In the late 90’s the Kenai Peninsula Borough began looking at extending the Kenai Spur Highway 26 miles toward Moose Point and have been discussing options for that funding recently.
The Mayor’s Chief of Staff Paul Ostrander said that the Borough has been working closely with Senator Lisa Murkowski’s administration to develop at least part of the project and discussed it when she was here.
Ostrander: “There’s a couple of options. One is to look at a smaller portion of the road, say the first four miles or so, to look at that specifically to see if it’s possible to utilize the funds directly from the feds to construct that first part. Now if that’s not possible, there’s a possibility that we could get a Congressional language change that would allow us to work with the state to get some funds that didn’t have the same restrictions that the federal money has, and to do the same thing to look at that first four miles or so and construct some type of road.”
Ostrander explained when the project first began, the Borough was looking to construct the entire 26 miles of road, however the environmental assessment determined they needed an Environmental Impact Statement.
Ostrander: “The Environmental Impact Statement would eat up almost all of the remaining funds, if we were to look at the entire 26 miles and do an EIS, it would eat up almost all the remaining funds leaving virtually none for the construction of the road.”
The entire 26 miles of the original project goes from the end of the existing Kenai Spur Highway to the end of the platted right of way which has been sold to the publicas recreational properties.