Juneau task force nears a whale-watch cap and a new helicopter noise study

Juneau's tourism task force meets Thursday to near-finalize a recommendation that the city license whale-watching operators and cap their numbers, because, its draft says, "the status quo is not sustainable."

The Visitor Industry Task Force 2.0's latest draft tracker also calls for a new study of tour helicopter noise, updating a baseline set in 2001. Alaska News reported Oct. 18 on the price tags across the task force's 41 recommendations.

The whale-watching recommendation lists a limited-entry licensing program, a moratorium on new operators, a license cap with "future tapering" and decals for licensed boats. The tracker puts the cost at $105,000 to $290,000, mostly for legal and policy work. Two alternative wordings would instead make those tools options to evaluate, or drop them in favor of new "frameworks" worked out with city lawyers and operators.

The draft also tells the city to "learn from pitfalls" in commercial fishing, where permits have migrated out of state, and to "incentivize keeping ownership local." The Southeast Alaska Whale Watch Association, which supports a cap, has urged a model closer to Alaska's commercial fisheries, with permits that can be transferred with the sale of a vessel or company, Alaska News reported Oct. 1.

About 75 boats from 24 companies regularly whale-watch in Juneau, with room for 2,325 passengers, by NOAA's count. Federal rules keep boats 100 yards from humpback whales in Alaska, but "there is no defined legal limit to the number of whale-watching vessels that can view a whale or group of whales at the same time," NOAA Fisheries said in 2023.

A second recommendation, at $62,000 to $188,000, would write the association's commitments into the city's voluntary operator guidelines, including no-go zones, spacing rules and an expert analysis of a "good" number of boats around a whale.

The helicopter study would compare current and older helicopters with the H130 model and cost $125,000 to $300,000. That now includes $25,000 to $50,000 to decide whether to redo the city's 2001 alternative heliport assessment, which in September was its own recommendation. A full redo would add roughly $150,000 to $400,000.

The 2001 assessment recommended satellite heliports at Montana Creek and Dupont and projected they would cut the number of homes inside flight-noise corridors from 6,037 to zero. Neither was built, Alaska News reported Aug. 22.

The city plans to post the draft recommendations after Thursday's meeting and take public testimony Nov. 5. The task force is set to finalize them Nov. 12 and send its report to the Assembly after a Dec. 17 meeting.