Kodiak

Borough Lands

The Kodiak Island Borough owns roughly 56,500 acres of land within the Borough. Most of this land was originally obtained and selected under municipal entitlement from the State of Alaska; the configuration of other parcels is the result of land trades with the State. Over 50 percent of Borough land is located on Shuyak Island and Raspberry Island; Ugak Bay and Hidden Basin also include numerous pockets that total a sizeable portion of Borough land acreage. Lease and disposal of Borough lands are subject to approval by the Borough Assembly. The Kodiak Island Borough zoning ordinance contains 18 zoning districts: Watershed (W); Wildlife Habitat (WH), Natural Use Lands (NU); Conservation (C); Rural Development (RD); Rural Residential (RR); Rural Residential One (RR1); Rural Residential Two (RR2); Single Family Residential (R1); Two Family Residential (R2); Multi-Family Residential (R3); Business (B); Rural Neighborhood Commercial (RNC); Urban Neighborhood Commercial (UNC); Retail Business (RB); Light Industrial (LI); Industrial (I); and Public Use Lands (PL). Recreational land use includes 11 municipal parks totaling 60 acres in size.

State Lands

The most significant State lands in the Borough are the vast tidelands. The State does not own a significant amount of upland area in the Borough. Most State uplands are in the northeast part of the Borough near the City of Kodiak and south around Ugak Bay to Dangerous Cape. State land selections are now complete in the Borough and new additions to state ownership are not likely. The Alaska Department of Natural Resources (DNR) manages most state land in the Borough. A few areas have had management authority transferred to other State agencies. The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities manages roads and airport facilities, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) manages the Tugidak Island Critical Habitat Area and the Division of State Parks within DNR manages state park lands. State parks accessible by road include: Fort Abercrombie, Buskin River and Pasagshak State Recreation Sites. A large portion of Shuyak Island is an undeveloped state park accessible only by water or air. The newest State park in the borough is located on the northern coast of Afognak Island. In total, 5 state parks throughout Kodiak Island comprise 56,448 acres.

Federal Lands

Much of the Borough contains land managed by federal authorities. The major federal land owner in the Borough is the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). USFWS manages the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge (KNWR), which comprises 1.8 million acres of the archipelago, the Becharof and Alaska Peninsula National Wildlife Refuge (APNWR), and the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge (AMNWR). The USFWS is the largest single land owner in the Borough. The Borough boundary on the west, across Shelikof Strait, includes a portion of Katmai National Park managed by the Department of the Interior, National Park Service. The refuges are managed as multiple use areas and allow a wide variety of uses that do not interfere with the primary purpose of each refuge. The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), Department of Transportation, manages several important facilities on Kodiak Island. The U.S. Coast Guard Support Center Kodiak, which is located near the Kodiak urban area, contains over 21,000 acres. The Support Center provides infrastructure to support several Coast Guard Cutters, Air Station Kodiak, Communications Station Kodiak, Loran Station Kodiak, Electronic Support Unit Kodiak, North Pacific Fisheries Training Center, Marine Safety Detachment Kodiak, plus several other Coast Guard detachments. The U.S. Navy SEAL (Sea, Air, Land Special Operations) Cold Weather Training Detachment is housed on the Support Center's facilities at Spruce Cape. Other tenants located on the Support Center's main complex include the FAA, NOAA, the National Weather Service, and the National Marine Fisheries Service. The Support Center contains a full range of facilities and land uses usually associated with a major urban area, including recreational, residential, institutional, and commercial. The uses of land on the Support Center and other federal facilities are generally exempt from local regulation. However, the uses are subject to federal requirements such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and other environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. A portion of the scattered small rural parcels in the Borough are federal trust lands. Except for Native Allotments and Federal Town site lots, no other federal trust lands, such as Indian reservations, exist in the Borough. These parcels are held in trust by the federal government in the name of the owner. The activities on the parcel and any transfer of title must be approved by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Since they are federal trust lands, the parcels are exempt from most local and state regulations, as well as taxation, until ownership is transferred. Federal environmental laws such as NEPA and the Clean Air and Water Acts do apply.

Private Lands

The greatest growth among land ownership categories in the Borough has been privately held lands. Most of the lands selected by the Native regional corporation, Koniag, and the village corporations have been transferred for management or patented to the corporations. Over 750,000 acres of land have been transferred to these private corporations. This amounts to about 17 percent of the total land mass of the Borough. Much of this acreage, such as that on Afognak Island, was selected for timber resources or other development potential. However, some of this acreage was selected from within Wildlife Refuges and contains areas with high habitat values for fish and wildlife. Over the past several years, money from the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill settlement has allowed the federal government to repurchase much of this land. The surface estate to former Wildlife Refuge lands is subject to regulation to ensure its protection in a manner that will not materially impair the values for which the refuge was established and the subsurface estate (mineral rights) to such land was retained by the federal government. Except for lands previously part of a Wildlife Refuge, the subsurface estate of all Native lands is owned by Koniag, Inc.