After the tow trucks left, one family could reach their own land

A family in Big Lake drove down their road to their own property for the first time last month, after crews towed 50 vehicles and trailers off a half-mile stretch of it.

The road is in the Peaceful Place neighborhood, and the junk had been accumulating in the public right-of-way for years. A resident there told the borough she could not sell her house because of it. No real estate agent would list the property, Mat-Su's deputy director of planning and land use told the Assembly this week.

Borough staff sent notices to 120 households and held a meeting on the corner in early August. About 122 people came, along with the district attorney and state troopers, who committed a criminal suppression unit to the neighborhood. Officials described the cleanup as adversarial and said there were arrests during the work, which is why they had asked troopers to be there.

On Aug. 12 code compliance staff ran what they called a tow swarm. Private companies pulled 50 vehicles and trailers out in about five hours. A volunteer cleanup at the end of the month, using donated equipment and time from excavation and waste-hauling companies, filled 11 dumpsters. Counting vehicles taken off private property after owners agreed, the effort removed about 60 vehicles and 50 tons of trash.

What made it possible was where the junk was sitting. "The pivotal thing in this was that the stuff was in the right-of-way," one Assembly member said, and staff agreed: public right-of-way gave the borough authority to act without anyone's permission.

The work cost about $42,000. Some of that is recoverable from property owners, among them the Catholic Diocese of Fairbanks.