There’s finally some light at the end of the trail.

At its Aug. 6 meeting, the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly unanimously approved the Kodiak Road System Trails Master Plan – an endeavor some seven years in the making – in the amount of $128,013 to Portland, Ore.-based Alta Planning + Design.

Organizers hope the plan will organize, protect and better identify trails inside town and off the road system. Nine firms responded to the borough’s request for proposal.

Getting to this point was a start and stop process throughout the seven years. Committees met around 2002 to find a consensus between pedestrian, equestrian and ATV users of trails. A “trail enthusiast” survey was distributed a few years later to determine which trails receive the most use and what type of use.

There was even talk of requiring registration for ATV users or instituting trail-user education seminars.

But once borough staff began working on the boroughwide comprehensive plan, the Kodiak Road System Trails Master Plan fell by the wayside. Once that boroughwide plan was finished at the end of 2008, the master trails plan was back on the radar.

Bud Cassidy, borough community development department director, said the project came about years ago as the usage of nearby trails became more popular and of increasing importance to the community. Cassidy said making a master plan will help protect Kodiak’s outdoor recreational resources.

 “The concept is to identify these locations before the land is sold, before it’s turned into something else,” Cassidy said. “We don’t want to miss an opportunity to make sure they’re considered before something else happens with the property.”

Services to be provided by Alta Planning + Design are a “condition study” of existing trails; identifying, describing, mapping and rating existing trails; determining trail objectives (such as a trail’s intended use or level of development); making design guidelines with input from the trail objectives; examining potential routes for future trails; developing a trail-user guide; addressing private property issues; and finding methods of addressing trail-user conflicts.

“We have some challenges here, and that’s what the plan is going to deal with,” Cassidy said. “We talked about putting trails on steep slopes or in sensitive areas. We talked about the conflict between motorized and non-motorized users.

“We also have the issue that there are trails everywhere. One of the things that we need to focus on is that a lot of them are on private property. We can talk to private property owners and ask if we can still have that trail there and maybe make an easement.”

Part of the private property issues arise from components of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), said Duane Dvorak, borough community development department associate planner. Some of the trails on the road system are considered 17b easements under ANCSA.

These easements run through private, Native-owned lands, but have a destination to public lands. They are authorized for all public manners of conveyance, such as walking or motorized vehicles, but only authorized shareholders are allowed to use the land off the trail areas for things like hunting or fishing.

Dvorak said part of project will be installing Geoblocks on the trails. Geoblocks are plastic templates installed in the ground to help harden and keep trail routes intact.

He said surveying the trails is also important to maintain trail sustainability.

“Ninety percent of your trail may be just fine. It may be high and dry with good soil conditions and good drainage,” Dvorak said. “But some with wetlands and steep slopes may be subject to erosion easily. Some may have stream crossings – those are all areas where maybe just a little bit of strategic trail hardening can really make a big impact on the environment and on the habitat value.”

Cassidy said a trail user guide will be more extensive than the Audubon Society map, which contains basic overview of road system trails and generic information. It also will be more GPS-oriented.

“If you’re riding in an ATV or if you’re hiking, you can have your GPS with you and know what trail you’re on and know where you’re at on the trail,” Cassidy said. “It’s going to be more technical and detailed.”

Dvorak said some of the raw data for the trails has already been collected after a 2003 effort that mapped some 200 miles of trails off the road system. Those efforts also included photographs and indexed GPS data.

As the master plan moves forward, the Parks and Recreation Committee will serve as the primary advisory group. Also contributing will be borough staff, the Planning & Zoning Commission, the Borough Assembly and the general public through communitywide meetings.

Information will be posted on a future Web site.

The plan’s first meeting is Sept. 1. Cassidy said there will be an open house with consultants and staff. Also scheduled is GPS training so community members can learn how to compile more data for the project.

No exact dates for the projects have been given yet, Cassidy said, because its demands could change with more public input.

“As you work your way through this process, there will be things you didn’t think of that you’ll probably do, and things that you didn’t think of that you don’t need to do, so it’s a fluid process,” Cassidy said. “There’s a lot of pent-up energy. Folks are foaming at the bit to get going on this, and a lot of them are on the committee. It’s something that’s been dragging for a long time.”

Mirror writer Bradley Zint can be reached via e-mail at bzint@kodiakdailymirror.com.