Meadow Lakes Community Council president Mike Wolf was glad to hear Monday his community was no longer a potential home for the prison. Four of the 16 sites originally considered to house a 1,200-2,251-bed, medium-security �mega prison� being planned for Mat-Su were in the Meadow Lakes community, west of Wasilla. Three of those sites were tossed out previously. Monday�s news meant Meadow Lakes is off the list entirely.

�It goes against our bedroom concept around here - of quiet, rural living,� Wolf said.

Meadow Lakes is off the list largely because of its community planning efforts, Mat-Su Community Development director Ron Swanson said Monday. A prison didn�t fit with the community�s plan for its future, he said.

Also gone from the list is a 640-acre site in the Knik-Fairview community, near Girl Scout Camp Togowoods. Public comments said a prison would be an unfitting neighbor for a Girl Scout camp, Swanson said, and the site-selection group agreed.

The final property taken off the list was 625 acres northwest of Houston, owned by the Alaska Mental Health Trust, Swanson said. RISE Alaska, a contractor helping evaluate prison sites, said the prison needs 160 acres of land on which construction is possible. A dry, 160-acre footprint couldn�t be found on the site, Swanson said.

Five sites remain: Sutton, where a minimum- and medium-security facility already exists; 1,700 acres in Point MacKenzie; 480 acres near Echo Lake south of Palmer on land owned by Quality Asphalt and Paving; 1,140 acres near Zero Lake in Houston and a Goose Bay site.

The final site, 320 acres at the end of Knik-Goose Bay Road, remains in swing, Swanson said. The state built a minimum-security prison there in 1983, but it was shuttered because of budget cuts three years later. Not much remains on the land. Swanson said more engineering must be done before that site can be assessed .

Gordon Attaliades, president of the Point MacKenzie Community Council, said he hasn�t heard any strenuous objections to a Point MacKenzie site. The council hasn�t weighed in on the matter, he said. Talk about prison sites came up between bimonthly community council meetings and the next meeting is Nov. 25.

�They did it kind of quick on us,� Attaliades said. �(But) nobody�s shown any great concern over it. I think they�re just going to put it where they�re going to put it. The one at the port makes the most sense of any. There�ll be a ferry there before too long.� Point MacKenzie may be ambivalent about the prison�s location, but Houston and Willow residents have ramped up efforts to turn the prison away from their community. A group of mushers and Willow trail users have joined the effort. Their names are among 203 signatures Zero Lake resident Sandy McDonald turned in on a petition to RISE Alaska and to Mat-Su Borough officials asking that the prison be placed elsewhere. The Haessler-Norris trail, sometimes called the winter Zero Lake trail, crosses through the Zero Lake site, McDonald said. Local mushers frequently use it, she said.

Houston City Council has passed public referendums supporting a prison in the city several times since 1997, Mayor Dale Adams said recently. The council�s hope, he said, is that a prison would bring jobs and needed infrastructure to the community that is now mostly a bedroom community.

McDonald and her husband, John, moved to the community in April, she said, after talking with neighboring landowners about the area. The quiet, bedroom community aspect was a draw, she said.

Before buying their Zero Lake property, McDonald and her husband visited city hall and asked about community plans, grilled neighbors on problems in the community and even asked adjacent landowners for a first chance to buy if they decide to sell or move. The couple bought next to state land because they hoped to have a say in how their neighboring land was used, she said.

�We thought it probably would go before the community � and that we�d have somewhat of a say, at least to look at the options,� McDonald said.

Now that the state land is being considered for a prison site, McDonald said they�re exercising their right to weigh in.

�We feel like we want to be active and vocal until they start digging - as my husband says, until the light switch gets turned on,� McDonald said.

Swanson said RISE Alaska received between 125 and 150 public comments about the prison sites, not counting McDonald�s petition. RISE and others reviewing the prison sites hope to use the public comments and detailed engineering data to further narrow the field of sites. A second round of community meetings was planned for next week but has been postponed to afford more time for analysis, Swanson said.

Swanson said he�s scheduling four meetings the week of Nov. 13. They�ll be held in Palmer, Houston, Sutton and Goose Bay, although times and locations have not yet been decided. After those meetings, the choice of prison sites will go to the borough Planning Commission on Dec. 4, he said, and on to the Assembly in January.

�All the remaining sites have pluses and minuses. Not one rises to the surface,� Swanson said.

Daily News reporter Rindi White can be reached at rwhite@adn.com or 352-6709.