Anchorage wetlands commission faces Oct. 14 sunset unless Assembly reauthorizes it

The citizen commission that recommended updating Anchorage's wetlands plan disappears Oct. 14 unless the Assembly votes to keep it. Under city code, it and two other advisory bodies expire on their own; only an affirmative vote renews them.

An ordinance up for a first reading Sept. 1 would extend all three, the wetlands commission, the Don Young Port of Alaska Modernization Program Advisory Board and the Public Naming Commission, for another three years. Assembly Chair Anna Brawley brought it forward. The city's internal auditors would review the three bodies and report to the mayor and Assembly before the next expiration date, and a public hearing comes before any vote.

The timing lands as the commission's main piece of work is still moving. In April it backed a first-phase update to Anchorage's 2014 wetlands management plan, needed because the municipality no longer issues general wetlands permits on behalf of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which now handles that permitting directly.

That update stalled in May, when the Planning and Zoning Commission set it aside indefinitely, citing the loss of the city's wetlands coordinator and unsettled questions about mapping and which wetlands fall under federal jurisdiction. The commission approved a revised version in July. Some residents objected in writing to letting staff redraw wetland boundaries without an Assembly hearing.

An internal audit this year found the wetlands commission operating with six of its nine seats filled and recommended keeping it.