U.S. - Alaska: Chamber backs South Palmer prison site

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By ZAZ HOLLANDERAnchorage Daily News
Published: November 29, 2006 Last Modified: November 29, 2006 at 03:03 PM

PALMER – The Greater Palmer Chamber of Commerce announced its support today for a massive new state prison at South Palmer, a site opposed by hundreds of local residents.
A little more than two miles west of city limits and just east of Echo Lake, South Palmer is one of three finalists for the prison, a medium-security facility that could house 1,200-2,251 inmates. On Monday, borough officials dropped a fourth site, near Houston north of Zero Lake, citing wetland concerns.
The Palmer chamber board of directors voted unanimously to support the site earlier this month, according to chamber president Dusty Silva. Four who were not present for the vote later expressed their support, too, she said. In the motion, the board also encouraged the Matanuska-Susitna Borough to build the facility “to provide the best economic impact with the least environmental disruption.”
A final opportunity for public input on the so-called Palmer South site is scheduled for 6-9 p.m. tonight at Swanson Elementary School, 609 N. Gulkana St.
The site is the most economically viable, would bring new jobs and economic activity to the area, and “the relative strength of the Palmer site places the community in a position to negotiate from a position of strength,” according to a draft chamber resolution that’s still under consideration.
The draft resolution also says “hiding away our social problems is both bad for democracy and immoral.”
The chamber represents more than 300 members in the Palmer area.
At a special meeting Tuesday, the board decided to share its support for the Palmer site via written comments, rather than sharing them verbally tonight at what’s likely to be a charged public meeting.
Nearly 400 residents of Palmer and the surrounding area condemned the site at a mid-November meeting at the downtown Palmer Depot, with about 20 showing their support. Most Sutton residents, too, have said they don’t want a prison in their community. Some nearby residents at Point MacKenzie have come out against that site, but the area is sparsely populated.
Few members at the chamber luncheon spoke up when invited to ask questions Wednesday. Two supported the project.
Then Bill Mitchell, a retired agronomist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Experimental Station along Trunk Road, rose to his feet.
Mitchell criticized the pressures the prison would put on existing water and sewer systems, as well as the increase in subdivisions on agricultural lands in the Springer Loop system near the potential site.
“I’m not against measured growth, reasoned growth,” Mitchell said after the luncheon. “Palmer was sort of in the backwaters, and pulled out … but just how much of that development can we take without changing the character of this Valley?”
Contact Daily News reporter Zaz Hollander at 352-6714 or zhollander@adn.com.