Juneau memo puts glacial flood fight at $933,965 a year, plus barrier upkeep

Juneau City Manager Katie Koester and Finance Director Angie Flick estimate the city's glacial outburst flood response will cost $933,965 a year, plus about $1.2 million a year to maintain and repair the HESCO flood barriers along the Mendenhall River, according to a memo to the Assembly.

The memo, marked informational only, goes to an Assembly Committee of the Whole worksession at 6 pm Monday, Nov. 2. It puts decisions off to the fiscal year 2028 budget cycle and the Assembly's Nov. 21 budget retreat.

Assembly appropriations covered the 2023 and 2024 flood responses, according to the memo. The 2025 and 2026 preparation and response were paid for mainly through what the memo calls "cannibalization of other appropriated general funds."

The yearly estimate has three parts. Event response, $125,985, covers about two weeks from the time Suicide Basin is full until the Emergency Operations Center stands down. Flood fighting as a year-round program, $502,810, covers planning, pump testing, barrier inspection, basic maintenance and public communication. Long-term solution work, $305,170, is the city's share of work with the Army Corps of Engineers.

Of the total, $632,050 would be new money, $165,190 is already in the emergency programs budget and $136,725 is opportunity cost, which the memo says falls mainly on the Streets Division's capacity for other street maintenance.

The city's flood strike team, a small group of Assembly members assigned to help the manager work out how to pay for flood response, met Oct. 27. It recommended putting the $632,050 in the fiscal year 2028 budget, continuing to absorb the opportunity cost and moving available money from the Corps glacier study account into a new $1.2 million barrier maintenance project and a $1.1 million match for congressionally directed spending.

The memo tallies $86,399,456 spent and committed on the floods since August 2023. The city's share is about $14.1 million. In August, the city proposed moving $4.5 million out of barrier construction into reserves for riverbank repairs and to start repaying the state loan, Alaska News reported Aug. 28.

The current barriers protect against flows up to 63,500 cubic feet per second, covering 1,456 structures assessed at $840 million, according to a Sept. 21 memo. The Corps' most likely worst case, 90,000 cubic feet per second, would reach 2,265 structures assessed at $1.5 billion.

That memo reported that strike team members Maureen Hall, Nano Brooks and Neil Steininger agreed at their first meeting, Sept. 8, that any local match for a long-term fix "should be borne by the entire borough, and not a service area of projected homes." Draft minutes record Koester telling the Assembly that raising the property tax cap to 12 mills could give it flexibility to respond without a special district.

Voters rejected that cap increase, Proposition B, 5,208 to 4,715, leaving the cap at 9 mills, according to certified results released Oct. 20. They renewed the temporary 3% sales tax, 7,840 to 1,946.

The Sept. 21 memo said the Corps will, at best, have a rough cost estimate for an emergency water conveyance prototype by spring or summer 2027, which could put a bond question on the October 2027 ballot.