On Dec. 6, the Municipality of Anchorage and the Alaska Department of Natural Resources issued a joint statement determining that Campbell Lake is a public water body under the Alaska Constitution and statutes. I have yet to see any mention of this significant event in the pages of the Anchorage Daily News.
Campbell Lake is one of the largest water bodies in the Anchorage Bowl, and it has long been asserted (or assumed) to be a strictly private lake. Since at least 1975, issues about its private or public status have been raised but punted in the Anchorage Assembly and the Planning Department. Beginning in September of this year, the Alaska Landmine, a news blog, extensively examined the history and legal status of the lake, and the recent joint declaration is the welcome result.
The joint declaration determined that Campbell Lake is a public water body, and it found four ways for the public to gain legal access to it: by float plane, by the lake’s inlet on Campbell Creek and by two overland access routes: the existing reserved public easement from West 100th Avenue on the southwest shore and the existing public section-line easement at the end of Jewel Lake Road, on the northwest shore.
Now it is up to state and local governments to make the existing legal overland public access rights a usable reality. At the least, these recent events would seem to warrant some “newsworthy” consideration by the Daily News.
— Thomas E. Meacham
Anchorage
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