Crews finish emergency river repairs as property owners turn to clean-up

What you need to know:

• Work finished Tuesday on two breaches in a decades-old revetment along the Matanuska River in Butte, halting water flow to a two-mile stretch of the Old Glenn Highway.
• Final reinforcement work is expected to be completed this weekend. State officials also plan to hydroseed a new access road built for the project and block it off with concrete barriers.
• The flooding began early Saturday when parts of the riverbank gave way under swollen currents. The new repairs are expected to hold through the end of the season. Officials have not scheduled any additional work.

BUTTE -- State crews on Thursday sealed off a second breach in a decades-old revetment along the Matanuska River in Butte as they neared the finish line on emergency work to halt the flow of water into properties along two miles of the Old Glenn Highway.

Floodwaters surged into the area early Saturday when two sections of the revetment, totaling more than 200 feet, broke apart under river currents swollen by recent warm weather, officials said.

Crews completed work on the first section late Tuesday and finished the second area early Thursday evening, officials said.

Work will continue Friday as officials reinforce the second site with several feet of large rock known as riprap, said Jonathan Tague, a state Department of Transportation project engineer overseeing the work.

A final project step will include hydroseeding and basic erosion prevention on a gravel road installed along the bank to access the breach sites, he said. Concrete barriers will be installed at the road entrance to prevent use by off-road vehicles, he said.

Tague said he considers the revetment fixes temporary but expects them to hold through the end of the season, when water levels are typically at their highest. No additional work is currently scheduled, he said, and any next steps will be coordinated with a state hydrologist. 

Water levels in the flood area between Mile 13 and Mile 15 of the Old Glenn Highway continued to fall into Friday morning following the fixes. A pair of Matansuka Electric Trucks used to stabilize utility poles against the flow of water were removed.

At the OutPost Cannabis Boutique and Store about a mile south of the breach sites, Cindy Izon spent Thursday evening mucking several inches of glacial silt out of an entryway where she said nearly a foot of water sat at the height of the flood early in the week.

The flood destroyed several generators and killed about 50 of their 200 chickens, she said. The family and business do not have flood insurance because no one will issue them such a policy, she said.

Water started appearing in the yard at about 3 a.m. Saturday. Friends and neighbors helped them set up sandbags on Sunday to keep the still-rising water at bay, a step that saved them from even more damage, she said. They plan to store the sandbags nearby in case they’re needed again this year, she said.

Although her son saw a public safety official driving down the bike path ahead of the flood early Saturday, no one stopped by to warn them that the water was coming, she said.

“If somebody had said something to us, we could have been two hours ahead of it,” she said.

-- Contact Amy Bushatz at contact@matsusentinel.com

This story was udpated June 27 to reflect a correction to Cindy Izon's name.