Environment

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Mendenhall Glacier is melting in ways that affect the size of glacial outburst floods in Juneau’s Mendenhall Valley. In a crowded lecture hall at Egan Library on Friday, scientists presented new preliminary data on how the ice contributed to this summer’s record-breaking flood, and shared their ideas about how that could change in the future. 

Juneau’s glacial outburst flood in August broke more than one record. Eran Hood is an environmental scientist at the University of Alaska Southeast. He said the Mendenhall River rose quicker than ever this year. 

“It was a fast release — the fastest release we’ve seen in terms of just the rate at which the amount of water in the river was increasing hour over hour,” Hood said. 

There was also more water than in years past, both from heavy rain in the days leading up to the flood and because the capacity of Suicide Basin — the source of Juneau’s outburst flood — has grown. The basin is an immense pool that formed when Suicide Glacier receded. Steep rock faces make up all but one of its walls. Billions of gallons of water are held back by one wall that’s an ever-changing ice dam formed by Mendenhall Glacier.

The outburst flood happens when rain and meltwater rise to the top of the ice dam and pressure builds up enough for the water to tunnel through the glacier and drain out of the basin all at once, sending a torrent through Mendenhall Valley.

The flood has been growing, but the researchers say it will reach a peak one day and then start getting smaller. Hood said they aren’t sure when exactly the basin will deliver its largest flood. 

“Hopefully we’re up near the top of the curve,” he said. “We don’t know yet.”

Jason Amundson, a glaciologist at UAS, said calculating the shifting volume of Suicide Basin is key to understanding how the melting glacier influences the size of the flood.

“I would say at this point, we have a really good grasp of the basin volume and how it’s changing over time,” he said.

The researchers flew drones over the basin that captured thousands of high-resolution photos. Stitched together, the images help the team measure how much water it can hold. 

In the presentation on Friday, Amundson broke down the math he did to calculate the change in water capacity over the past five years. He presented the volume in acre-feet — for reference, one acre-foot is equal to a football field covered in a foot of water. 

First, Suicide Basin is expanding into the side of the glacier. That means it’s getting wider. Amundson said the basin cut into the glacier by roughly 100 meters, adding about 6,400 acre-feet of storage capacity. But he said this is the hardest variable to follow because the ice is constantly moving. It calves and stretches, repeatedly pressing into the basin and retreating. 

Second, the researchers reported that Mendenhall Glacier has thinned somewhere between 15 and 20 meters due to climate change. That means the basin’s ice dam is getting shorter. Amundson said this has reduced water capacity by roughly 8,500 acre-feet. 

Third, icebergs in Suicide Basin are melting rapidly. That adds water capacity, because floating ice displaces water. Amundson said iceberg loss has added about 12,000 acre-feet of storage to the basin. 

Altogether, Suicide Basin can now hold about 9,900 acre-feet or 3.2 billion gallons more water than it could in 2020. The numbers presented are still rough estimates based on preliminary data that hasn’t been finalized yet.

“In the last five years, the storage capacity has increased by something like 20% — little bit scary to think about it continuing to increase … 10,000 acre feet every five years,” Amundson said. “But I think the thing that should give you at least a little bit of comfort is that there’s not a lot of floating ice left in the basin.”

He said melting icebergs added the most water capacity, but now there’s only about 6,000 acre-feet left to melt. 

The theory is that the largest outburst flood should happen when there are no icebergs left in the basin. So Hood said this could be good news.  

“Theoretically, that’s kind of a good sign that we could be nearing the peak,” Hood said.

But he said reality is never as clean as theory. The changing ice dam, high tide or an atmospheric river could make the Valley’s largest flood come sometime before or after all of the icebergs melt. 

The research team is also using ice-penetrating radar that hangs from a helicopter, pings down to the bedrock and produces maps of the glacier’s underside. Those maps will help them measure how thick the ice is, predict the lifespan of the floods from Suicide Basin and investigate other potential basins that might release floods down the line. 

Amundson said that at first glance, the next potential basin further up the glacier, which is still covered in ice, doesn’t seem deep enough to create a big outburst flood.

“I’m a little bit skeptical that it could be a big basin,” he said. “We’re not sure yet, because we haven’t fully processed the data.”

He said more potential basins will be analyzed over the next few months.

Learn more about Juneau’s glacial outburst flood by visiting our ktoo.org/flood and listening to the Outburst podcast.

The U.S. Coast Guard commander for Western Alaska compared the devastation in Southwest Alaska villages over the weekend to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“Several of these villages have been completely devastated, absolutely flooded, several feet deep,” Coast Guard Capt. Christopher Culpepper said at a news conference Monday. “This took homes off of foundations. This took people into peril, where folks were swimming, floating, trying to find debris to hold onto in the cover of darkness.”

The remnants of Typhoon Halong barreled into remote, coastal communities in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta on Sunday, bringing hurricane-force winds and record flood waters. Coast Guard and National Guard crews have rescued at least 51 people so far from two of the hardest-hit communities: Kipnuk and Kwigillingok. Three people remain missing from Kwigillingok. Hundreds of survivors are in community shelters.

“It’s been very scary — very, very scary — for folks,” said State Emergency Operations Center head Mark Roberts.

Roberts and other officials at Monday’s news conference said they’re still taking stock of the damage, but said the storm destroyed dozens of homes. Some of them floated off their foundations with families still inside. Several people called the state’s emergency operations center for help.

“The folks that were in houses that were floating and didn’t know where they were was one of the most tragic things our folks in the state EOC have ever faced,” Roberts said.

The storm also cracked Kipnuk’s runway so planes cannot land and snapped a lot of utility poles in half, leading to continued power outages, Bethel state Sen. Lyman Hoffman said.

Massive search and rescue effort continues

Locating every missing person is the state’s top priority, Roberts said.

Alaska National Guard Adjutant General Maj. Gen. Torrance Saxe said he has activated every member of the state’s National Guard and Alaska State Defense Force living in Western Alaska, totaling 60 to 80 people. State officials are also calling up more personnel largely from Fairbanks and Anchorage, he said.

“This may end up being the largest off-the-road-system response for the National Guard in about 45 years,” Saxe said.

Dozens of nonprofit organizations, businesses and faith-based groups, including the Salvation Army, Red Cross, Samaritan’s Purse and World Central Kitchen, are also coordinating recovery efforts with the state, Roberts said.

“We’re coming,” Roberts said. “We’re going to have folks there to help you.”

Gov. Mike Dunleavy has declared a disaster for the region, easing access to additional resources.

“We know you need help. We’re going to continue to get the help to you,” he said. “We’re going to do everything we can to get everything up and running as quickly as possible, and we will continue to help — not just today, tomorrow, but weeks and months on and until we get things back to what used to be at least considered semi-normal.”

Record flooding

The storm surge broke records in the hardest hit communities, said meteorologist David Kramer of the National Weather Service. At Kipnuk, the water reached 6.6 feet above the normal highest tide mark, he said.

“The previous record was 4.7 feet, and that was back in 2000. So almost two feet higher than what we have seen before,” Kramer said.

The surge at Kwigillingok was also several feet higher than the last record high water, Kramer said.

Despite its fierceness, this storm was more focused than Merbok, the big disaster that hit Western Alaska in 2022.

“Merbok was, I’ll say, more extended on the coast,” said Gen. Saxe. “This really did hit certain areas very hard, and we want to get our help there, as I said, very quickly.”

Coast Guard assess environmental impacts

In addition to its search and rescue mission, the Coast Guard is also focused on the potential for a marine disaster. By midday, the only pollution reported was a light sheen in the flood waters, but the area of storm damage includes dozens of bulk fuel tanks and other fuel storage facilities, Culpepper said.

“These facilities are those that which the communities rely upon for home heating oil, subsistence through winter, for travel, for fuel, for vehicles, boats, aircraft, and they’re critical assets,” he said.

Coast Guard teams will conduct assessments and decide where the greatest danger is, he said.

Dunleavy said spilled oil is a low priority for the state right now.

“We’ve got to take care of people quickly. We have to take care of their needs quickly,” he said. “We have to take care of water, food, sanitation, electricity.”

Oil and gasoline spills can be addressed later, he said.

‘More and more warming that is disrupting lives’

Dunleavy said he didn’t know how much climate change may have contributed to the intensity of the storm. Alaska has seen big storms in past decades, too, he said.

“We certainly had a couple stacked on top of each other last couple of years,” he said. “At least two under under my watch.”

Hoffman, who represents the region and grew up in Bethel, said its climate has changed, forcing the village of Newtok to relocate.

“There has been more and more warming that is disrupting lives in the Y-K Delta from the last 25 years that I can tell,” he said.

At least three people were still missing Monday, and 51 had been rescued from two Southwest Alaska communities hit hardest by the remnants of Typhoon Halong, according to the Alaska National Guard.

The massive storm flooded communities and destroyed homes Sunday when it slammed into the coast of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, bringing with it destructive winds and high waters. Officials have said that the hardest hit communities appear to be Kipnuk, Kwigillingok and Napakiak.

In an update Monday, the Guard said rescue teams from multiple agencies searched storm-impacted communities throughout the night. The storm blew and floated at least a dozen houses off of their foundations, some with families still inside.

As of Monday morning, U.S. Coast Guard and Alaska Air and Army National Guard aircraft had rescued 51 people and two dogs from Kipnuk and Kwigillingok. Three people were medically evacuated from Kipnuk to Bethel for medical care.

The three people unaccounted for are from Kwigillingok, the Guard said. Additional details were not immediately available Monday. Search efforts continued.

According to the National Weather Service, the wind had mellowed by Monday morning, as the storm moved north into the Beaufort Sea.

Carson Jones, lead forecaster with the Weather Service’s Anchorage office, said weather in the areas hit hardest over the weekend had returned to normal for fall on Alaska’s west coast.

“Kind of isolated rain showers, some snow showers, up farther north into the northwest area there, but throughout the Kuskokwim Delta, we’re mid-40s, light winds and isolated rain showers,” Jones said. “So the weather has calmed down significantly for those communities.”

Monday morning, Jones said, the storm was hitting the North Slope, where Prudhoe Bay and Deadhorse were seeing wind gusting up to about 40 miles per hour.

The Guard asked anyone in need of immediate rescue to contact the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center at 907-551-7230. Gov. Mike Dunleavy has scheduled a news conference for 1 p.m. Monday with numerous state and federal officials. It will be live-streamed on the governor’s Facebook page.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

A company under contract for a major timber sale in Haines is trying again to secure a permit to store harvested logs in Lutak Inlet, a key piece of its proposed operation.

As part of that process, the company conducted a required survey this spring that says the storage site is appropriate and would not affect sensitive marine habitat.

But some community members remain unconvinced. The area Fish and Game Advisory Committee submitted a comment letter on Friday that says the intertidal area of the inlet is a “sensitive habitat” for species including salmon, eulachon, or hooligan, and crab.

The committee argues the permit should not be granted absent more information about potential repercussions.

“These species provide an essential source of food security as well as cultural continuity for local residents who rely on the Inlet for subsistence harvests,” the committee wrote. “Any degradation of these habitats would directly impact the community’s ability to access traditional and sustainable food resources.”

Oregon-based Northwest Forest Products Inc. won a contract years ago to carry out the Chilkat Valley’s largest timber sale in decades, known as Baby Brown.

The timber harvest hasn’t begun. But last spring, the company’s local operator, NSEA Inc., applied for a five-year permit for log storage with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources.

Then, the agency pulled the application after realizing it skipped a crucial step: requiring a survey of the sea floor.

“We don’t have a ton of log transfer facilities anymore. So I believe that kind of just slipped through the cracks,” said natural resource manager Tony Keith. “And that was our bad, so that’s why we did pull it.”

NSEA conducted the survey in April. That entailed using a device with underwater GPS, video and mapping software to examine current ocean floor conditions.

The survey report, which was submitted with the new permit application, concludes that the site is “suitable” for the facility. And it says no sensitive or critical habitat was documented.

Then NSEA re-applied for the permit in late September. The application proposes a log transfer facility and storage area on a 12-acre site about four miles out of town, off Lutak Road. The facility would be used to transfer logs into the inlet, near the shore, where they would be stored until they’re loaded onto ships.

The survey report explains that those ships will head overseas to the export log market “because there are no in-state purchasers for logs in the northern part of southeast Alaska.”

The company has indicated it plans to begin logging the timber sale in the spring of 2026 and wrap it up before the end of 2028.

Area management biologist Nicole Zeiser said the proposed facility would directly interfere with local fishing.

“Especially with the mooring buoys that may be installed. I’m not sure how many or exact location, but that would significantly reduce access for both subsistence and commercial gillnet fishermen, but crab fishermen as well,” she said.

State Forester Greg Palmieri previously told KHNS the storage site would be about 1,700 feet long. The new permit application says it would take up about 2,500 feet parallel to the shore. In an email on Friday, he said log rafts have been used in the Lutak Inlet historically – and that facility use can easily be managed to avoid fishing impacts.

NSEA President Polly Johannsen did not respond to a request for comment.

The public has until Oct. 13 to comment on the permit application. Comments can be submitted to muriel.walatka@alaska.go.

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Some Alaskans are fired up about water pollution from heavy fuel oil burned on large cruise ships. At a panel discussion in Juneau on Wednesday, members of tribes and conservation organizations said there’s a solution: using cleaner fuel.

Heavy fuel oil is the stuff from the bottom of the barrel — the waste product at the end of the oil refining process. It’s cheaper than distillate fuels and is used widely by most of the large cruise ships that travel along Alaska’s coastline every year. 

When it’s burned, heavy fuel oil exhaust releases sulfur oxide into the air, which can cause heart and lung disease and lead to acid rain. In 2020, the International Maritime Organization, or IMO, required ships that burn heavy fuel oil to use scrubbers, which filter the exhaust through seawater. 

Aaron Brakel is a clean water campaigner at the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, which organized the panel. He said scrubbers didn’t solve the pollution problem — they just moved it into the ocean. 

“They spray the water, transferring pollutants from the air into the water from the exhaust,” he said. “Most of the scrubbers worldwide, most of the ones here in Alaska, are open-loop systems.”

That means they pump seawater infused with toxic exhaust back into the ocean instead of storing it and disposing of it at an onshore facility.

Nearly 80% of the cruise trips made in Alaska last year burned heavy fuel oil through open-loop or hybrid systems. Hybrid scrubbers can switch between dumping the effluent or storing it, depending on discharge regulations in the waters the ship is passing through.

Brakel probed into U.S. Environmental Protection Agency records and found that between 2023 and 2024, 17 ships using open-loop scrubber systems reported more than 700 water quality violations off the coast of Alaska, as Alaska Public Media reported last month. But the data doesn’t show exactly where the violations happened.

Kay Brown is the Arctic policy director at Pacific Environment, an advocacy nonprofit. Last year, she and her colleagues published a literature review of studies around the world on the negative effects of scrubbers.

“The big takeaway here is that scrubber pollution is toxic to marine life at very low concentrations,” Brown said. 

One study found scrubber wastewater at a concentration of 5% killed tiny crustaceans called copepods within one day, and called the wastewater a “witch’s cauldron” of toxic compounds. Another study found that exposure to scrubber discharge affected the reproduction success of some mussel and sea urchin species at even lower concentrations.

Several Southeast tribes have passed resolutions calling for cleaner fuel, including the Yakutat Tlingit Tribe, the Organized Village of Kake, the Organized Village of Kasaan and the Ketchikan Indian Community.

Ilsxilee Stáng Gloria Burns is president of the Ketchikan Indian Community. She said she wants cruise lines to take initiative.

“This practice of fuel dumping makes the cruise ships an extractive industry,” she said.  

Burns said the onus is on the cruise industry to build a relationship of reciprocity instead. 

Linda Behnken is the executive director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association and board president of Alaska’s Sustainable Fisheries Trust. She’s fished commercially for 40 years and says the statewide seafood marketing strategy is built on telling the story of Alaska’s healthy, pristine waters.

“To have this information, to me, where we know sort of that dirty secret, I feel like we’re being disingenuous by continuing to build our reputation on this,” she said. 

Behnken said Alaskans have a responsibility to protect the water from pollution. 

Cruise ships that burn heavy fuel oil are equipped to switch between fuel types.

Some regulations have already taken effect in U.S. waters. Last year, the IMO banned heavy fuel oil in Arctic waters, with some fuel tank exceptions. Scrubber discharge is restricted in Hawaii’s waters and banned within the Port of Seattle. California has long required ships to burn cleaner fuels upon entering its waters. 

Sen. Jesse Kiehl, D-Juneau, attended the panel. He said he’s concerned about water pollution from scrubbers, but hasn’t decided on a policy path yet.

He said he’s been meeting with a lot of people about it, including cruise companies. 

“We had some serious conversations and they presented some research, some of which I bought and some which I didn’t,” Kiehl said.

Cruise Lines International Association Alaska represents the cruise industry.

“There is no scientific basis to support a ban on [scrubbers],” CLIAA spokesperson Lanie Downs wrote in an email, adding that they “remain an important compliance option as the maritime sector continues to reduce air emissions.”

Alix Pierce, Juneau’s visitor industry director, said in an interview that there’s a long-standing voluntary commitment from the cruise lines to switch to marine gas oil when they’re in Gastineau Channel, while in Juneau’s cruise port and upon departure. 

“All we can do is make agreements and ask that they be followed, and even if we did have legislation, I don’t know what our compliance program would look like,” Pierce said. 

She said the city has no reason to believe ships aren’t honoring the commitment. But in 2019, Gov. Mike Dunleavy axed state funding for the Ocean Rangers program that had observers aboard cruise ships, so there is no longer oversight on oil slicks. The state’s wastewater permits and ship inspectors only address sewage and grey water, not scrubber wastewater dumping. 

Pierce said the city is working to help find alternative shipping fuels through a partnership between ports and cruise lines called the Pacific Northwest to Alaska green corridor project. 

“We’re excited to see how we can kind of continue to try to drive change in the alternative fuel space, because that’s really the future,” she said. 

She said the group will publish a report in the next few months looking at the feasibility of transitioning cruise ships to another fuel type called green methanol, which can be produced from municipal or agricultural waste. The IMO suggests it could cut carbon and sulfur oxide emissions. Pierce said the effort could move the needle beyond the scrubber problem and meet IMO’s goal to make shipping a net-zero emissions industry by 2050.

Juneau’s last cruise ship of the 2025 season will depart next Tuesday.

Correction: The panel discussion was on Wednesday. 

As the remnants of a typhoon were set to slam western Alaska, Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued a disaster declaration Thursday for communities hit by a powerful storm earlier in the week.

The state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management said in a press release that flooding and storm surge damaged homes and infrastructure during Wednesday’s storm. Kotzebue was under a mandatory evacuation, which has since been lifted. According to officials, there are no reports of injuries at this time.

Carter MacKay is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. He said initial forecasts overestimated tide levels by one to two feet, which was good for low-lying communities like Kotzebue and Shishmaref.

“As an overall trend, there was an abundance of high water and erosion across the west coast with some areas of damage, but it wasn’t widespread impacts,” MacKay said.

The declaration activates public and individual assistance programs across the Bering Strait, Lower Yukon, and Kashunamiut school regions, as well as the Northwest Arctic and North Slope boroughs. Those programs help repair public infrastructure and provide aid to families whose homes were damaged.

State emergency officials are deploying response teams and have requested help from the Alaska National Guard and State Defense Force.

Incident Commander Mark Roberts said in the release that preparations made before the storm helped keep people safe, but warned that more bad weather is on the way. Flood warnings are in effect across western Alaska through Monday as another storm, the remnants of Typhoon Halong, approaches the Bering Sea.

MacKay said the weather service is already shifting its focus to the upcoming storm.

“It’s looking a little bit worse in terms of really strong winds gusted about 70 to 80 miles an hour,” MacKay said. “So wind gusts could be even stronger with this next one moving in, which could lead to potentially more significant coastal impacts.”

Residents are urged to stay alert, follow local instructions and keep emergency plans ready.