Juneau company fined $350K for damaging wetlands

Published 4:30 am Monday, August 10, 2026

A Juneau construction company has been left with a hefty bill as a result of illegally discharging pollutants in wetlands and tidal marsh area.

A consent agreement filed July 30 in U.S. District Court orders Duran Construction to pay $350,000 to the U.S. and State of Alaska governments, as well as perform mitigation work at three Juneau sites. Interest of 3.75% will be charged for amounts outstanding after the consent decree is entered by the court.

The complaint, brought by the state and federal governments in December 2022, charged that Duran Construction along with president Marciano Duran and vice president Josette Duran discharged dredged and/or fill material to waters in Juneau, in violation of the Clean Water Act.

According to the court documents, the company used mechanized earthmoving equipment to discharge fill material into S&S Ponds to create a roughly 80-foot-wide, earthen peninsular pad extending 150 feet into one of the ponds.

“During a September 2021 site visit, (Environmental Protection Agency) and (Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation) observed additional conditions and circumstances of the unauthorized discharge of storm water associated with industrial activity at the S&S Ponds Site,” according to the complaint.

The S&S Ponds site is a 29-acre parcel located near 6225 Alaway Ave. in Juneau. The site lies between Switzer Creek and Lemon Creek in a tidal marsh area and includes three ponds that are intermittently connected to one another by surface hydrology.

The court filing charges that in 2001 and 2002, Duran Construction mechanically cleared and discharged dredged and fill material at the Vista del Sol site without applying for a permit.

“The construction activities at the Vista del Sol Site have highly modified the unnamed tributaries and adjacent wetlands, including by, among other things, extensively rerouting the creeks and filling the wetlands.”

The Vista del Sol site now consists of a housing development directly north of Glacier Highway between downtown Juneau and Mendenhall Valley in which phased construction began in the early 2000s. Prior to development, the property supported a complex of forested wetlands that abutted unnamed tributary creeks within a watershed system known locally as the Fireweed Creeks.

Duran Construction was also found to have placed fill material into wetlands at the Vista del Mar site while constructing a pioneer access road to the site.

“The unauthorized, mechanized land-clearing and earthmoving activities resulted in discharges of dredged and/or fill material, including logs, branches, debris/slash, soils, sediments, gravel, and rocks below the ordinary high water mark of unnamed tributaries and into adjacent wetlands.”

The Vista del Mar Site is located at 12320 Glacier Highway in Juneau, adjacent to the Tongass National Forest and overlooking Auke Bay. It is located immediately west of the lower elevation portions of the Waydelich Creek watershed and sits on an unnamed slope, forested wetland/tributary complex.

The mitigation work includes restoring flow pathways in tributary channels that occur within the cleared area of the Vista del Mar mitigation site.

The company must also permanently fix existing unstable conditions in the incomplete channelization at Vista del Sol, as well as install and maintain erosion and sediment control systems for lot drainage.

At the S&S Ponds site, the company is required to move, manage, and enhance (through weed controls and planting) the existing berms adjacent to Switzer and Lemon creeks to prevent the creeks from migrating and to buffer the site from surrounding developments. Duran must also remove the existing culvert and construct a new channel and floodplain terrace system.

The company was also ordered to restore the main staging area to a mosaic of emergent wetlands and open space characterized with microtopographic features.

“Duran shall hire a professional botanist to implement a S&S Ponds Planting Plan,” according to the consent decree. “The Planting Plan shall only include species native to Southeast Alaska and shall fully account for S&S Ponds Project Targets, site hydrology, and microtopographical and elevation differences in the fully implemented restoration design.”