A Ketchikan tribal treatment center cleared its rezone in April. Four months on, no permit application has surfaced.

Southeast Alaska tribal citizens seeking residential addiction treatment now leave the region for care. A Ketchikan Indian Community project meant to end that has the formal backing of the Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.

The tribe's Executive Council adopted Resolution EC 26-34 on March 26, affirming support for KIC's proposed Healing Center at Salmon Falls, on the former resort property about 15 road miles north of Ketchikan, and for the zoning actions required to build and operate it. The resolution carries no legal weight in borough zoning.

The Executive Council described the facility as a tribally led residential treatment center offering culturally grounded, community-based services that would reduce the need for citizens to travel outside Southeast Alaska.

The resolution ties the site to drug routes. "Ketchikan serves as a critical transportation hub for Southeast Alaska, and has increasingly become a point of entry for illegal drugs entering the region from the lower 48," it states. Tlingit & Haida, a federally recognized tribe with more than 38,000 citizens, adopted Resolution TA 24-12, "Prioritization of the Fentanyl Crisis," at its Tribal Assembly on April 19, 2024.

The zoning fight was not one-sided. The Ketchikan Gateway Borough Planning Commission recommended denying the rezone, finding the planned uses would not expand the range or intensity of uses already permitted under Future Development zoning. Resident Helaire Echohawk wrote to the Borough Assembly urging a no vote on rezoning "from Low Density Rural Residential/ Future Development to General Commercial."

The Assembly rezoned three of five lots to General Commercial in April, under Ordinance 2106-Substitute: US Survey 3163, Alaska Tidelands Survey 502 and Tract C of Waterfall Creek Subdivision, all zoned Future Development. Two Low Density Residential lots were left out.

Uses newly allowed there require a conditional use permit before they can be established, and that takes its own public hearing before the Planning Commission. None has reached a commission agenda through its Aug. 11 meeting. This account comes from the resolution and borough records; KIC is not quoted in them.