ANCHOR POINT: Owners set to sell the land to Nature Conservancy, local land trust.
ANCHOR POINT -- Conservation groups are putting the last touches on a deal to protect private beach and estuary land at the mouth of the Anchor River, where hundreds of fishermen and overnighters camp every weekend during salmon season.
The scenic berm of gravel, sand and grass, part of an old Anchor Point homestead, has been open for free-form camping for years. The nearest outhouse is a mile away, in an adjacent state recreation area. But that doesn't seem to discourage scores of recreational vehicles, tents and small cars with towels covering the windows.
Efforts by the private owners to police the camping always ended in failure. No-trespassing signs inevitably ended up in campfires. But efforts to sell the land to the state were no more successful.
Last year, owners of the two parcels took steps to subdivide the land. The Kenai Peninsula Borough balked, noting that most of the property was incredibly high-value wetlands, where salmon smolt gather and migratory birds stop. Such wetlands did not lend themselves to construction of recreational homes.
The property owners said their main goal continued to be to put the land in public ownership.
"I've always said that from Day One," said Lacy Brunetti, whose husband, Paul Mutch, inherited the family homestead on the beach.
This summer, a new set of land appraisals has resulted in a signed purchase and sales agreement for the 46-acre Mutch property with the Nature Conservancy and a local group, the Kachemak Heritage Land Trust. Negotiators say a similar negotiation over the second parcel on the beach is near completion.
Together, the deal will involve 64 acres of land. Total cost is going to be more than $450,000, said Kenny Powers, director of protection for the Alaska chapter of the Nature Conservancy.
Most of the money will come from a federal wetlands-preservation grant that passed through the state Department of Fish and Game to the Nature Conservancy, Powers said. But a local fund-raising campaign is going to be necessary to raise a matching share.
The conservation groups plan to work with sportfishing and migratory waterfowl groups, said Barb Seaman, director of the Kachemak Heritage Land Trust. She said they will need to raise $130,000 once the deal is all signed.
"I think it's important for users to be involved," said Seaman, who walked the river during king salmon fishing to talk to fishermen.
"It's huge for public use," said Anchor Point fisherman Lynn Whitmore, who said Seaman's pitch got an enthusiastic reaction.
Only the lower few miles of the river are open for salmon fishing, and closing off access to the river by the beach would crowd everyone into just a few holes.
"It would be a nightmare to fish without that lower tidal river," Whitmore said.
One unresolved question is who will manage the land in the end. Powers and Seaman said the land is likely to be managed by Fish and Game rather than the state parks division, which controls the campgrounds and boat launch at the nearby Anchor River State Recreation Area. A private contractor is now running the state recreation area.
A state park on the beach would mean more formal campsites and controls. Fish and Game management would allow camping to continue more informally, Powers said. The state could not pave the area or otherwise do things that would undermine the conservation purposes behind the land-purchase grant, he said.
Mutch and Brunetti are commercial fishermen who returned to Anchor Point in the early 1990s to find that the family-owned beach had become a semi-permanent home to people living in camps and school buses.
Some people were spending their winters in trespass cabins in the Caribou Hills, they said, and their summers trespassing on the Anchor Point beach.
Mutch called on the state troopers for help in moving out the long-term camps. But imposing order on the weekend campers proved impossible.
Efforts over the past decade to work out a sale to the state collapsed over differing appraisals and disputes over who owned the tidelands. But those efforts revived last winter when the owners attempted to subdivide.
A new appraisal found a higher value for the wetland property, noting a general rise in local property values, Powers said. The appraisal was approved by federal reviewers, clearing the way for a deal.
Reporter Tom Kizzia can be reached at tkizzia@adn.com or in Homer at 1-907-235-4244.
