to human life, to human health.”
    Still, the CLT is required to remove them prior to moving forward with their Halibut Point Cottages.
    McConnell said one way acceptable to the DEC is to add fertilizer to the soil, spread it around, and wait. An environmental consultant, however, said the process would take too long to run its course. Hughey is “uncertain” how long it would take, but said it might be months before the site would be ready.
    The second option is to dig up the 120 cubic yards of affected dirt and haul it away for disposal. A Juneau company, Bicknell Services,  is lined up to do the job, possibly in cooperation with a Seattle firm for disposal, for an estimated $37,000. Once removed from Sitka, the soil would likely be treated and used as cover in landfills, Hughey said.
    The CLT is funded by government and foundation grants and donations, and the soil remediation is not entirely covered in its budget, so the organization is looking at selling a piece of its land to the adjoining Pet’s Choice Veterinary Hospital, which already using the relevant piece of land for parking.
    Hughey said that the nonprofit had always intended to sell or lease this tract to the clinic; accommodating their neighbors had been part of their plan from the get-go. The sale or lease, he said, would be in keeping with the principles of the affordable housing referendum as it will further the Halibut Point Cottages project by paying for the removal of the contaminates.
    “We’re not selling it for purposes other than providing affordable housing,” he said. “The sale of the property was planned long before there was any contaminate discovered.”
    Since the clinic is already using the land for parking, nothing would change in terms of the site’s use and appearance.
    “It would all look exactly the same to the neighborhood,” he said. “Cars parked in the same place.”
    The nonprofit performed testing on the land to be sold to the vet clinic, so current and future users can be “fully informed in a way we were, not when we got the land from the City,” Hughey said. The CLT dug five holes and did discover a layer of decomposed motor oil.
    “We have insisted on a clause which permits only parking there, so what may be beneath it is immaterial,” Hughey said.
    He said the sale price would cover the disposal of the remaining 120 cubic yards of soil requiring treatment, although the exact amount is still in negotiation. He predicted that the removal process will begin “in the next couple of months.”