WASILLA -- An Anchorage road construction company that bought land north of Willow in 2010 got it for a reduced cost because of the farm-only protections on about 213 acres.
Now the company, Colaska Inc., wants permission from the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly to buy the development rights on the land next to the Alaska Railroad just east of the Parks Highway, at a cost the borough estimates at $1.6 million.
The company wants to extract gravel or fill from the land, taking it out of farm production for good, borough officials say.
The proposal is getting pushback from people who want to protect what farm fields remain in the fast-developing Valley, home to some of Alaska's most fertile soils. But it's also spawned talk of a "farm bank" concept that supporters say could save the best land.
Colaska's request will go before the Assembly in a public hearing during a meeting that starts at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the borough building in Palmer.
Assembly member Matthew Beck, who represents the agriculture stronghold of Palmer, is skeptical of the proposal, which he called only the latest Colaska bid to develop the property.
The borough doesn't have anything to gain from Colaska -- there's no extraction or gravel tax -- but stands to lose farmland that's already disappearing from the Mat-Su, Beck said. He's worries that the borough could set a precedent where other companies buy farmland with an eye to converting it for development.
Beck wants to form a task force to explore a "no net loss" policy idea.
"If a company buys a piece of property with ag rights on it, they need to not only buy back the ag rights but they need to buy another property of equal or greater value, not moneywise, but the quality of the agriculture," he said Tuesday.
The Assembly member who represents Willow, former Iditarod musher Vern Halter, wants Colaska to do that now.
The land in question hasn't been farmed in years and the previous owner stored dynamite there, said Halter, who plans to offer an amendment to the Colaska bid.
Halter said this week that if the deal is approved, he wants the $1.6 million to go toward promoting agriculture or buying equal- or better-quality farmland in the Mat-Su.
"They could take that money and get something way better and actually promote agriculture," he said. "If we don't do this, it's just going to sit idle again. Nothing's going to happen. They're not going to farm it."
Halter said he's got no ties to Colaska, though he noted that noise complaints to his line stopped after the company moved its loading area to rural Willow from more developed Meadow Lakes.
Colaska is a subsidiary of the Colas group of companies -- the group bills itself as the world's largest road construction company -- and operates Alaska subsidiaries including QAP, formerly Quality Asphalt Paving, a familiar name in Valley road contracts.
Colaska did not respond to requests for comment.
The company's idea met with immediate opposition when it first surfaced in September. The concept of food security and the need to emphasize locally grown supplies given Alaska's reliance on imported groceries was mentioned several times at an Assembly meeting that month.
Carol Kenley, a vegetable and flower grower in the Fishhook area and secretary of the Mat-Su Farm Bureau, warned the Assembly against creating a precedent that could spur future farmland conversions.
"We don't have unlimited ag land here," Kinley testified during a September hearing. "There's lots of land that doesn't have ag-only usage on it that's available for development so we need to be really cautious when we change this designation."
Borough staff recommended against Colaska's bid.
The borough started preserved agricultural lands in the 1970s for a variety of uses including farming but also grazing, birch tapping and beekeeping, according to a September memo.
Assembly approval "would set a new precedent and could result in a flood of applications to purchase development rights and/or remove (restrictions) that maintain agricultural use of property," according to the memo from the borough's land and resource management division. That could leave borough residents "with an even more vulnerable food supply."
The Colaska request doesn't qualify for exemptions from agriculture covenants covering public welfare or future farm use compatibility, the memo states. And the Assembly in 2007 denied a similar request to release farm protections on another property.
About half the Colaska acreage was rated as "farmland of local importance," according to a Natural Resources Conservation Service report. The site holds mostly poor-quality gravel but good-quality roadfill across nearly 70 percent.
In light of the Colaska bid, about 45 people including several Mat-Su Assembly members came to a forum in Palmer last week to talk about the future of agriculture in the Valley, according to Arthur Keyes, who owns Glacier Valley Farm in Palmer and founded the South Anchorage Farmers Market.
Keyes talked up an idea that surfaced at the forum: creating a farmland bank similar to those in place now for wetlands mitigation. A company like Colaska would pay for development rights on ag-only land, but the money would go to buy as-good or better farmland somewhere else.
One priority area could be the Springer system in Palmer, a five-mile-wide strip of rich glacial soil blown out of the Knik River Valley near the state fairgrounds, he suggested.
Keyes doesn't relish the idea of giving up that Willow-area farmland, he said, "but if it can benefit the state of Alaska's agriculture in the future ... I'm all for that."