MEA wins easement on Mental Health Trust land in Wasilla

One of the smallest land deals in Alaska this week — 0.007 of an acre, roughly the footprint of a pickup truck and a half — will help pay for mental health services statewide.

The Alaska Mental Health Trust Land Office on Wednesday granted Matanuska Electric Association a term non-exclusive easement on a sliver of Trust land at Church Road and Shampine Lane in Wasilla, giving the cooperative the right to run and reach electric utility infrastructure across the parcel without owning or exclusively occupying it.

The interesting part is where the money goes. The Trust holds roughly one million acres across Alaska — a land base created by Congress in the 1956 Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act and restored through later litigation and settlement — and the Trust Land Office's job is to wring revenue out of it through sales, leases, timber, minerals, and easements exactly like this one. Every dollar lands in Trust accounts funding programs for Alaskans with mental illness, developmental disabilities, substance use disorders, Alzheimer's and related dementia, and traumatic brain injury. A power-line easement in Wasilla is, in a small way, mental health funding.

For MEA — a member-owned cooperative serving more than 51,000 members across the Mat-Su and Eagle River/Chugiak — this is routine plumbing. The cooperative acquires easements constantly to build and maintain its lines, and Trust land in the Wasilla area already hosts MEA infrastructure alongside public access easements, per a 2021 Trust Land Office notice for a nearby parcel.

The decision authorizes the easement; it doesn't mean crews are digging. No rate impact, outage, or safety issue is identified in the public material. Mostly, it means the lights stay on — and the Trust's beneficiaries collect the rent.