The City and Borough of Juneau will move forward with a controversial plan to mitigate annual glacial outburst floods in the Mendenhall Valley.
It comes with significant costs for residents in flood-prone neighborhoods – 466 property owners will pay $6,300 over the next decade to install flood barriers along the Mendenhall River. Four of them will pay an additional $50,000 over 30 years because of additional work required.
Sam Hatch retrofitted his home on Meander Way after flood waters filled his crawl space and saturated the land beneath it in 2023. At Monday’s Juneau Assembly meeting, he testified that the city should bear the cost of flood prevention, not residents like him who have already spent thousands on recovery.
“My savings, retirement and investments are all gone. I have three mortgages. My wife and I both work full-time jobs, and you still want more,” he said. “Shouldn’t the city shoulder the burden like avalanche protection, like firefighting or police? The city has decided emergency services are transactional. Good people don’t charge to save others.”
Last August’s annual glacial outburst flood damaged more than 300 homes in the Mendenhall Valley. The year before that, it destroyed homes and displaced nearly two dozen households. Following the destruction, homeowners called on the city to take action to protect residents before the next flood.
Last year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recommended a roughly two-mile-long HESCO barrier levee as a temporary measure to protect homes until a more permanent solution can be found. City leaders have maintained it’s the best idea they have before the next flood.
On Monday, the Assembly unanimously approved a funding scheme to install barriers along the river. To pay for it, they created a local improvement district to split the project’s cost among nearly 500 flood-prone homes.
Deputy Mayor Greg Smith called it an imperfect solution.
“We’re all striving for a longer-term solution, but unfortunately, that is just going to take more time than any of us want. But that is the situation that we face,” he said. “I think it’s the best we can do in the time that we had before the next flood season.”
The first phase of barrier installation will cost nearly $8 million. Homeowners in the newly created district will shoulder 40% of that cost, while Juneau taxpayers pay for the rest of it.
Of the 466 properties in the proposed district, 117 formally objected to the plan. At the meeting, residents testified both in favor and against the plan. While some felt comforted by the barriers’ protection, others objected for reasons like the additional cost burden on homeowners in the area and concerns about the barriers failing.
Debbie Penrose Fisher, president of Juneau Flood Solution Advocates, said she remains unconvinced that the plan will actually protect homeowners and advocated for a longer-term plan.
“Sadly, this ordinance has tried to divide our flood community, and I will do my best to turn that around,” she said. “There are no winners or losers in this ordinance — we all lose.”
But Michelle Hale, a former Assembly member and a Valley resident, said there’s simply no time to wait for something better to come along.
“I believe that the HESCO barriers are the best solution we have right now, and we need to act right now,” she said. “Those raging waters are going to be here before we know it, and we don’t have a choice of not acting.”
City officials say site preparation and installation of the barriers will begin hastily once the local improvement district goes into effect in March.
