The City and Borough of Juneau’s controversial flood fighting plan could shield more than 450 Mendenhall Valley homes from annual glacial outburst floods. But there’s been a lot of pushback about who should pay for the project, which has an estimated budget of $7.83 million.
At Monday’s meeting, the Juneau Assembly considered a plan that would split costs through the creation of a local improvement district, or LID, which would allow the city to collect a payment of $7,972 from every household in the flood zone.
Some homeowners who flooded this year, like Sandra Edwardson of Killewich Drive, said that cost will be a pain point for households that have already spent a lot of money on repairs.
“I believe implementing the LID as suggested would unfairly penalize those who have already been affected by a natural disaster,” Edwardson said.
If the city’s plan fails to gain enough public support, it’s possible that nothing will be done to curb flooding before next summer’s glacial outburst. The floods have been an annual occurrence for more than a decade, after the rapid retreat of the Mendenhall Glacier due to human-caused climate change created a glacial lake known as Suicide Basin. Each year, it fills with rain and meltwater before bursting downstream into the Mendenhall Lake and River.
Until recently, most of that flooding was minor, but in 2023 flood waters surged to unprecedented levels and destroyed two homes. In 2024, flooding broke records again, damaging nearly 300 homes.
The city’s plan for next year’s flood, at the suggestion of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is to construct a temporary levee made of military-grade HESCO flood barriers along key sections of the Mendenhall River. For phase one of the project, the levee would extend from Marion Drive to Killewich Drive and Meander Way. The Corps will distribute the barriers free of charge, but the installation and site preparation are costly.
The city’s proposal would split costs 50/50, with $3,915,000 to be paid by Juneau taxpayers at large — the Assembly has already allocated $2 million of that funding — and $3,915,000 to be split among the households in the LID.
Local improvement districts are typically formed to support construction projects that benefit a distinct neighborhood. If there’s a need to pave a new road, for instance, an LID might be created to split costs among homeowners who live along that road.
In this instance, the proposed LID includes most of the households that are at risk of flooding during a 16-foot glacial outburst flood, though it does exclude a handful of homes that would not be protected by the levee, like the low-lying neighborhood along View Drive.
That means 466 properties — six of which are owned by the city — would split the costs, with a nearly $8,000-per-household payment. A select few might have to pay even more — $50,000 — to armor their riverbank before barriers are installed. Many riverfront homeowners have already made major personal investments to armor the bank.
If the LID plan is approved, homeowners would have the option to make the payment in full, or pay it off in installments, with 4.87% interest, over the next decade — that’s the estimated lifespan of the levee.
But the project can’t move forward unless homeowners in the LID want to go along with it — if more than 51% of property owners in the district object in writing, then the plan fails.
Technically, the Assembly could override that decision with eight affirmative votes, but member Alicia Hughes-Skandijs said she has no plans to go against the community’s will. She said she has received mixed feedback from constituents so far.
“If you asked me what the pulse is — are you hearing mostly ‘we don’t want this’? Mostly ‘we do want this’? It is pretty hard to tell,” Hughes-Skandijs said. “But if people don’t want this, I don’t want you to have this. So I have no interest in forcing this on you.”
But Hughes-Skandijs and other Assembly members also expressed concern that failure of the current proposal could result in inaction ahead of next summer’s flood season. Member Maureen Hall said she hopes to move forward with the HESCO levee proposal and the LID.
“I so appreciate how harrowing this has been for all of our community members that have had to live through this trauma,” Hall said. “But I think, my gosh, if it does get voted down, that trauma could be repeated again and again.”
The city has repeatedly emphasized this plan is meant to be a temporary solution — a way to buy time for more permanent flood prevention proposals like draining Suicide Basin or constructing a levee around Mendenhall Lake. Representatives from the Corps’ Alaska branch have said that those options would be impossible to pull off before next summer.
And according to City Manager Katie Koester, abandoning the HESCO proposal could jeopardize more permanent solutions altogether. The city, she said, “spent a tremendous amount of political capital,” to secure the Corps’ support for the HESCO barriers. If the project fails to move forward, Koester said, the Corps’ may not support future flood prevention projects.
Some residents who testified against the LID proposal asked about alternative ways to cover costs, like splitting the full cost across taxpayers, rather than just 50%. Koester said that option would require a longer public process, which would stretch well into next year. And it could complicate the city’s responsibility when it comes to other hazards, like the possibility of landslides downtown.
“Are we prepared, as taxpayers, to go in and help every single homeowner that suffers from a natural disaster? The answer is no,” Koester said.
The other option might be to secure federal funding for the project. Though the city and the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska are pursuing funding, most of those grants, if secured, would not be distributed in time for next year.
There’s a lengthy public process ahead before the LID could be finalized. The first official round of public comment on the proposal will happen at the Assembly meeting on Dec. 16. After that, everyone in the district will receive a mailer with more details, ahead of another round of public comment in February.
From February to March, property owners will have 30 days to submit their written objections. If there’s enough support, the ordinance to create the local improvement district would be effective in March.