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A $300 million project to build a new Coast Guard base in Juneau for the icebreaker Storis likely will not be complete until at least 2029, the service’s top admiral said in a U.S. Senate hearing last week.

The Commandant of the Coast Guard, Adm. Kevin Lunday, testified Thursday in front of the U.S. Senate’s subcommittee on Coast Guard, Maritime, and Fisheries, chaired by Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska.

During the hearing, Sullivan pushed Lunday on his timeline for work in Alaska. Congress approved almost $25 billion earlier this year for new Coast Guard construction, including hundreds of millions for work in Alaska.

In August, the Coast Guard commissioned the icebreaker Storis, a converted oilfield services ship, at a ceremony in Juneau. The Storis will be based in Juneau, the Coast Guard has said, but not until new facilities are built.

“Are we on time, on schedule?” Sullivan asked.

“We’re moving quickly to be able to execute that funding and have that pier and infrastructure there ready by 2029,” Lunday said.

The Coast Guard had previously said its target was 2028.

“They’ve talked about 2028 before with regard to Juneau and the Storis,” Sullivan said in a phone call with reporters afterward. “He did mention 2029, but part of my job is to make sure we have the money, make sure they make the decisions early, and impress them in oversight hearings like this, to get them to keep their timelines if they put them out there, but also try to move them closer in.”

Lunday was only recently confirmed to his position after President Donald Trump controversially fired Adm. Linda Fagan after the start of his term.

Sullivan said it’s only natural for a new appointee to play it safe.

“I think the default position is to be a little conservative on the timelines,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan also pressed Lunday on his plans for a series of new icebreakers the Coast Guard intends to build in coming years.

Sullivan has been campaigning to have several medium icebreakers based in Alaska in addition to the Storis. Lunday was evasive when Sullivan asked him when he would make a decision and whether he would choose Alaska.

“As (my team) develop options, one of the first ones that I want them to present among a range of options for consideration … is for homeporting of up to four icebreakers in Alaska,” Lunday said. “Although we are still pending a decision, that’s clear guidance I’ve given to the team.”

Afterward, Sullivan said he tried to pin Lunday down on the issue because he sees it as important.

“I love the Coast Guard, but I have had real issues with how slow they are,” he said.

While Lunday didn’t make a firm commitment, Sullivan said he viewed the day as “progress.” Sullivan said he wants to see the ships in Alaska because basing them here has an economic benefit that he termed “a virtuous cycle” — the ships create demand for local shipyard work and stores to sell things to the Coast Guard, members of the Coast Guard and their families.

Housing any new arrivals remains an unsolved issue, he noted. Communities throughout Alaska are experiencing critical shortages of housing and child care.

“In almost every community, housing is an issue, and it’s an issue throughout the whole state,” he said.

“This is where we need to get the state, the cities, the boroughs also, to come to the table and say, ‘Hey, we have land here that we can provide. … We have financing that we can help incentivize housing,’” Sullivan said.

He said the Coast Guard is contributing financially for housing, but that he has encouraged elected officials to look for ways to ease the issue.

The North Douglas boat launch will soon reopen to the public after being closed for more than two weeks due to damage to its parking lot. 

In mid-January, Juneau Docks and Harbors staff closed off a portion of the launch’s parking lot on North Douglas Highway that provides access to the boat ramp. That’s after they discovered a large sinkhole that developed near the entrance.

Matt Creswell, Juneau’s harbormaster, said the closure was made out of an abundance of caution. 

“Luckily, this did happen in January instead of in the middle of the busy summer boating season,” he said. “The use is fairly minimal out at North Douglas. However, there are some die-hards that are out there quite often, and it’s used as a cabin access point as well.”

Sonny Mauricio, a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, said the damage was likely caused by erosion to a culvert pipe that runs beneath the highway, which the state maintains. The state is handling the sinkhole repairs.

He said the department plans to temporarily repair the damage and reopen the launch to the public by the end of this week. He said it’s still unclear how extensive the damage is to the area.

“We plan on going out this week to cover it with big metal plates that will stay there until the spring allows us to go out and do some more permanent repairs,” he said. 

Mauricio said the department will share details about a more permanent fix in the coming months.

The U.S. Forest Service is moving forward with a plan to harvest over 5,000 acres of trees in the Tongass National Forest, just east of Ketchikan. A majority of that will be old-growth trees, which some people worry will be devastating to the forest.

The Forest Service released the final environmental impact statement for the South Revilla project earlier this month. It would allow for the harvest of over 4,000 acres of old-growth timber, and over 1,000 acres of young growth timber. The project site, which surrounds Carroll Inlet on both sides, is around 41,000 acres in total.

Cathy Tighe, a district ranger with the Forest Service, says the cut will allow for more than logging — it will also create new recreation opportunities.

“So it’s actually it’s not just focused on timber,” she said. “It actually clears a lot of activities that help us meet our multiple-use mandate as an agency.”

The project includes construction of new trails, a cabin, boat launches and outhouses. It also includes the construction of parking spaces and 14 miles of new road.

Environmental groups have been pushing back on large-scale, old-growth logging for decades. For years, up until Trump was reelected, the Forest Service was steering away from large-scale, old-growth logging. The focus was instead on young-growth sales, which has less cultural and environmental impact.

The Ketchikan-area plans were originally introduced in 2016, under the first Trump administration, but were shelved in 2020 with the change in administrations. But with the latest administration change came a new executive order, and a new directive from the Department of Agriculture to restart and increase timber production.

“Since this project was so close to being completed previously, we had all of our resource specialists review those changes and sort of pick up where we left off.”

Part of developing the plan involves an interdisciplinary review, where resource specialists with the federal agency study the site and evaluate risks.

“It’s a long process, partly because we have all of these different resources working together,” Tighe said. “And then, in addition, there’s a lot of what we call best management practices that go into, you know, how far away from a stream you have to, like, fuel equipment to protect resources.”

But critics say that old-growth logging projects of this scale will be devastating.

Betsey Burdett is the owner of Southeast Exposure Outdoor Adventure Center, a kayaking and ziplining tour company. She says she’s seen logging projects of this size before. And she doesn’t see it as responsible development.

“It’s just a question of how many people can this land support,” she said. “What’s the breaking point, and how can we do it responsibly?”

She says she’s seen people leave the island because they didn’t like what was happening to the forests at the height of the timber industry.

Nathan Newcomer from the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council says there are better ways to go about logging.

“Our organization works with small mill operators that are just like mom-and-pop shops really, like two people that work there, and they might go grab one or two old growth trees every once in a while,” Newcomer said. “Or a tribe, for example, they might want to go chop down one old growth tree to build a canoe or carve a totem pole. There’s appropriate ways to do this.”

He says the project will harm animal populations, like those native to the Tongass, and the region’s world-class salmon runs. Old-growth projects also affect carbon sequestration and long-standing ecosystems.

Newcomer says the South Revilla project will affect Southeast Alaskans who live a subsistence lifestyle and will come at a cost to taxpayers, who will likely have to pay for a lot of the project.

“The average person in Alaska understands that that’s not our economy,” he said. “It’s not based on large scale timber production. It might have been at one point decades ago, but we’ve moved on. And so again, I ask the question, who’s asking for this? Who’s getting the benefit out of this? It certainly isn’t the majority of Alaskans in Southeast.”

Newcomer suspects this project might be a bellwether for other large scale old growth projects to come in Southeast, particularly if important conservation laws get repealed.

There is a 45-day objection period that follows the release of the final environmental impact statement. That ends on March 8. The final environmental impact statement can be found on the Forest Service website.

As the city’s Emergency Programs Manager, Ryan O’Shaughnessy leads emergency planning, response and recovery for the City and Borough of Juneau.

KTOO’s Mike Lane recently caught up with O’Shaughnessy to talk about lessons learned from the major storm events in December and January and how the department operates.

Listen:

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Mike Lane: Ryan, what is your vision for CBJs Emergency Management Department and how did these new roles, avalanche advisor and tech fit into that vision?

Ryan O’Shaughnessy: Yeah, that’s a great question, Mike. My vision for CBJs emergency programs is really one of whole community engagement. our team really relies on strong partnerships with all kinds of different agencies for avalanche specifically, as well as for, you know, the flooding we experience in the summertime and any other hazard that we may face. You know, Juneau is an islanded community, and it really takes all of us – the public, our government agencies, our nonprofits, our private sector – to participate in emergency management.

Mike Lane: Right. Okay. Do you think you’ll be hiring for more roles in your department soon, like a geo hazard or landslide specialist, climate adaptation specialist, etc?

Ryan O’Shaughnessy: Those are great questions, Mike. I can’t speak for the Assembly on the allocation of funding for our division, but you know, we have a lot of work cut out for us. There’s, there’s no shortage of hazards in our community, our hazard mitigation plan cites many, many hazards ranging from everything from downtown fire to tsunami and earthquake, glacial lake outburst flooding, regular flooding. So there’s no shortage of hazards. And you know, we have identified in our hazard mitigation plan a lot of actions that we can take to mitigate those. But those do come with, you know, staff requirements.

Mike Lane: How do you see this past disaster declaration went? How do you think it it all unfolded? Was it organized? Was it chaos? What was it?

Ryan O’Shaughnessy: Organized chaos is where we like to live. You know, the practice of emergency management is taking those emergency scenarios and trying to bring some order to them. So, you know, I think we accomplished the objectives that we set out with which, you know, as always, we’re going to prioritize preservation of life, life/safety for the public, and protecting critical infrastructure. So always, always learning, right? There’s always things that we can do better. And we are continuing to reflect on this most recent event with our partners and internally and try to enact some lessons, some lessons learned.

Mike Lane: Excellent. Speaking of lessons learned: what did you see in this last episode of disasters that you’re now reevaluating how you’re going to do it later? Was there something that you went, “Oh, we got to change this.”

Ryan O’Shaughnessy: Yeah, I think there’s, there’s lots of stuff. A lot of, a lot of takeaways specific to avalanche. But, you know, we’re constantly looking for those things in emergency management, right? We’re training, we’re preparing, we’re executing and responding to disasters, and then the next phase of that cycle is to reflect and evaluate. Based on that evaluation, we again, we train and we plan. And you know, this disaster specifically, I think one of the core challenges was it affected everything about our community. You know, a lot of times when we see stuff like the flooding in the summer is a great example. It’s localized to an area. Whereas this disaster, it literally blanketed our community. People were tired. Both the people affected by it, the people working to respond to it, were tired from shoveling at their own homes. Everybody was exhausted. It impacted travel and the facilities we were able to use. So it was a challenging one, and some some unique and interesting lessons being learned for sure.

Mike Lane: Is there anything you’d like to add to this?

Ryan O’Shaughnessy: I never miss an opportunity to plug emergency alerts. Signing up for emergency alerts is absolutely the best way to stay informed and up to date on on anything going on related to this hazard and other hazards in our community. 

Mike Lane: How would one do that?

Ryan O’Shaughnessy: The easiest way to sign up for emergency alerts is to text “CBJ” to the number 38276. 

Mike Lane: 38276.

Ryan O’Shaughnessy: Yep. And you just type and just the in the message, just send “CBJ” and that’ll sign you up for emergency alerts. 

Mike Lane: Awesome. 

Ryan O’Shaughnessy: Alternatively, you can go to the CBJ website. Right there on the homepage, there’s a button that’ll get you signed up. 

The Trump administration has denied Alaska’s request for full reimbursement for disaster relief efforts immediately following last October’s devastating Western Alaska storms, despite the Dunleavy administration’s claim that the federal disaster declaration meant the state would be fully reimbursed.

That leaves the state on the hook for millions of dollars for disaster recovery, however the full amount is still unknown.

The state’s request for federal support for 100% of disaster relief efforts in the first 90 days after the storms hit was denied on Dec. 20, according to a spokesperson for the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management on Thursday.

The state appealed the denial on Jan. 15, and asked for a 90% federal cost reimbursement, but has not yet gotten a response from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“We have not heard back from FEMA on approval or denial and there is no timeframe requirement,” said Jeremy Zidek, public information officer for the division, by email.

A spokesperson for Dunleavy’s office did not respond to a list of questions, but confirmed the appeal on Friday. “An appeal has been filed and the administration will await the federal government’s decision,” said Jeff Turner, Dunleavy’s communications director.

In the meantime, the federal government is reimbursing Alaska’s disaster recovery efforts at roughly 75%, leaving the state to cover 25% of its costs, with some exceptions for certain relief programs, Zidek said.

Following the West Coast storm disaster in October, Dunleavy quickly declared a state disaster emergency. On Oct. 22, his office announced that the Trump administration approved the state’s request for a federal disaster declaration, and the state’s full costs would be covered immediately following the storms.

“President Trump was deeply concerned with the wellbeing of Alaskans who lost their homes and livelihoods to this historic storm,” Dunleavy said in a statement along with the announcement. “I want to thank him and his administration for approving the disaster declaration because now Alaskan families have local, state and federal support for rebuilding their lives in the months ahead.”

“The federal disaster declaration authorizes a 100 percent federal cost share for all categories of relief assistance for the next 90 days,” the statement said.

Dunleavy’s office did not respond to questions about his previous statement or whether his office had communication from the Trump administration about why the request was denied.

Alaska’s Republican U.S. congressional delegation applauded the federal disaster declaration and Trump’s support for the Western Alaska disaster response last year. All three members said through spokespeople Friday that they support the state’s appeal.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has been actively engaged with FEMA and state officials throughout the disaster relief efforts, said her communications director, Joe Plesha, in a statement on Friday. “Alaska’s vast geography and many rural communities make disaster response more challenging and recovery efforts significantly more costly,” he said. “She supports the state’s appeal and will work to secure the maximum amount of federal support available to Alaskans who have suffered so much from this devastating storm.”

A spokesperson for U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, Amanda Coyne, said the senator has advocated for the 100% federal cost share, as well as organized a delegation of FEMA and other Trump administration officials to visit Western Alaska.

“Given the severity of the storm and its devastating impacts on communities in Western Alaska, Senator Sullivan believes an increased federal cost share is warranted,” Coyne said. “He will continue strongly advocating with FEMA and other senior officials in the Trump Administration for an increased federal cost share as the state’s appeal goes through the process.”

A spokesperson for Alaska’s lone U.S. Representative, Nick Begich III, said on Friday that he supports the appeal and will continue to advocate for those impacted by Typhoon Halong at the Congressional level. “Our office is in communication with the Administration to ensure recovery efforts in Western Alaska remain a priority,” spokesperson Silver Prout wrote.

Western Alaska storm recovery is ongoing

The Western Alaska storms and particularly ex-Typhoon Halong brought record-breaking winds and flooding — damaging thousands of structures, roads, boardwalks, airports and other critical infrastructure. It prompted the state’s largest mass evacuation of residents from their homes to other villages, Bethel and Anchorage.

While some Western Alaska residents are continuing to rebuild through the winter, other residents who evacuated to Anchorage are living in temporary housing. As of Thursday, the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management reports that 471 residents are still sheltering in hotels in Anchorage.

The state is administering public assistance programs, which reimburse costs of repairing public infrastructure and utilities, as well as provide individual disaster assistance, in partnership with other agencies, including FEMA.

FEMA has awarded $31.2 million in individual assistance to date, Zidek said.

More than 2,000 residents have been awarded state individual assistance, and 1,794 households have registered for federal assistance from FEMA.

Those applications for state and federal assistance are still open until Feb. 20.

State disaster relief funding under debate

The state’s disaster relief funding is a point of ongoing debate among lawmakers and the governor, as they kick off discussion of Dunleavy’s proposed $7.75 million budget and its $1.5 billion deficit.

Last year, legislators approved $23.3 million in state disaster relief funds, but Dunleavy vetoed $10.3 million of that sum last summer, leaving $13 million in the budget. In November, following the federal government shutdown, Dunleavy announced a state disaster to help provide food aid, transferring $10 million to the state’s disaster relief funding from the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Village Safe Water and Wastewater Infrastructure program.

This year, the governor has requested an additional $40 million in the state’s supplemental budget, which is a routine ask for additional money to pay the state’s bills for the previous year.

Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, a co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee, didn’t mince words about the governor’s back and forth with disaster spending. “Ill-advised and foolish,” he said. “It makes no sense what he did to me, frankly, and it’s embarrassing for him, his veto.”

But Stedman said he hopes the state’s federal appeal is approved, and expects legislators to pass the governor’s request for the additional $40 million. “Obviously, 100% is better than 90 and 90 is better than 75,” Stedman said of the federal cost share. “So that’s pretty much a given there. But we will fund the disaster request as the governor puts it on the table, through next week’s amendments.”

Sen. Jesse Kiehl, D-Juneau, also a member of the Senate Finance Committee, commended the governor for his record on disaster response, and echoed hope for the appeal to move forward. “There’s no question in my mind that this is exactly what the federal disaster relief programs exist for. So I think the governor’s request was the right thing, and if it came back at less than full funding from the feds, that’s the wrong call,” Kiehl said.

Kiehl described the state’s fiscal picture, with rising costs and ongoing debates on how to raise more revenues, as “bleak.” “So there isn’t cash just sitting around for disaster assistance,” he said. “We have to step up for western Alaska financially. That’s going to stink, but we have to do it, as far as I’m concerned.”

A typical cost share between the federal government and a state for disaster relief efforts is a 75% federal and 25% state cost split.

“We have dozens of federal declared disasters we are currently working on that have the 75/25 cost share structure,” said Zidek, with agency. “Large disasters are occasionally given a modified cost share structure adjustment, but it is not guaranteed. When we have a large disaster, we ask for modification to reduce the amount of state funding needed because as managers of state funds it is the responsible thing to do.”

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate on Friday passed a bill funding the departments of Defense, Health, Labor and Transportation, among others, with both Alaska senators voting yes.

Still, hours later, at 8 p.m. Alaska time, funding will lapse for those departments, comprising much of the government. The U.S. House still has to pass the bill, and House members don’t return to the Capitol until Monday.

The shutdown, or lapse in funding, could last just one weekday. That would be minimal compared to the 43-day shutdown in 2025, the longest in U.S. history.

Nonetheless, the Office of Management and Budget says it will follow its usual shutdown practices.

Unless they’re told otherwise, all federal employees who would normally report to work on Monday should still go, according to the OMB’s plans. It’s standard practice on the first weekday after a funding lapse for federal workers to be on duty to launch the orderly shutdown procedures.

Then, if the shutdown continues, agencies are expected to notify their employees if they are essential and have to come to work, or if they will be put on furlough.

This time, the impact on Alaskans will be more limited than the shutdown last fall, because Congress has already funded many departments for the rest of the fiscal year. Those include NOAA and the departments of Commerce, Interior, Justice and Veterans Affairs.

Democrats held up a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security. They demanded reforms to curb the kind of harsh immigration enforcement tactics deployed in Minneapolis, where agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens.

Now, Congress and the White House have two weeks to reach an agreement on what those reforms will be. Both of Alaska’s senators say they support some type of reform.