January 3, 2025 CBJ Neighborhood Meeting for Proposed LID

I think they are. I know, no, that's what I'm thinking. As we speak, I was just going to switch with Robert.

All right, we're, we're live and we are, uh, recording. So welcome everyone this evening to the, uh, public meeting, neighborhood meeting on the, uh, Linden Hall River Flooding, uh, Local Improvement District. I want to thank you all for coming out on this snowy night in, uh, in January. Really appreciate it. I want to acknowledge that we have a number of our assembly members in the room.

We have Mayor Weldon, we have Assemblymember Kelly, We have Deputy Mayor Smith, we have Assemblymember Wall, and I saw Assemblymember— and Maureen Hall in the back. Am I missing anyone? The light makes it hard for me to see everybody, but thank you all. So know that, you know, your assembly members are here to also listen and learn alongside you.

So aside from the assembly members who are here, I just want to introduce the CBJ and different representatives that are here to answer your questions and share information with you tonight. My name is Katie Kester. I'm the CBJ City Manager. To my left here is Chief Engineer John Bohan. He has been lead engineer on this project.

We have Nate Rumsey, who's the Deputy Engineering and Public Works Director. Denise Koch, Engineering and Public Works Director. Mike Records is with the US Army Corps of Engineers. And you all know Deputy Manager Robert Barr. And then we have Emily here, who's our expert on— Emily Ryder, expert on all things legal.

So you've got all of us here to provide information and answer your questions this evening. Next slide. All right. Let's see. Housekeeping notes.

This meeting is being recorded. It's not a great format for Zoom because it's not being broadcast over Zoom. But it will be available on the website for you to review. The presentation that we're giving you right now is available already on the website. So those materials will be available.

Again, I wanna thank you all for coming out tonight. And while we're sharing thank yous, I just, we'll talk about later on in the meeting, the long-term efforts for flood mitigation. Many of you may have read the press release that was recently sent out acknowledging the inclusion of some funding for a general investigation study for a long-term solution in federal disaster supplemental assistance legislation. So we, we will talk about that later, but I just wanna thank all of you who submitted letters and phone calls to the delegation and give our federal delegation a big thank you for supporting our community through these times. They've really supported us, not just with a long-term solution, But of course, making sure we can have the resources of the Army Corps of Engineers.

So make sure when you see them visiting our community, when you see their staff, you give them a thank you. Just give you a quick idea of how the meeting will flow tonight. After introductions, we will have the engineers in the room and hydrologists and technical experts walk you through the HESCO barrier installation project. So that's kind of what this Local Improvement District funds, funds, and there's new information because this whole team and a bunch of people behind them are working nonstop to design and study this project. So I think you will find that very interesting and useful.

Then Deputy Manager Barr and I and Attorney Wright will go over the LID process, some of the questions that we have received. From the public about the LID and kind of COVID those elements. And then probably most importantly, there will be time for Q&A at the end. So we're hoping that our kind of presentation doesn't last more than an hour to leave plenty of time for you all to ask questions. We have the, this evening scheduled until 7:30.

We can stay a little bit later than that, but know also you can always reach out to us at [email protected] with your questions. These, this is an incredibly responsive team here. And again, we have the website. Um, so just to let everybody know, we're here tonight to hear about it, so we're taking up a lot of time, so if we can just move on, that'd be great. Oh, I can tell already it's going to be a friendly crowd.

Did you guys bring fruit? Well, the longer you talk to us, the less we're going to talk, just saying. So, so the— so Let's just take a deep breath. There's a website. This is the website that has a lot of this information.

So we want to make sure and, and provide a lot of this information for you guys. So next slide. All right, so just to talk a little bit about where we are, you all lived this, but we of course had a record flood event in August of 2024. The city responded to that, and we will continue to respond to any flood events. I want to make that point really clear, just like any emergency.

So we will be there. CCFR, JPD will be there not only to help with response, but also to help with cleanup. We worked very collaboratively with the tribe on this cleanup, and we will continue to do that. We're working hand in hand with them in any event for emergency response and cleanup and recovery. So I just want to, you know, we all— I recognize many faces from that process.

And just want to acknowledge that no matter what happens, we'll continue to be, be there for you. But really, we're here to talk about what to do next, right? What to do after this devastating event that affected our community. And so I believe at this time I'm going to hand it over to Chief Engineer Bohan, who's going to talk about the technical details of the HESCO barrier installation project.

Thank you, Manager Kester.

Um, good evening everyone. Um, gonna run through this hopefully fairly quickly but give you kind of the details of how we got where we are at this point, how we got to HESCO, and how we're working towards flood fighting. Um, basically the kind of the first step will be just kind of a quick overview. Um, first thing we really did was to look around and try to understand the magnitude of what happened. 2023 Was one thing.

2024 Was way bigger than what 2023 was. Way more homes impacted, way more water. The heart of the valley got flooded. And so we had to step back and try to figure out some details. We, we worked with a bunch of technical experts.

We found a pair of basically found that we had to follow parallel paths, basically figure out what to do in the short term while the long term is being worked on. And then, you know, kind of broke into the short term. So essentially, couple of photos just to show you what we were trying to do as we were trying to break this down. We were looking at this going, oh my God, how big and how bad is this? And this is just a photo looking up towards Kilowich Drive and Marion Drive to show where the majority of the water came into the valley.

And, you know, it jumped the bank and it hit the valley. It's pretty, pretty impressive and pretty unfortunate at the same time. So our goal is to try to figure out how to, you know, how to avoid that basically permanently, but also in the short term. Another photo, this was Marion Drive or Meander Way, sorry, North Meander at, you know, 11:00 PM, late, you know, before the flood peak, but you can see the water's lapping up towards people's homes. Then let's talk about 4:30 in the morning.

Water's completely in the neighborhood again. Huge. And for us to wrap our head around what's really going on. So we were trying, we're struggling trying to figure out what to do next. The first thing we did was meet with the experts, collaborate with the technical experts.

We held a We held a think tank in Anchorage on September 6th to work with the agencies, to work with the Corps, Fish and Forest Service, National Weather, you know, the people that know things about this. DOT had their hydrologists there and their engineers who work on this all the time. Klinken Haida, plus as Katie mentioned before, City Manager Kester, representatives from Senator Murkowski's office and Senator Sullivan's office. They were very involved at this meeting asking questions. Trying to figure out how they could help.

So essentially at that meeting, we analyzed and discussed all the potential solutions that had been presented at that time, brainstormed other solutions. But what we came up with is we needed to know what was going to happen. So we needed to come up with hydraulic modeling to make informed decisions on what's— what the solutions will do to basically be aware and avoid some of the unintended consequences. We also knew that long-term solutions— or we came up with the fact that long-term solutions were going to take longer than the time we had to figure things out before the summer '25, the next, the next big outburst flood. And so we had to find a short-term solution as well.

So what we did is we came up with the fact that we need to come up with two parallel paths. We need to work on the short term. And the long term at the same time, because both are very important. But the short term has the immediate, you know, essentially the immediate bonus of getting done, getting something done before the next flood. So basically what the parallel paths look like, the long term is working with the Army Corps of Engineers to come up with a long-term plan.

That's called the General Investigation Study. You'll hear about that in And the second, and in the short term, is hydraulic and hydrologic analysis. What is the river going to do with the higher flows? Where's the water going to go as the flow continues to increase? And then how do we buy time to implement the long-term solution?

Basically, we call that flood fighting, whether it's sandbags, whether it's barriers, whatever you want to call it. You are trying to fight the flood and keep it in the river. And essentially we came up with and we're figuring out that we needed to work with the short-term and long-term solutions at the same time. And we have been doing that since mid-September. The general investigation study, I will let Nate Rumsey just— Nate Rumsey, just quickly go over that.

Thanks, John. So as mentioned, a lot of effort has gone into both identifying that the general investigation needed to take place so that we could implement a long-term solution.

But a lot of additional work has gone in, whether it's with the manager's office, tribe, the letters that have been sent, the congressional delegation to actually get to the point where we could move forward with the general investigation. So as also mentioned in the latest continuing resolution that was passed, we do know that the Glacial Lake Outburst Flooding language was captured in there. What we don't know is some of the specifics at this point. That would be the specific amount of that $20 million that may go towards a general investigation study for the Glacial Lake outburst floods. Also, we don't know specifics about the timing yet.

However, we do know that within the next 60 days or so, that type of information will be coming out of the Army Corps of Engineers out of the federal government.

Another point I wanted to make relates to CBJA's participating agreement with the U.S. Forest Service. The idea there is there's a $1 million participating agreement, and that lets CBJA and the Forest Service work together in hopes to advance some of the studies, some of the data gathering that's needed, that we know is going to both inform what we're trying to do right now, but also hopefully get us a head start on some of that type of information we would need to inform the GI study. So we're not just sitting back and waiting on even the long-term study. It is parallel paths, but aside from some short-term solutions, we're trying to figure out ways that we can advance or shorten the timeline of some of those long-term solutions. Also, there's a few additional points I want to make.

The general investigation itself is not the long-term solution, but we know we have to go down that path to identify what the possibilities are for a long-term solution. It will identify what a preferred alternative might be. It might recommend specific construction projects that we could undertake. But we have to go through those steps in order to get to whatever that long-term solution is. And then the last point I wanted to make is we've received so many different suggestions from the community about possible long-term solutions.

And although we haven't been able to pursue some of those immediately, I did just want to say we recognize that many of those are, are really great solutions. We've documented many of those, and those will have the opportunity to be reviewed as a part of the general investigation process. So if you had a great idea, you've submitted something, please don't think that we haven't acted on that in any way, but we are trying to focus on short-term solutions while working with the Army Corps on what some of those long-term solutions could be. So thanks. And John, I'll turn it back over to you.

Thank you, Nate. So what are short-term solutions and what are we doing? Basically, the first thing is we're doing hydraulic and hydrologic study. I'm going to call it H&H from now on just to avoid the tongue twister. But essentially what that will do is provide new flood inundation mapping.

It'll basically be looking at the river from the new snapshot in time based on all of the erosion and all of the banks that have changed since the last round of floods, the downcutting, things like that. And we'll take that and apply that to basically when we put the flood barriers in and also to inform the general investigation study. So we're basically forming the building blocks, not only for the short-term flood fighting, but also the long-term solutions as well. So these are steps to move forward both ways, and it's information that we need. Second piece of the short-term solution is kind of important.

We need to figure out how to keep the water in the river to keep it from inundating properties. So at this point, the H&H study, we have Michael Baker International Water Resources and Hydraulic, an H&H firm under contract. They're going to provide us river modeling and basically continue working with all of the existing data, working with all of the resource agencies, Army Corps, National Weather Service, NOAA, USGS, DOT, pretty much everybody that has data and information available. For example, DOT flew a very high-definition, um, actually airplane aerial mapping of the valley in October. To basically get us the latest and greatest ground imagery to, to use on this model.

And that, that information will become available to the hydraulic consultants in the next week. And so they can perform their modeling not only with the back information and all of the checks that everybody's performed, but with the newest ground elevations as well. So we're working towards getting the best information we can as fast as we can. Part of their, part of their analysis will be to look at the barrier deployments and identify what those do at the different flood elevations to the water upstream and downstream. So we will be informed of, you know, once Phase 1 goes, where do we go next?

What's the next impacted area beyond Phase 1? Is it upstream? Because for some reason the water stays in the river and backs up. Or is it downstream because it's pushing the water further downstream and faster and getting into other properties? At this point, we don't know, but that's what the mapping is going to prove for us.

We are hoping to have information in late February from Michael Baker on the initial run of the, the mapping and modeling. So that's our goal, is to have that and to be informed in time to basically implement that use that information for our deployment this spring ahead of the 2025 El Niño flood. Short-term solutions we looked at, flood fighting, obviously, you know, we want to keep the water in the river. We've looked at sandbags, what we would call sandbag equivalents, and then other alternatives, flood walls, plastic flood barriers, vinyl floating flood barriers that deploy themselves when the water comes up.

Essentially, we also checked with the Army Corps because they were at that point, right when we were starting this, they weren't able to provide us their flood fighting expertise as well as working with them trying to get the general investigation study moving. And so they came and offered their, offered the proven technology of the HESCO barriers and all of their, their expertise. So they are able to provide us with the barriers. At no cost, but also they're proven and they're also bringing their expertise with us. And they, you know, Mike has been down to Juneau 4 times now to, and every time he's here, he's, you know, this morning we were walking the route and Mike got in to look at the river and that low flood because he had more questions.

He's like, what happens now? How deep is the bank? Because the river's at about a 1-foot flood elevation, which would be, or 1-foot flow elevation based on the Mendenhall Lake River gauge. So very very low. And then on top of that, they have vetted what we have done so far.

They've walked it, they've gave us advice, they vetted and affirmed what we've really been trying to do on the, on the Haskell route. And so it's been invaluable. And when we do go to install, they bring an installation expert. Some of you may have met him when he was here in November, Keith Anderson from Flood Defense Group. He is the United States expert on deploying the barriers.

He's deployed them everywhere. They've used them for, you know, for floods. They've used them for debris flow control in New Mexico during, after, after forest fires. So that's how we settled on HESCOs. And I got ahead of myself, sorry.

Um, what are HESCO barriers? Um, they're basically overgrown Sandbags. They're 3-foot wide, 4-foot high, and then they come in 15-foot sections, and they're basically 3-foot cells. They're fabric-lined wire mesh baskets with, you know, connected to each other and basically connected in continuity so that they function as one system. Basically, they're placed along the riverbank, and they are basically meant to keep the water inside the river.

We can use them in, in many configurations. As long as you go at least as wide as you go high, you can continue to build up. And you'll see some of the configurations are actually just wider than high because we want to make sure we've got impact resistance and protection from heavy water flow. They're highly recommended and endorsed by the US Army Corps of Engineers for flood fighting and used all over the US. Another question will be drainage.

What happens to the drainage that's, quote, trapped behind the barriers? And this is more just yard drainage or culverts, ditches. We're going to be putting a lot of pipes through these things. The pipes are laid on the ground and built integral into the HESCO barriers and filled with sand. They're not dug underneath to allow a place for water to inundate and stuff like that.

So they are You know, they are integral and a piece of the HESCO barriers. And they also, we will be putting check valves in them so they don't backflow from the river into the properties.

What does short-term flood fighting look like? So we're working on, you know, I think Nate termed it the 95% alignment at this point. We have been talking to the riverfront owners. And most of you have seen members, you know, seen us and members of our team, the project managers coming out and asking you all the questions and wanting to know what your yards look like and things like that. We have pretty much taken all that information and tried to get an alignment in consultation with the Army Corps every time Mike comes down and when Keith Anderson came down in November to keep refining that alignment to make it fit and make sure it works.

Um, we've gotta go through permitting. We have to work with FEMA, we have to work with the Army Corps. We also have to work with the state agencies. So permitting is also something that we do have to go through for this. Um, we do have a few areas that require bank armoring, and that is essentially to protect the integrity of the full HESCO barrier deployment in a line.

If you have one section of that that fails because the riverbank undermines it and it falls into the river, you know, you're basically defeating the purpose. We would go from there to site prep and barrier installation. Ideally, those two will occur at the same time. We will be working a little bit ahead of the deployment or the installation to remove obstructions. We may have to move a shed or a fence, or there are a couple decks that we might have to work with you to move.

And we will be discussing that with you as we move forward. And then we fill the barriers after we put the drainage in. There are going to be some areas that site prep might be moving further ahead because of some of the, some of the different work that needs to be done prior to keep the process moving smooth. But they will be moving in hopefully a logical order.

How did we get to Phase 1 and how did it develop? Our initial, our initial thought is we need to keep all of the water in the river. Consultation with the Corps basically said you should barrier the entire river as far as practical to protect all the homes from inundation. Now, ideally, that would be our goal and that would be our first project, but we had to have something that was constructible and fit the timing that we have available to deploy something before, you know, the 2025 Olympics. Essentially, what we looked at was all of the flooding observations, all of the data, all of the aerials, talked to all the experts, all of the details, and basically looked at something that we could do to protect the highest number of properties with a single project.

And essentially what that came down to was the Marion to River Court Way, essentially 2-mile piece, you know, 2-mile piece of, you know, segment of barriers. And what that will do is it will protect 314 of the 322 homes that were damaged, that we got— we have recorded as damaged. During the 2024 flood. And so we feel pretty validated that our first phase, even though it's not getting everybody, is protecting a very substantial chunk of property and our, honestly, in layman's terms, best bang for our buck to get it started. And we have also worked and looked to design this to protect greater than a 16-foot flood, which was the 2024 flood.

We're shooting to be a barrier height above the high water marks of the yards, but I'm not going to say that's going to equate to a 4-foot higher flood because of the hydraulics and the dynamics. But we're trying to be higher than the original flood elevation by, by a barrier. This will also be informed further by the H&H study as we get that information. Second piece of the of the Phase 1 is how we developed the, the LID boundary. And essentially, we used the 16-foot flood inundation maps from what we viewed as waters that would be touched, that was touching the properties from the 16-foot that was impacted from River Court upstream to Marion Drive.

And so that was how that boundary was determined. We couldn't defensively go further because we don't have mapping. We don't have anything scientifically defensible to say we're going to protect houses further in the valley beyond the 16-foot inundation. We hopefully are. We don't know how big the floods in here, but we don't know how many.

We don't know how to assess that. And I can let, city manager Kessler. Talk to that a little bit further, but we needed a defensible boundary to start with. So that's how we've gotten to that point. Here's some photos just to show, you know, basically the amount of time we spent on the riverbank.

You've probably seen us in our different orange vests walking up and down the river on different days, looking at different things, taking data, taking measurements. Trying to figure out and, you know, that and validate what our route is like. So now to the meat of what we're here for. Director Koch loves this. She calls it the Tetris drawings.

And so on the upper left, you'll see the green Tetris blocks. Those are the configurations of the HESCO barriers in the different neighborhoods. And so I'll just do kind of a quick discussion of how and why we got to where we did. So 4299 Marion Drive has changed and the bank upstream of it has been cut back a little bit further. So it is essentially a 90-degree turn where the flow runs straight into it.

At this point, we needed to double up the barriers, double high, double wide, to create a large mass to protect from the impacts coming straight down from the river, straight down and into it from the river. Now this is similar to what happened large scale at Kilowich Drive and how the water hit the bank and jumped up and over and went down into the neighborhood. Fortunately, it didn't happen here. It ended up in the yard and went back into the riverbank, or back into the river. But we know if it gets worse, it's going to get worse.

So we want to protect against that. You come further down, basically all the way to where we reach Fronton, Fronton to Riverside. It's pretty clean. It's a single barrier. It's parallel to the flow.

It's on the inside of the corner. We feel, you know, we feel one barrier will do the work here. There's not a lot that would impact this at this point. When you get to Kilowich, we add another barrier to what we had up at North Marion. So we're adding one more barrier just as a backup to bolster it and make it a little bit stronger for the impact and for the water coming up over the riverbank.

Coming further down Killawitch, back when we get to parallel flow, we go back down to one barrier all the way to Betty Court.

Excuse me. As we get lower into Betty Court and end up coming around Betty Court, there's some topography things we have to work around. So the only reason we're going higher with the barrier is to obtain the height. There is no— there's really no need for the stronger barrier there, but in order to build higher, you have to build wider at the same time. And then through the bottom of Betty Court, we're back to a single barrier.

I would like to note on Betty Court that we will put a, what we call a super sack segment, and a super sack is an overgrown sandbag. It's a 3-foot by 3-foot by 3-foot sandbag with forklift loops in it that can be picked up and put into place prior to the flood and then removed after the flood, or if there's water trapped up in it. We're doing this for a couple reasons. One, this is kind of a key point on Betty Court for snow removal to get the snow back off the property so it doesn't get off the road, so it doesn't get stuck in in the cul-de-sac and choke up the cul-de-sac. But also in the event that for some reason water either comes over the barrier, there's a blockage in the river, somehow there's a, you know, water gets on the backside of the barriers, we can bring a loader in there and actually open that up when it's productive to allow the water to drain back out and get back into the river.

So further down meander, very similar inside corner. We just need this. We need the second barrier high because of topography. And then further down, we end up with 3 barriers high because of topography. John, 3 barriers gives you what kind of total height?

Each barrier is 4 feet high, so you would be 12 feet high. The tops should be fairly level. It's just as the ground's going away from under it, is why we're, you know, why I'm saying topography challenges, because we need to build up higher. We need to build up to the same height as the lower ground. Further down, we're starting to get into another impact area.

This is what I call the fish hook. And essentially the water's coming down and right now would be focused into houses adjacent to the intersection of Northland And so they need a little, you know, they're high enough, but they still need the robust barrier to be 2-foot, you know, 2 barriers thick. You know, 1 high at this point based on the high water marks appears to be adequate, but we definitely want some more strength there because of the force of the flow. And we also had some documented tree strikes on houses down in that stretch. Where there's debris flow from the trees falling in and bouncing off the riverbank and pinging houses.

So we wanted to make sure we had a robust barrier deployment at that point. Why don't you open up a channel there through the fishhook and release some of that flow? That could be a long-term solution. Okay. So further down, we end up, we end up in a little area that could be higher concentrated flow when exact, if the, if or when that would ever happen.

You know, at some point the fishhook is going to cut through. Where it's going to cut through, we're not sure. So we know at some point that's going to happen. So from here down, we want to go too high to be prepared for that. And then a lot of you know that the question will be at the answer.

Thank you. River Court Way was basically the main outlet for the water in the valley. The photo here shows that it was a waterfall for quite some time. And so we wanted to make sure that we have another SuperSack barrier here to ensure that we could maintain that drain avenue, drainage way, if absolutely necessary. So further down, we just continue through River Court Way with one barrier high.

We're back to pretty mellow flow. And on the inside of the corner again, so We should be okay there. And then this is pretty much what a drainage pipe running through the barriers would look like. It's just integral. It'll be wrapped with the fabric.

It'll be filled with dirt. It'll just cut the— we'll just cut the metal, the wire out of the way to get the pipes into the barriers. And then each pipe will have a check valve installed in it.

Deployment strategy, I talked about this a little bit before. Bank armoring would be first so that we can go through and construct without having to work over or around barriers. Access, move obstructions, deploy barriers would be one operation as practical. And we will have the installation experts here training our installers to do this. And we're working hard and we'll basically be hitting the ground running when we get, get to go to basically do this prior to the next flood, which will mean that we're going to be working at multiple locations at a single time to meet that time.

A few questions that have come up that we've gotten in the past. What happens if water gets on the inside of the barriers? We've got drain pipes, we've got the, we've got the Super Sack plugs. Mike, I would like you to take the next question, which is, how effective has this solution been? Thanks, John.

So the Army Corps is recommending HESCOs here because they are a proven solution both in the US and around the world. Like John's talked about multiple times, they're very massive, which in this particular situation is significant. I know that members of the community have brought up concerns about where HESCOs have failed in the past. Examples of where those have failed have been where HESCOs have been placed on pavement. So like John just talked about with the alignment, the HESCOs are— and so basically what happens is the water builds up behind the HESCOs and the pavement is slippery and pushes them.

So that's why the HESCOs here will be placed on either native soil or where the native soil is being probably placed on compacted small riprap so they have a strong friction surface that will hold them in place. Another time that they failed, I know someone here brought up, is when there's been water against the HESCOs for weeks on end and basically sand boils form under the HESCO, which is an erosion due to the water level difference between the two sides of the HESCOs. And that is, you know, this is a unique situation in a lot of ways. But one thing that isn't unique about it is that flooding happens all around the country. And one advantage of this unique situation is that the flooding here is pretty fast.

So those concerns about water just sitting against the HESCOs for a long time and creating sand boils are less of a problem than would be other places where HESCOs have failed. And then in terms of strengths, —those kind of failure situations that people have heard about, like John talked about. They're very similar situations where the HESCOs have succeeded, like we talked about with the double-wide HESCO because of tree strikes, like John talked about there.

In New Mexico, where there have been forest fires and there's large debris flows coming from flooding, the HESCO barriers have proved very effective at surviving and retaining significant debris hitting them. At a high velocity. And I know I've talked about this before when I was here in October, uh, whenever that was, and some of you here, but the ESCOs are also actually tested with the scenario of having a large log, uh, ram directly into them. And like we talked about before, also ESCOs are used worldwide, uh, for protection on military bases. And that's that massive volume there, is that they can withstand large direct impacts, which in our system here with the big Sitka spruce trees potentially ramming into the bank, it's really important to have that robustness and ability to repair them between events.

So like I said, it's basically this combination of that they're a proven solution that's been used all over the world, and they're also particularly tailored to survive and withstand the problem on the Mendon Hall.

Thank you, Mike. The next question would be, are there potential downstream impacts? And I, we talked about that a little bit beforehand in the presentation, but we have Michael Baker working on that right now. Essentially, that's what the H&H study is going to do, is not only tell us what the barriers are going to do, what the flooding is going to do, but also where the water is going to go after it hits barriers. And so that is essentially what our next step's going to be.

After we get Phase 1 done, we will be looking to the next high area of inundation and figuring out what to do next. So we're not stopping here. And basically downstream, upstream impacts, that's part of what the modeling is going to show us. And so that would actually fit into what studies are being done at the same time. So Michael Baker is doing the work and studying the river and giving us the model.

And so I guess one more question. I don't know, Mike or Nate, do you want this one? It would be, how will the HESCO project impact a long-term solution?

The HESCO temporary solution, it's timescale of 5 to 10 years, is totally separate than an Army Corps long-term solution with the GI. So doing the HESCOs will not impact the ability to do the AGI. It's a different funding source, nor will it affect the capacity to do it. In some ways, it's actually an advantage because, like John's talked about with the Michael Baker modeling, our hope is that then we can then use that modeling as a stepstone to move forward and already have that going when you start moving to the channel investigation.

Thank you, Mike.

And then we got a few questions from the riverfront for the barrier installs. Number 1 is, can I, you know, can I install the HESCOs myself on my property?

And essentially, no. What we look at here, and this was one of Nate's analogies, which is great, I want to give him credit for it. This is like a utility. This is like a, a water transmission line. It has to be continuous and it has to be sound.

We have to have that peace of mind to protect everybody. And so we need to be able to install all of it and certify it ourselves. So that is really the crux of why we want to own this. We wouldn't let you as a homeowner hire a contractor to go install your segment of WaterMain. Or sewer main.

So we want to make sure that this has the same integrity of— the same integrity that we would expect out of our utility infrastructure. Second question, kind of follow-up, is, can I install my own flood fighting measures? Absolutely. I recommend you guys consider doing that. I mean, we're hopeful, you know, really, I hope you do take what measures you feel necessary to protect your homes.

We're basically hopeful that our flood fighting measures are going to work, and we're doing everything we can in our power to make sure they're going to. But still, your homes are your responsibility, so I would leave that with you. The next question would be, who pays for what? We will pay for the obstruction removal when we're installing the barriers. We'll pay for the You know, we'll pay for the restoration, which City Manager Kester will talk about in a few moments.

And so we're, we're, you know, with the LID, the project is paying for it. So we're sharing the cost through the LID, but the project is paying for all of that work. And then what about Phase 2? Phase 2 is going to most likely be multiple segments or phases or subphases of Phase 2. We're going to try to prioritize as we get modeling what happens after Phase 1.

Where does the water go? What happens downstream? What happens upstream? And do the same analysis we did to figure out how we got to Phase 1. What's the next biggest bang for our buck to protect in a project that we can complete in a reasonable timeframe before the next flood?

I don't know if we'll make '25, but before the flood after that. And so that will continue until we catch it, until we get everything covered, or until we get the long-term solution. Um, with that, I believe that's where I end and hand this back to City Manager Kespi. Thank you, uh, Chief Engineer Bohan. That was really useful information, and I know you have a lot of questions, so we will just burn through this piece and then make sure we reserve time for you all to ask questions.

So what is a local improvement district? This is a mechanism in state statute and city code for benefited properties, properties that benefit from an improvement to pay for project costs. We mostly see local improvement districts with things like water lines and sewer lines and paving roads, but this, this is an applicable instance where there's an infrastructure that will provide an improvement, and that is governed in Title 1510. If you want to read it yourself.

What would this project, the flood, the HESCO flood mitigation project, the LID pay for? And I think Bohan talked about it a little bit, but I just want to go over it. So, you know, this is, this is what matters to you, right? This is your pocketbook, your, your money. And what does it pay for?

It pays for the permitting, and there's extensive permitting between FEMA and the Corps, DNR, It pays for the shoring up of the armoring where needed. That's of course exclusive of the 4 properties that will be assessed an additional $50,000 for the complete armoring. But there's lots of places where we just need to stabilize the armoring. It pays for installation of the barriers, as Bohan mentioned, all the, you know, filling them, making sure the site's prepared, making sure there's adequate drainage installed. There is a contingency built in there because, as you know, with any project there's a contingency.

And importantly, we have reserved $500,000 of the budget to reinstall obstructions that we may have to remove or modify on your property. And so we are responsible for removing the HESCO barriers when we've come to a long-term solution and the end of this project. It is very much a temporary solution. And so we will will be responsible for paying for the cost of that removal and reserving some funds for reinstalling those obstructions. So a little bit about the timeline and the next steps.

Of course, we're all here tonight at the neighborhood meeting. This neighborhood meeting was initiated by Ordinance 2024-40 by the Assembly. It originally was proposed as a a 50/50 split between the LID and City and Borough of Juneau taxpayers at large. However, the assembly amended that to a 60/40 split, so more, more for the City and Borough of Juneau taxpayers. And that was really done as an acknowledgment of what Bohan mentioned, where we are using these inundation maps because— the 60-foot inundation map— because that's the best available data that we have.

But we acknowledge that there are likely some properties that will be protected by this improvement that are outside of that inundation map. We don't know what those are until we do that mapping. Can't do that mapping in a timely way for this process. And so in acknowledgment of that, the assembly shifted the split to be a greater 60/40 split and a greater burden on city and borough of Juneau taxpayers at large. So that gets us to a $6,292 assessment for the 466 properties included in the LID.

The proposal is a 10-year payment program at a 4.78% interest rate. This interest rate is dictated by code. This has to be our kind of standard interest rate that we could get like a long-term CD or something at. The 10-year timeframe I know has been questioned. The life of the HESCO varies from 5 to 10 years, 10 years if it's really holding up well.

Certainly I don't want it to take 10 years for us to come up with a long-term solution, but we wanted to be able to spread the cost of the local improvement district over as many years as possible without spreading it beyond the life of that improvement. So we will be working very hard to come to a long-term solution before that, but I also want to acknowledge that, you know, it's going to take some time to do that feasibility work and to do that construction work. So that's where the 10-year time frame came up with. Not that we, you know, we really don't know when we're going to be able to remove those, but want to make sure that we give you as much time as possible to pay for that local improvement district. A really critical date that you all need to have is that any objection to the district needs to be received in writing by the end of the public hearing on February 3rd, 2024.

25. So that will be an opportunity for you to testify before the assembly and, and, you know, make your voice heard. Of course, most of them are in the room tonight, so they're going to be hearing you, uh, tonight as well. Um, and the end of the public hearing will be the— when the mayor drops the gavel after public testimony, uh, at that 7:00 PM regular meeting. You have to submit something in writing, but I encourage you to submit something before that if you're in objection to the assessment, uh, to the local improvement district.

We did include in the certified mailing that you received, and there is online forms to register your objection. You are not required to use that form to register your objection. It's just a convenient way for you to be able to, you know, write your parcel number, your name, and make sure that we have what we need to be able to, you know, check you as against the district. You have to object to be counted as a no. So if you do nothing, it will be essentially counted as an affirmative for the LA LID.

I do encourage you, if you are supportive of the LID, to share those, those thoughts with your assembly at [email protected]. You know, they need to hear from everyone on this project. And then the LID ordinance becomes effective on March 3rd. So that's really our target date to begin doing work and installation. We will be doing permitting and design and engineering all up until that date.

But really the kind of go/no-go is that. So just wanna like briefly go over some of the frequently asked questions that we get at [email protected]. Some of these are covered in your information packet, but hopefully I can provide a little more, a little more detail. Is CBJ pursuing other potential funding sources? So yes, certainly we've been working with the Clinkett and Haida on pursuing federal funding.

We have— Clinkett Naida has received one grant for about $750,000 that would go towards the project. We're still working with, with Clinkett and Haida and really with the grantors on, you know, what that would cover. As a federal project, there's likely increased permitting costs and other things that will increase the project cost. But importantly, your cost cannot be more than $6,292. So that's another kind of fixed number for you to understand.

So we're still trying to figure out, you know, how to apply those funds. There are a lot of grant programs out there. Many of you have shared some of those, and I just— trust me, those are all on our radar. We've got— we're tracking all of those. The challenge with grant funding, and even the challenge with some of the programmatic funding that we are hopeful has been included in the disaster supplemental legislation that was recently passed by Congress, is really a timing one.

So the access to those funds will not be in time to be able to do this project this spring. We're really aiming for July, this summer, so that we can have this project in place before the next Yokaloope season. So we will continue to pursue those different grants. We will continue to work with the delegation that has been just incredibly supportive in leveraging funding and leveraging support to, you know, fund future phases of the project. No question, the long-term solution, it's going to take a lot to design and construct.

So that's another piece where we will be applying— we will be applying for those grants and those resources.

What happens if the levy is approved and other funding is secured? So the assembly has talked about, you know, that money being— reducing the total project cost. After any increases to the project cost. Can more properties be added to the LID? No.

So the preliminary assessment roll that was— the assembly sent out to all 466 property owners is the— no additional property can be added to that because of course that property owner would not have been given proper notification. Can my assessment increase from $6,292? No. City code says it cannot increase. So what you will be charged as a property owner is the actual project cost.

So you won't— you know, it will be some number underneath or right up to that number. Of course, we'd like for that project cost to come in under budget. That's why we built in a contingency. But, you know, projects can be very unpredictable beasts. What we cannot do is say, just kidding, it actually costs $8,000 per property.

So we're going to charge you $8,000. That would require us to start at the beginning, 2 months ago when the LID ordinance was introduced. What happens if you sell your property?

The LID is a lien against your property and it travels with the property. So it's not you as an individual, it's your property. So it can be transferred with property owners. Oftentimes, just in practice, what I have seen is that it's paid off at the time of sale. That, of course, will be a decision between the buyer and the seller and your lenders, but it does travel with the property.

How do you pay your assessment? You can pay your assessment, so it won't be due until the total project is completed and the Assembly has confirmed the final assessment roll, which will be another public hearing, another opportunity for you to testify on the project. So this likely won't happen for another full year. Just, you know, we have to do the project, reconcile all the final costs, and bring that before the assembly, that certification of the final assessment roll. And then that assessment will not be due until your property taxes.

So that will go out on July 1st, and that will be due on September 30th with property taxes. So it'll be an additional line on your property tax bill. Oftentimes this is just combined with if you're paying a mortgage, It will be combined with your escrow. You, you could contact your bank, make sure that's happening. But that is one way that that would be built into there.

You can pay your assessment off in full before, before that payment date takes place. So if you're like, I don't want to pay any interest, I just want to get rid of this thing. There's no penalty for paying it off in full, and there's no penalty, you know, if in 5 years you pay it off in full, right? We're not charging you, you know, the full 10 years interest or anything like that. What will the barriers still be installed if the LID fails?

So I, you know, I think that that is unlikely. The Assembly has initiated an LID as a mechanism to cost share these, this improvement. That certainly, you know, whether or not the Assembly decides to pay for installation of the barriers out of city and borough of Juneau funds will be an Assembly decision. But I can tell you that every indication that I've gotten from the body is that they wouldn't do something if the property owners, the affected property owners, don't want it to be done. Another mechanism that the HESCO barriers could be installed if you voted no.

So to vote no, 51% of the property owners paying for the cost have to object. So the assembly could override that with an 8-1 affirmative. So, but I just, again, this is just my sense as your city manager. This is, I am not speaking, the assembly is their own elected body that does their own things. But my sense is that they would not want to force something upon the neighborhood that they, that the neighborhood did not want.

What will the city do if the barriers are not installed? So there is not time. Between, you know, February 3rd and next Yokohama season to do any additional mitigation measures. However, as I mentioned in the beginning, and hopefully, you know, you know, we will continue to do emergency response. We've improved our mass notification system.

You can sign up for that. It's a much more robust text notification system for not just this disaster, but, you know, any type of notification within the city and borough of Juneau. We will continue to provide that emergency response. We will, and we will continue to provide recovery. The state was just an essential partner in this disaster in helping us.

I mentioned the tribe also has just been a leader. So those, those things will continue. And of course, we will continue to work towards a long-term solution and that general investigation study. So those are some of the questions that certainly I have seen, and I can't see with that glare. There we go.

But I think more importantly, you guys didn't want to hear me talk. That was obvious at the beginning of this meeting. You have questions for us. So I think now we might, um, maybe we'll like last time we kind of stood down here. It just feels so like we're up here on this stage.

So maybe we'll move down here and we'll have a couple people in the audience with a microphone so we can continue to record and get some Q&A. Give us a second to move down.

Who do we have, uh, walk in the mic? Well, I could walk the mic around, but I was gonna have people come down to— okay. Oh, look, we, we have a mic here for questions, it looks like. So maybe we'll have, uh, that mic. This work?

Take this with us.

Will this continue to look Will it pick us up down there? Pick you guys up? If we go too far in the audience, it won't do a great job. All right, please say that under my front. Just feels so alive behind stage.

Yeah, so let's put up here. Should it go down?

All right, so please, I want— if you can speak to this microphone, and maybe we can have one microphone in the crowd just in case there's people who can't get to the microphone that easily.

Right. Can you get a mobile mic for us? Oh, never mind. All right, maybe with our mobile mic, but please.

Roman, can you try to check there? The— you want the image to full screen? Oh, particularly the fish. The fish. Okay, can you put the fish?

Yeah, it's a— the computer is, uh, got a battery issue, so we're just charging it at every moment that we can.

I'm going to guess this question's for you, Bo. So I'm going to walk this right through.

Bishop, I think he was passing it. Yes. You need to put a leaf chain in the fish run. You say to yourself that that'll eventually happen, but if you do it now, you're going to relieve a lot of the water out of the river and keep it from backing up. Right now, that fishhook is effectively a very effective dam.

And I've lived out long on Dryden, I've watched these floods for many years. The fishhook comes down and actually directs water up to the land away and into my property. And if you don't cut a slot through that fishhook, you're going to get a lot more water coming from where it jumps over the bridge. I walked out from my property to Riverside Drive during the peak of the flood. And there was probably an average of 3 feet deep from the end of Long Run Drive.

And then by the time we got up to Riverside Drive, it was about a foot deep. You're going to condense a huge amount of water. Come down to this fish hook, which is already flooding. I don't see any problem with cutting a relief channel through that quickly. It could be done for a lot less money than the hospital barriers.

So financially, it's a very small question. Thank you.

Thank you. Good question. And actually, the short answer to this is that is, that is a great long-term solution that we will be looking at. We've been talking about not just relief channels at the Fish Hook, further upstream. There's a lot of ways to expedite or make the, make the river way more efficient by moving the water through overflow relief channels.

The challenge is, and this is where the experts come in, there are unintended consequences. So where do we cut through the trees right there? If we cut through the trees right on the picture, Um, we would focus the water instead of there right on House 3377 and then put a giant standing wave in their front yard. Unintended consequence. We are trying to study all of this and do it in a rational manner and use the information we have up front.

I appreciate your question, so thank you. Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions, and I have several. A little bit Um, Mohan, my first one is for you. You mentioned the forklift to be able to pull the sandbags up to let water back out. How are you going to drive a forklift in 4 feet of water?

It's not a forklift, it would be a front-end loader. And we— there are limitations to those obviously, but that is the intention of being able to get large equipment in there to do that. We would stay to do something, and really when it's safe, we actually just have a had that conversation this afternoon. But there's also a different scenario if opening it and letting the water out isn't viable at that moment because there's too much water in the river. You're also counterproductive.

So, you know, large, large equipment, forklift basically, but using a large snow, you know, a large front-end loader with forklift to be able to break most of the time. This is what Wayne had actually, pretty significant current in it, and that may not be a good idea. Just something to consider. It was a current going the other direction. That's understood.

Understood. But we're trying to at least leave the option for relief valves at some, at some locations. My next question is actually for the manager. Uh, have you updated the hazard mitigation plan yet? So we have a hazard mitigation plan from 2009, and those expire in 5 years.

So our hazard mitigation plan is outdated. We have hired a contractor to do the updated hazard mitigation plan. We expect that to be done in the next year. The hazard mitigation plan is necessary to be eligible for certain grant programs. None of those grant programs would we be able to apply for and get in time for this project.

But it is our goal to get those, to get that hazard mitigation plan in place to be eligible for for future rounds of grant funding. Absolutely a failure on CBJ's part for not having that hazard mitigation plan updated, but it is not impacting your ability to, you know, get flood insurance or access funds. And from a timing perspective, there's no programs that we would be eligible for now, but certainly it's of utmost importance for us to get that plan updated as soon as possible. Thank you. Uh, and my last question is— it's not really a question, it's more of a statement, and it's for the benefit of the people in this room and the benefit of the assembly to understand that I think that you're confusing homeowners' desire for HESCO barriers and coupling it with a funding mechanism that impacts them greatly.

We can still do HESCO barriers and fund them separately. That's a decision of the assembly. And if people don't know, at 51%, the assembly has a choice to make. And so people can still be in support of this project and not be in support of the lid, which is also not an infrastructure improvement if it's temporary.

Well, I'm not an engineer, but you guys are choosing a 2-mile strip. Now, people on the one side of the river did a lot of work to their banks. Which this year then when, when the flood happened, that just forced water into a whole other area. And if you put this 2-mile barrier up and that forces the water to then flood, say, um, the neighborhood on the other side of the bridge, isn't that a huge liability issue for the city? Because I know if I lived on that side of the bridge and you guys put this 2-mile barrier up that forced the water down there, the first thing I would do would be knocking on your door.

We know what we're— we absolutely know. I mean, you were talking that there's a permitting process and how complex this is. If you're doing that for this, why aren't we gonna be doing it? Why don't we just go straight for the levee, which we know works?

I'm from Fairbanks. We built the levee there. I was— my house floated down with the creek when I was a kid. I mean, they haven't had a flood since. If we know, yeah, it's going to take time, but yet there could be a lot of red tape cut, we could be putting our energy into something that's permanent.

Because if you're just passing the problem downriver, I mean, that's a liability, huge liability. So I'm just gonna, I'm gonna hand it over to Chief Engineer Bohan, but I wanna say two things. Absolutely, we don't wanna do, we don't wanna do that, which is why we're during the hydrological modeling. And the second piece on the levee, levee absolutely is a viable solution. It needs to be studied and it needs to go through that study and design process.

And we know that's gonna take time and I don't wanna lose the valley and all of those homes, hundreds of homes while we study and permit a long-term solution. I mean, the Fairbanks Levy in 1972 took, what, 10 years to design and permit, and that was in a very different permitting environment. So we totally agree that there's a long-term solution out there that's going to be much better. The assembly has decided, and, you know, my conscience has decided as well, that I don't want to lose all those homes while we wait, uh, for that long-term solution, which is why we're working on the short-term solution. But if you want to talk to the technicalities, any of, of modeling or, or anything else, Logan, I'll hand it to you.

Other homes— what if you're just passing it to 300 homes on the other side? I, I, I don't think I'm going to satisfy you with any answers. So we're studying what We're studying the impacts. We have the hydrologic study coming. And we're going to— we're basically going to set ourselves up to protect the center of the valley, which is the worst impact that we've had so far.

The secondary piece is going to be informed with us with our next move. That's basically why we're studying this. So— [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Anyway, thank you for the question. Appreciate it.

Next. Hi guys, thank you so much for taking the questions. I have a couple, but I'll try and be quick and I'll come back around. John, you said that you're going to build these barriers and you're planning it on the 16-foot inundation, but the overall plan is to put another 4 feet on top, both for, I'm sure, engineering safety factor and just to make sure they're not overtopped. I guess.

But when you're in the city code, the city code says all benefited properties shall be included. And so we're building— I'm going to call it a 20-foot barrier. I know that's not how the hydraulics work out, but we're building a barrier that benefits a lot of people. And it's not just the people that are included in the— okay, we grabbed the inundation maps that we have and we're moving forward. This could easily be 500 or 600 properties that are not included in the lid as current, and you admit it.

And you're saying we didn't include them because it's too much work or we can't make a guess. Well, that's not fair, and it's not what the code says. If we include a whole bunch of people and everybody's behind us and we do it, it gets funded. We, we can take people out once we get the modeling that you've already ordered. And we can even say that, but I don't know why it's not an option to include them, and it's not fair to the rest of us.

So if you're going to build that barrier, why aren't we including all the benefited properties? I get the cost share kind of tries to adjust that, but that's not what the code says. So I think we need to follow the code, especially if we're going to try and be legal, and I think it's reasonable to get buy-in for the entire valley that you guys say that you're protecting. So just to answer that question, we, we need to have a legally defensible way to draw those boundaries, and we, we do not know, uh, that other properties will be benefited. Certainly we can make those assumptions, but that's why those— that map was, uh, that map was chosen.

Um, I mean, we can't arbitrarily say, okay, well, we think it's all of these properties without having that modeling and that science behind it, and You know, I can assure you that there will be plenty of opportunities for our community and for the Valley and our taxpayers to continue to pay for what will be a long, a long and expensive journey towards a long-term solution. So like, don't be worried that this is the first opportunity that, you know, the Assembly will have to wrestle with how much taxpayer dollars to spend on flood mitigation because it, There will be many more.

The one way to interpret that is you're going to drop consecutive lids over and over again. Yeah, so that's awful, and I don't want to see that. I've written into the assembly and I even said, hey, just fund it for now, pay it, float it, find the money, and then go into a local tax district or some other mechanism where we better understand the benefited properties and we can fairly address that. So I'll leave that. I think a local tax district is an excellent idea, and there is— there, the Timing was not sufficient to do that in this case, but you're absolutely right, a local tax district is a great idea.

And $4 million to the assembly is chump change, so just move forward. But anyhow, my next question, then I'll walk away from the mic— thank you everybody— is under this plan you talk about the assessment and all the benefited properties. Well, riverfront property owners aren't benefited by this. You're taking— Let's get everybody get their questions. Okay.

So essentially, you're taking private property to put something on that I cannot remove, I cannot change, I cannot touch. Like, I don't have rights to that property anymore. And for my property, which is 3475, you're talking 3 barriers deep, 12 feet high. I'm guessing that's like below the hill behind my house in the trees. I'm not sure.

It's hard to tell from the maps because all of those are old. Um, so what are you doing to counter or address the fact that you're actually seizing property for 10 years? That's not addressed anywhere in the bid. It's not— I'm assessed the same as everybody else, but I'm going to lose a third of my lot. What's that?

How is that being addressed? Yeah, I can take that one. Thanks for that question, Sam. So, um, two pieces to that. First, you didn't specifically ask this, but the— it's important to know that the authority that we would be relying on if the LID passes and if the project happens is emergency authority that's within the code that the assembly has adopted under the emergency ordinance to go and install the project.

That declared emergency won't last forever. And then what the LID does is it— and I know we disagree on this term, right? It defines public infrastructure that benefited properties, right? And what we're essentially asserting on behalf of everyone in the local improvement district is that these barriers as a system, as a combined public improvement, benefit all those properties by keeping water out of the properties in a 16-foot flood and in greater amounts. We don't know exactly what greater means, right?

You talked about the model, and you're right that if you We can't just say 20 feet because, you know, the modeling is different in different parts of the river and there's lots of variables there. But that's the key, right, is that we would be essentially saying that those barriers are protecting and they are a benefit to your company. They're not. Well, I get it. And the argument is that we would make in their reverse, believe it or not, is that they, in the absence of those barriers, it seems likely, it seems plausible.

And what we're trying to avoid is that in, in greater events, which we have every expectation are likely to happen, would result in that property going off-grid system.

It is a possibility. I think you guys need a lease or some sort of agreement that solidifies this on a yearly, year-to-year basis or for the 10 years so that that is not a question. Thank you, guys.

Flooding in 19—. Or 2023 straightened and widened the river below the back loop bridge. As a result, U Drive had less flooding this year than it did in '23, even though the lake was significantly higher. That's one example that straightening the river and giving it more room will reduce flooding. Downriver from this fishhook, there was an ox bow similar to this, looped around and was eroding the bank there by Vintage Park.

When that finally washed out and straightened the river, you can stand on the footbridge there by Thunder Mountain and see a straight shot down to the Brotherhood Bridge. That ox bow is no longer a problem. The problem here with the fishhook is that it creates a partial dam. Your suggestion of cutting it through where you did is not the right suggestion. You've got to go all the way over to the left and straighten that river out.

If you don't do that, you're going to have a dam there that's going to cause a problem, and it's going to be a bigger problem with Haskell barriers running all that water from Killawitch over down into that dam area. You've got to cut that out and make it a straight shot. And it's not a temporary solution. That's a permanent solution that can be done right now.

I'll just respond briefly on that one. Again, sir, you are, you are absolutely correct. Considering cutting through the river and straightening the river is definitely one of the viable long-term solutions that will be considered in the Army Corps' general investigation study. It's just not something that we can do feasibly and realistically on the timeline that we have without studying the impacts that would have if we diverted the water in that way.

Hello, thank you. So much of the work I've heard about tonight hinges on this study by MBI. Or this contract work, engineering work that MBI is doing. Can you tell us about MBI? Have we— has the city worked with them before?

How many people do they have on this? Are they under pressure to get this done on time? What, what's the cost involved? Can you tell us those sorts of things about MBI? That's my question.

Sure, Michael. Uh, MBI is, I believe, an international hydraulic and hydrology firm. They're actually bigger than that. They they do more work, but they have a very robust H&H section. We actually have people from their section from Anchorage as well as their modeling people from, I believe, North Carolina working on this.

So they have a fairly large force working on this to pull the information together to get us data and the first, the first results by the end of February. They came highly recommended from the state of Alaska who uses them all the time. Time on multiple contracts. And so we didn't go into this blindly and just choose them. DOT had recommended that they do this, and we use them to do this.

They're one of the top 4 firms that they use. So they, they, they come with a very highly recommended background, and they have been very responsive to our needs at this point. So I, I don't have any— I don't have any— I, I have a lot of faith in them, and I'm very confident in what they'll produce They're under contract. Do they have a fixed cost? They're doing it on time and materials because of some of the variables and the unknowns in the new LiDAR mapping that is coming from DOT in the next week or so.

So we are on— at this point, we are the first phase that they're doing right now for the modeling is under time and materials. And so basically they're expediting to get moving to meet our schedule. We pretty much turned the paperwork around. Instantaneously to keep them moving as fast as we can. Thank you.

Uh, thank you for taking my question. Um, couple comments. Uh, first of all, uh, I don't know if I'm the only one in the room, but I really appreciate the city's efforts and their ability and their outreach and communication on this thing. Um, I feel your anxiety that you're putting forward, a lot of uncertainty about the problem and the solution. So I appreciate you and your efforts.

Second thing is recommendations: stay off social media. There's not a lot of things that are— very little things being said online from about the intention. So I appreciate that you're in front of us and making these steps.

Accessible. My question is this: last year's flood was— we live right on Kilwa Trail River— last year's flood was what, 14 feet? This year's flood, 16 feet. There's some indication the basin is increasing. Next year, this summer, could be 18 feet.

How does your Tetris map vary if in fact there's an 18-foot flood or a 20-foot flood? Is there an algorithm that says some of the individual HESCO barriers are going to have to be doubled up or tripled based on the size of the flight? So yes, thank you. Very, very good question. And I didn't get into the details on how we got to the Tetris, but that's, that's, that's a good question.

And that's what started with walking the route with Mike, with Mike and his Army Corps partners, as well as Keith Anderson, to work on bolstering this. We're going to know more when we get that mapping in February and the modeling. At this point, that is our, our, our estimate of what we are able to do for hopefully 4 feet above the 16-foot flood elevation, which isn't guaranteed to be a +20. We don't know exactly what the 4 feet is going to gain us. Is it going to gain us 2 feet because of added velocity?

Is it going to gain us more than that because at a higher elevation, it's, it's, the water's inundating on the other side of the river, which is lower. So we actually have storage over there because we're keeping it in the river. When we run the modeling, we're going to run it up to a plus 20-foot flood elevation up at Mendenhall, up at Mendenhall Lake at the flood gauge. And we're going to see what it does on the HESCO barriers. And we're going to basically make our final decision on heights based on that information.

And, you know, but at this point, we also have to get something built. If the LID moves forward, we need to move forward to protect against against that, against the next flood. So we need to do something. We're not gonna sit and fester. We're gonna use the, the best information we have available at the time to proceed forward, I guess, is the— and we're, I'll be totally honest, we are working with very limited information, but we are trying to move at a sprint, as Director Koch calls it, because if we stop, this won't happen.

And we're going to have water in the valley again. So we're trying, if we get a project to move forward, to be ready to basically take off and start working as soon as we have approval. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Thank you for having us have opportunity to ask questions and make comments. I'm going to follow up with the gentleman before. He does not stand alone in the appreciation for all of the for the work that you've done.

What I'd like to say right now is, uh, I, I wanted to thank everyone, anyone in the community, our mayor, our assembly, everyone who has had a hand in helping recover through this and also prepare for the next one. Every little action makes our lives better. I have a couple of questions.

I live on Emily Way, and, uh, we were not in the expected flood area, as you know. Um, we were not prepared for this financially, and in doing a little bit of research, I have found that most Americans have $1 to $2,000 saved for, uh, emergency situations.

It took an immense amount of moving finances and figuring out how we were going to financially recover from this before FEMA came in. Even with the support that we've had from GoFundMe and other, you know, FEMA, we are still in debt from this. I don't expect that I will be out of debt before we are expected to start paying for um, the $6,000. I recognize the work that the assembly has done, our community has done, in expressing the request to get that, uh, 50/50 changed to 40/60, and I am standing here asking if there is a way to be able to wipe away the interest. Interest on this project feels painful and cruel.

And I don't think that that is what the assembly is intending. However, I'm still recovering financially, and I would believe that we all are as well. I would like that to be considered. That is an unnecessary finance that is given to the city from our pockets. That, uh, is, is something that is difficult to, um, swallow.

I do understand that there are codes and that we have to follow those. I'm just asking to double-check and look to see if there's anything else that can wipe out that interest. And then, uh, the question that I have— the other question that I have comes with comments, and this is to my neighbors and community members. This, uh, experience has been one of the most difficult experiences in my life. I would assume that it was for you as well.

I understand that many of my neighbors have been dealing with this for a lot longer than I have on Emily Way. I know that this brings up intense, um, fear and emotions associated with our lives and our home, including all of our, uh, equity— most of our equity, if you, um, don't have all of your equity in your home.

I would like to ask my neighbors to recognize that the people who are doing the work are our neighbors. They're our community members, and we are Alaskans. We hold each other up, and we see these people in the community every day. They are doing the best that they can.

It is a difficult job that they're doing. And this issue, whereas it is the most important issue in my life right now, is one issue that our assembly is dealing with right now. And the more that we make it difficult, the harder it is on them. I'm, I'm asking my community members, what can you do to make it easier to help them help us?

Thank you for your final Thank you very much, um, for your thoughtful comments. I know that the assembly is here and they heard them, uh, and they're listening. The, uh, the final decisions on the terms of, of the LID will be made at that public hearing on February 3rd. So I let— I, I know my assembly, uh, hears you and appreciates you taking the time to share those comments. Thank you.

Hey, thank you all for being here. I know it's tough to sit up and hear some of the things, but, uh, very encouraging to hear the good thought. Uh, I'm on Riverport Way, right on that cul-de-sac. Have a couple quick questions. Stood outside during both floods last year and this year and watched the amount of water that dumps out of Riverport into Mendenhall River with elevation change of about 3 feet from the top of the bank to the river.

Our house did not flood. It got up into the yard to the foundation, got in the garage a little bit. My concern is, even with some type of pipe through there with quick valves or, you know, a Super Sack in there to pull, is that if we did have a breach upstream and the neighborhood did flood, that based on the amount of water that I've seen drain into the river there and where you are currently saying the HESCO barriers will stop, it seems to me that if you stop the HESCO barriers 100 yards to the north, that wouldn't be necessary because of where the river is in elevation compared to the street with still 3 to 4 feet. Yeah, right there. I mean, Right now, I believe the way the map shows it, the HESCOs are going past that red house and stopping right there.

And based on what we've seen over the last two floods, you could be probably at a 19-foot flood and not flood over that. And that's just what I've seen from standing there. But that is a lot of water that comes through there, and there would have to be a very substantial system to get that water out of there if we did have a breach. Because if there's not, then we would have homes flooding that haven't been historically flooding. And that's my concern, is that then we're in like a taking situation where we've got properties that were flooded because of the escrow barriers.

That's my first question. And my second question is to echo what the lady before me said, is that it seems to me to be very unfair to be charging 4.78% interest on something that is helping with an emergency And that's being assessed across all properties no matter their value and the ability of people to pay. When you may have a quarter million dollar home being assessed the same amount as a million dollar home, and some folks can't afford to pay that. And I'd just like to know where that money for is coming from, and if it's general fund, what is going to be done with the money that is made in interest going back, and what's that money going to be used for. Because right now it's 61— it's $6,200.

I think there's $3,500 in interest over the course of 10 years that really only affects people of lower income. That, to me, that's unfair that we are disproportionately affecting lower-income people by giving them a loan but charging them interest. I think the Assembly— and I'm glad they're here— can hear this, that if there ever was a time to waive an interest rate, this would be it. So thank you.

Let's turn to the interest rate question, then pass the technical question over to Bohan. Uh, so the city code says that, um, we would charge an interest rate similar to, you know, what we could get, uh, for our, um, bond— normal bond, um, holding. So like we have, um a central treasury, and that most of that money is invested in bonds in order to like be earning some interest. So that 4.78% interest is what we would be getting if the city hadn't spent the money on the project. So that's where that number comes from.

That's a number in code. You're absolutely right that, you know, the assembly can change that. And like I mentioned before, I do, I do think they're, they're hearing you. So thank you for, for your comments. Okay, thanks.

On the SuperSec barrier, we're not talking about just one 3-foot barrier wide. I mean, we're talking about the width of the road or something very substantial so that we could accommodate the mass volume of water coming out. Ideally, we hope it doesn't happen, but we want to have a safety valve there. And so it wouldn't be just moving one barrier, it would be a big block of substantial number of barriers that we'd have to move out of the way, but it would give us the ability to protect what your concern is. Does that answer your question?

Thanks. Hi, can you hear me? Yeah, you can hear me. I understand we need to go do something. My concern is that are we doing the right thing on a long-term basis?

And may we not be better off to delay this 3 months and buy flood insurance? I mean, my flood insurance, $300, that's a quarter of a million dollars. I'd rather pay that, have flood insurance, than to pay this and cause a problem for somebody down the road.

If we straighten this channel, probably solve a lot more problems.

I don't know that this is the best idea, but it's one idea, and maybe we need to study it more before we spend $6,000 plus. I can afford to pay for insurance all these years. You can't afford to pay for these barriers. We don't want these barriers to work for the next innovation. Thanks.

Just briefly, I just want to say that those are all excellent thoughts and certainly thoughts that have gone through our minds as, as we've been working through this process. And, um, You know, we certainly encourage everyone who can purchase flood insurance to purchase flood insurance. The National Flood Insurance Program is, as you mentioned, inexpensive, at least right now, and the coverage is pretty good. So definitely good to plug that. And, you know, as far as, you know, whether or not this is the best project or this is the project to be doing right now.

It's what, in consultation with Mike and with DNR, DOT, and with Army Corps colleagues, it's what we've managed to come up with that can conceivably prevent massive flooding from happening in these houses this coming season. Um, and, uh, the LID process and your comments to the assembly on the LID process, your objection or your lack of objection on the LID process, um, all of those things combined really are— is, is what's going to help us as a community make a decision. Hi, so my house is in a bit of a kind of a double whammy position. We are on 3455 Meander, which is on the previous map, uh, where that, that fishhook that everyone was talking about, our house is like right on it. Yeah, it's also really high up off the, off the river, so our house amazingly did not get affected by the flood.

A lot of our neighbors did. We got to witness the devastation, and I my heart hurt for everybody that, uh, had to tear up their flooring or their insulation or anything. But now I'm— so on a side note, I'd like to say, you guys kept talking about we don't have much time, we don't have much time. You guys actually had a lot more time than you think. I, um, back in November of '23, I attended one of the assembly meetings and I testified.

Now again, I'm not an engineer or geologist, but I did say that I witnessed the 2023 flood. And I said to— you can look up the minutes, I don't remember what date it exactly was, but I did say at that meeting, if that river breaches the bank, you're going to have a hell of a problem. And fast forward to August 2024, turns out I was right. So, and now I'm put into a position where my property is on the river, it's in the line of the HESCO barriers, potential HESCO barriers, and I might have obstructions. Um, there— I know my neighbor has a fence that goes all the way to the riverbank, so he might have—.

That, that might have to get, get chopped up or whatever. I don't know what you want to call it. I have a deck that might need to be amended or shortened, or there's a, there's a giant tree in my property, maybe that's going to be in the way. I guess my concern is if this goes through, and based on the presentation here earlier, and am I— is like all these modifications, shortening the deck, getting rid of a tree, kind of getting rid of a fence, all this, is it all that's really going to be taken care of and I just, I don't have to lift a finger and all of it's going to be put back exactly as it was or in better condition. That's, that's, that's my chief concern in mind because, because again, think about it, my house wasn't affected by the flood.

And again, my heart definitely hurt for everybody that did, but at the same time, my property might get mangled and I'm losing the riverfront property that we bought in 2020 when, uh, we were informed by a realtor this was not a flood zone. We were well out of it. Anyway, that's, um, that's my question. Um, so, uh, when the pro— we will document what we need to do, and hopefully, um, the team has been to your house and visited with you, and, and we will document, uh, what we need to do to be able to install HESCO barriers on your property. And then that document supplementation will serve to restore your property when we remove those HESCO barriers.

Now, I don't know exactly what that program looks like, uh, because we're, we're focused on developing this program, but it would likely look like some type of reimbursable program where you could do the work on your house or pay a contractor to do the work on your house, uh, to put back your deck or, or do things like that.

Thank you for taking our questions. Can I have a second? Just finish. Uh, so another thing about the HESCO barriers is they're actually quite flexible. So in the case of a tree, it's quite likely that the HESCO barriers could go around a tree.

I'm not concerned about the tree, I'm concerned about my deck. Okay, well, possibly your deck too. Um, and then in the case of trees, because Even if you aren't concerned how that bill might be, the escoberos could potentially actually just encapsulate a tree in the time they're there. It wouldn't require removal of the tree.

Thank you for listening to our questions and taking some of our concerns. I appreciate the momentum on this one short-term project. One of my concerns being at Riverfront House, we're at 3475, and since the '23 flood and even more so after the '24, we have seen a tremendous amount of gravel movement from upriver to just before the fish hook. And at low tide, the carrying capacity of the river now is so low that we can walk from our yard across the gravel to the next bank. And that tells me a couple of things.

One, we've lived there for 10 years and we've never seen the bottom of the river like we can now, which is a concern because that means its volumetric capacity is so much lower than it used to be. But I guess my main question is The river was a navigable waterway, and there are procedures to keep that navigable and dredging and things you can do without a permit, without a hydrological study. You can do it today. And I really want to know why we aren't being presented with more short-term options. I know it's a long-term thing, and I know all those things are in place, and I know there's bigger plans, and I know we need to know about out the basin.

But there are more things that can happen before the flood in August. What I don't want to happen is we throw all of our things at one idea, and we could have done— we could have done dredging, and we could have done other things to make the carry better and to make the river flow like it's supposed to. And we're not seeing that. I have a lot of questions. I'm glad we're moving forward, but I think that's my biggest one is how come we're not dredging, and how come that hasn't been discussed as an option when it is a viable option at this point.

Do you have any—. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] I think that the point you made about the gravel is a really good point, and that really highlights the challenge of an evolving river and the reality of what happens in the river affects other parts of the river. And then that really highlights, were to, and that's happening because upriver there's incision going on. And, and so if you were to just chop straight through, which will be investigated as long-term solution, but that's the risk of doing something like that, is when you chop straight through, it has cascading impacts downstream. And those can be impacts like further sedimentation, which then cause issues for other homeowners downstream.

So that's really good that you highlighted that.

Um, that's the first thing I have to say. I don't know what you were— were you going to say? No. Okay. Um, the HESCO barriers came through our emergency management program.

Uh, that's— that is what they offer on this time frame. Uh, you're right, the Army Corps does dredging. It's something to be investigated. And it's just that the funding that was available in this time frame is for this, these temporary measures. And that is what is included as an option within temporary measures are things like pumps, sandbags, HESCO barriers.

And that's basically how that came to be. I mean, like we talked about before, there's a lot of, you know, the Army Corps would not have recommended HESCO barriers. We did our own internal study for them. But that's how it came to be that they were a possibility that was looked at in this time frame.

I understand that, but my question is, that is a temporary measure, which I also understand. Dredging is not temporary. Dredging is so fast and can potentially be permanent. Even if we deepen certain sections by a foot or two, right, we don't see a water breach until 14 feet. Right?

The water does not come over its breach points to impact the neighborhoods until the capacity of 14 feet. If we deepened the river by 2 feet, that would stop all of this. Like, we wouldn't need a health boat, and it would be a permanent change, and we could do it in a matter of weeks with the funding available and with the granting and with everything, and it wouldn't be temporary. Like, there's a, a dissonance in the solutions that I understand needing a temporary solution, but there are permanent options that could happen at the same speed in the same timeline that we aren't seeing, we aren't hearing discussed.

I think about the consequences of dredging and the problems with that, but what I'm going to add to that is that as you all know, like we just talked about, river is evolving, river is naturally deepening. You know, there's research done by Ed Neal, who's a local hydrologist that has been on— what's it called? I know I should have named that show— Complaining Corner? Anyways, he was talking about the consequences of an overdeepening river, and that's what you're seeing in the channel is these collapsing banks, and that is a consequence of an overdeepening river. So if you were to dredge more, that would happen more.

So that is another consequence that propagates upstream, then potentially can affect everyone along the river as the riverbank continues to collapse because it's already over-deepened.

I'll just add, I mean, my experience in attending many of, many of the meetings with our federal agency partners that permit the river and that own the river is that any, any time we talk about or think about modifying the river itself, um, that very quickly becomes evident that we will not get those permits in a quick way. You could dredge without permits because it's a navigable waterway. You could do it tomorrow if you want to. That's— I'm going to stop since other people have questions, but like, I hear you, and there are conditions around that that would not see Um, just a quick question. It's saying these all go through.

What guarantees we have will be completed in the time frame of the, of the flood? And if not, if they're not completed, what's the contingency plan for the, the barriers not being completed?

Well, we're certainly working, um, as fast as we can to try to complete this project before what we believe is the oakwood season. I mean, July is our timeline. We're doing the best that we can. And I don't know, like, the more quickly we can work through this process, the more quickly we can work with individual homeowners on installing those Tesco barriers, the more successful the project will be. But there's definitely a lot of work in front of us.

So It is. It's a— it's a— it feels like a big project. I'm not going to lie. It feels like a big project. And we're doing the best we can to get it done before next summer.

August, we've had what, 2 events in August? August 6th. No guarantee that it will be August 6th. It's all— we'll be watching the basin as it fills. We'll all be watching those cams and watching.

We have about a week notice, a week. That has been the trend. Um, that we have about a week notice before, um, it starts releasing. We don't know if it'll release fully, right? I mean, there are so many unknowns here.

It could, uh, it could take all summer to fill up and then partially release. Um, you know, I think some people joke with us that we're going to do all of this work and it'll just have a partial release. Like, don't you remember with whatever, 5 years ago, this would happen and kind of flood the campground a little bit? So there are a lot And do you have anything to add? I mean, I just— you know, we all took a big breath of relief when we got that partial release this winter, right?

Right. But my question was, do we have a contingency plan if we can't finish those? Oh, I mean, I think the, uh, uh, would it cause—. I mean, it potentially could cause worse flooding in these neighborhoods if you have a partially completed wall. So the, the, um, project itself, the installation itself, will happen very quickly.

There's just a lot of work that has to happen before that. So maybe you want to talk to the timeline of actual construction.

So we have, I mean, we do have some hurdles to get through to get to construction. But ideally we're going to have people working on multiple fronts and we're going to prioritize those with basically the worst places first. Kilowitch, North Marion, I mean, we're going to have crews deployed at a lot of different places. It's not going to be just starting one in the linear and try to heat in the middle. So we're gonna try to have 3 or 4 different crews deployed working, if not 5, and trying to get, get everything done in time.

Based on the information we've gotten from Keith Anderson and the ability of crews to install the products and work forward, we can definitely get this done if everything goes right before July with a fresh start. A mild winter and a fresh start in March, we can, we can pull this off by July. If we have a bad winter or we have a bunch of red tape to go through, all bets are off. And so that's, you know, the, the work can get done, but we have to get to doing the work. Right.

And we're at a sprint to get to the work because that's really what we're trying to— that's what we're trying to do. But when push comes to shove, we're going to try with the LID costs to do everything in our power to pull that off, right? Right. And so if we— if it— everything goes, we still don't— we still don't make it, I was thinking, you know, we just— I mean, the city and everybody's paid for this. Is there any discount?

Do we even get any money back? Is there— I mean, so the— the LID is, uh, a lien on your property, and, um, if that— the only way that we can change that is through assembly action. So the only way you could change that, um, that, that's a— it's a law that gets passed, and so that would have to be changed through assembly action. Thank you. And then one last thing on the plugs, you— how stable are those?

How strong are those plugs? Because you're saying they're just bags with hooks on, or are they putting into the Hesco barriers? They, they get jammed in between the Hesco barriers and tied integrally, so they're tied together and then we would stack them front to back as well, as well as on top of each other. So, but there's no like mesh or protecting the actual bag? We would probably wrap them in plastic because that at least the face and bring them up and over to give them a little more protection than the HESCOs because they're continuous.

But also we will have Keith Anderson to, to here to basically give us his full expertise on doing that. But you'll basically jam that first line in between the HESCOs and reinforce it stronger than the line of HESCOs because, you know, there's segmental pieces around that and higher. So there's, there's going to be some thought and some structure put into it to make sure that it's at least as strong as HESCOs. Okay, thank you. So I, I have two questions.

Earlier you mentioned pumps being an emergency solution. And I've heard no discussion about proactively pumping out Mendenhall Lake to serve as a reservoir. So can you speak to that? Why wasn't that considered? The scale of the pumps inside the pumps, they're more for like pumping out a house, not for like the volume of water that we're talking about.

Suicide Basin's like billions of gallons, so these pumps are not like this a scale that you could effectively drain suicide— or excuse me, Madden Hall Lake ahead of time. And then there's also the fact that there's always input into Madden Hall Lake. It's generally kind of a steady state. And so you're— if you were trying to drain it ahead of time, you would also be fighting the ongoing inflow from glacier melt, snowmelt, rainfall. Sure, but that would mitigate any potential future flood or release from the basin.

DOT has huge pumps that they're filling up the floatplane base with at the, at the airport. Those pumps handle hundreds of thousands of gallons of water. So putting those at the lake starting in April, draining the lake even by 2 feet, would make a huge difference in any glacial release later on in the year. So I'm just curious why that that wasn't apparently considered.

So, September 6th, at our September 6th meeting, we met with all the federal agencies, including the DOT hydrologist were at that meeting. We did consider that option along with all the other long-term, what came to be long-term solutions that the community had put forth at that time. And as Mike said, it was just the sheer volume of water that we were talking about. None of the engineers have ever thought that that would be a viable short-term solution. But treating the lake as a reservoir, either by pumping it out or by building a levee around the lake, is absolutely going to be part of the general investigation study.

My second question is for the chief engineer. So my understanding is that the HESCO barrier is supposed to be a uniform height, the entire length. Is that correct? It's supposed to be a minimum height because the projection—. I live on the inside of the fishhook.

We did not experience any flooding, and yet you're talking about putting an 8-foot wall in my backyard. So I'm struggling to understand how that's a continuous, uh, height that's going to provide protection along the entire river. So what we did, what we were thinking about there is when the fish hook closer, it's likely going to focus right towards your house, which will create another situation similar to Kilowitch Drive, which will be a hydraulic jump, which will actually have the water jumping up on the river bank and trying to get over. And so while we're going through to deploy these things, we don't want to come back and do it again. We're trying to protect for something for the reasonable future.

And so while the stretch you're in above you has debris flow and also trees that are jumping, which is why we're 2 barriers wide, we're looking at the direct impact coming through where the fish could likely blow through and direct the force towards your homes and projecting that, that jump would be there. The base elevation of the barriers is still a single barrier because we understand you didn't have any inundation. This is to protect secondary, secondary flow and to be proactive to protect, like I said, future flood and water level changes. So it's more a surge barrier? It's a flood barrier.

I have a few things here, so I'll try and follow my notes a little bit. First of all, I wanted to thank CBJ for the response that they gave when we had the disaster. We don't need to know where the floodwaters go when they run over the banks. We lived through it. We appreciated the fact that debris we put out the street were taken away, no questions asked.

You cut through the red tape. That's what we need to do now. We need to cut through the red tape. We don't need to study this for another 3 years while we keep continuing to be flooded. We need a permanent solution and we need action now.

I don't know if we appeal to the governor, I don't know if we appeal nationally, but we need some kind of a disaster relief to cut through this red tape and start with a permanent solution. Now, I know it all comes down kind of to elevation. You say that you're going to do a study on all this and that we've got LiDAR. LiDAR data has been available for a while. We've been studying this since 2011.

People in this town have studied it. We kind of know what we need to do. We need to build a levee at the lake. You contain 1 acre-foot of water across that entire lake, it certainly prevents flood down the river. You're talking about you want to know what happens and how many homes are infected— are affected, uh, when the bank overflows.

But if we contain that water in the lake and only release that 17,000 cubic feet per second, or whatever that minimal amount is the river can hold, we prevent the flood to the whole valley. It needs to be done there. If we're going to take all this fill that we're going to put in these HESCO bags and put it in the bags, let it stay there for 5 years or whatever, and then remove it, it's a double expense. Let's put that fill on the levee where that it can remain permanently. And we come up with a permanent solution.

According to stuff I read on the net, these engineers that are talking about building the levee, the lake is currently at 60-foot elevation. If we build a levee across there at 75 feet, which in some places will be 14 feet high, other places it'll only be 3 or 4 feet high depending on the terrain, we can contain all that water in the Mendenhall Lake. And prevent this flood from entering the river. That seems like the solution. I don't want to spend any more money studying this.

We need to cut through the red tape and get it done now. Um, I'll make it short. I've heard, I've heard an estimate of $20 million for this HESCO installation and, and barrier stuff. I read on the net that the engineers that are currently thinking about the levee think they could do it between $31 million and $35 million. Why don't we spend the money there?

Why don't we get it done there and prevent these disasters for a long time in the future? And lastly, I'll just say that I was a positive proponent of the HESCO barriers when that was the solution that I first heard, because I'm right there on Kilowich. I had the river right in my front yard. And I was supporting that. But since I've been reading this other stuff about the levy and how much more it would protect the entire valley, I'd like our money spent there.

I'd like to take that $6,300 that you've assessed me and buy fuel for the excavators. Let's get this done now. Thank you.

No one here more than the people sitting up here wants to cut through the red tape. We are more frustrated by the permitting, more frustrated by the never-ending layers of, uh, Corps permits and then, uh, FEMA permits and then DNR permits than, uh, we live that daily. But there's no amount of, you know, lobbying CVJ that is gonna, um, help us cut through that red tape. It's the, the levee, the Mendenhall Lake is on US Forest Service federal property. They've been a wonderful partner, but this is an asset that's on federal land.

It's not CVJ land that— and we live in an era where there's NEPA, where there's lots of layers of permitting. So the reason why we are bringing you this temporary solution is so that we can still apply tremendous amounts of pressure, still require all of you to write your delegation, to write, to, to apply this pressure to help us with, with the permitting and, and the red tape and all of those things. Uh, but you know, the, the world we live in requires, and, and for good reason, right? For good reason. A lot of the concerns that you heard here today are like, what if the barriers don't work?

What if they do this? What if they do that? And our answer is, we're studying it, and there's federal agencies out there and state agencies out there whose job it is to make sure that that doesn't happen. So I just want to empathize with everyone here. I agree, the red tape and the time is incredibly frustrating, but it's just the reality of the world that we live in.

And we will be, you know, parallel paths of working on that long-term solution. I just don't want to wait 10 years to, you know, have a levee constructed with a flood control device or have pumps large enough. We don't even know if there are pumps large enough in the world to pump out Mendocino Lake to the level that we even need to divert that flow. So, you know, I just want— and sorry to sound a little bit emotional about this, but I agree with you. The permitting is what makes me just sick to my stomach sometimes because I work through it every single day.

These guys work through it every single day. And so we hear you. We hear you on that.

Hi, thanks. Hi, I work for the feds. Um, that is not accurate. That's ridiculous. That's such a wonderful excuse that you guys are using.

Sorry. Um, so I'm at the corner of Neanderthal and Northland, and I just wanted to say, like, one of the reasons why I am pushing back and not wanting to really pay for these HESCO barriers is just because I'm, I'm really concerned and I want somebody to please alleviate my fears maybe about erosion, erosion underneath the barriers, because I feel like if anybody watched the video from the, the yard that completely got destroyed 2 years ago, how, how is that going to work if a HESCO barrier is, you know, on this, on this border on the riverbank, and then it just erodes underneath the HESCO barriers. What's going to happen there? Whose yards are going to be destroyed from that? The other thing is, is that I know that we have those, those pumps in place so that the water doesn't come through the storm drains, but they sure did at our corner at Northland and Meander.

We had water coming up through the storm drains. And so what if water is coming up on the opposite side of these barriers and is just stuck in it, can't go anywhere. Like, just— I don't understand how that's supposed to be alleviated by tubes or whatever. Like, I just don't think— I would rather spend my money protecting my home versus spending it on something that's going to be destroying my neighbor's properties.

Oh, thank you for your questions. Those are good questions. First off, we have identified areas that require bank armoring, and we have identified areas, as Mike has been saying as well, where we would— to protect against scour where there isn't adequate vegetation or there's a sandy soil surface, we're going to compact shotrock scour protection into the surface to protect exactly what you're asking about, the scour up against barriers eating into the soil. We've identified areas that do need bank armoring to protect the barriers where, you know, where we feel that there is erosion showing on the riverbank now. There's trees falling in the river.

There's some further down towards River Court. There are actually indentations that have been armored around. And so we need to make that segment of armoring continuous. And so we've identified those areas and we feel comfortable that we have addressed what we need to address for, you know, for, for the scour at this point. Um, the second question about the storm drains— the water did not come in from the river.

The water came downstream from Riverside Drive where it jumped over the bank at Killawich and came from the upstream side. And the storm drains drain out to the river. And so we put check valves—. But it absolutely did. No, it—.

I understand what you're saying there. I, I know it came up from Stormdrain. It came from Riverside Drive downstream. Exactly. Like, anyway, went to bed and then we woke up and then it was like—.

What I, what I'm saying is the water did not come in from the river. The water came from the river where it jumped over. But it sure did. Okay, I will agree to disagree. I, I don't agree with you, so— but thank you, we will double check.

Okay, thanks.

My question is about the HNA study that you guys are waiting for. I believe it's in February supposed to arrive. Well, what data are you going to receive from that and what questions is that going to answer? Is that going to answer the questions of what the Haskell variant is, how that's going to change the outflow of the river? Is it going to answer the question of if we cut channels, how that will affect the river?

Will it answer those questions, or what exactly will that provide us? So it's, you know, I heard somebody talk about the information available from 2011 and past studies and old modeling and things like that. The Mendenhall River has changed substantially over the last 3 years. The last modeling done by FEMA, which I believe was the last update of anybody looking meeting with the river was from 2019. And so the river has changed substantially, '22, '23, '24, as everybody's seen.

At this moment, we're trying to figure out what happens, and what we call that, I believe, is a base flood elevation study without HESCOs or anything. But what happens from with the new river configuration from basically what the original inundation mapping started at, a 7-foot flood elevation. And these numbers are all based on the lake flood elevations, 7, and we're going to go up to 20. And so basically we're going to start with no HESCOs and we're just going to see what happens with the water coming in the bottom. And then we're going to put the HESCO barriers in for the, the phase 1 stretch.

And then we're going to see where the water goes at that point. But we're not, at this point we don't have time, we're not looking at cutting channels. We are just basically trying to model the basic river to see what HESCOs can do and where the water is going to go from the HESCOs and what's going to happen with the next bigger flood. I mean, we have had— we've been trending roughly a foot of flood elevation every year. And so if I, if I'm correct on math, I believe that's about 12,000 CMS a year.

We went from 20-something thousand to 32,000 this year. So it's going up substantially every year with roughly a foot. And so if we start relying on that trend, I don't know what that translates to for a flood elevation, but it's going to get bigger. And so we're just trying to see what happens next. And also what happens when we put the HESCOs on the bank, what happens downstream and where do we have to really try to focus next, do an emergency flood fighting project to protect if it's a major, if it's a major issue.

Also, what's going to happen with our HESCOs? Do we have a flaw in our logic and the HESCOs are going to either cause a backup or cause something that we have to modify? So we're using it right now to educate and inform our HESCO installation. Okay, uh, wouldn't that same information provide you with an answer of what would happen if you got the channels? I'll let John add to this in a second.

So what John just described was the the short-term phases of our HMH study, like Michael Baker. But we also have in our contract with Michael Baker longer-term conceptual later tasks that will look at potential long-term solutions, which we hope to use that data to jumpstart the general investigation study. We talked about that a little bit earlier, but once the Army Corps has the authority to proceed under the general investigation study, we're working to have every possible advantage that they can have in front of them to kickstart that. And a later task of the Michael Baker H&H study is to look at things like cutting channels in the river, things like building levees, lake as reservoir, etc. Thank you.

Two-part question. So one of the things we talked about is, you know, we can flood fight, flood fighting here. Why aren't we flood fighting on federal land? Is, is your emergency order— does that not apply to those sections of Juneau? You can't go on federal lands to protect people?

Because it seems like to me you're invoking these powers and you're using it to take my property and you're using it to say this is the only choice, but you're also refusing to look at these other areas where you might be able to do some good. Like, so for instance, all of the unnatural changes to dredge lakes that are up there that have been there for years. We haven't looked at changing any of those, and these orders you have would allow you to go there and do that and temporarily drain the lakes or breach the levees back there to increase the carrying capacity of the lake without doing substantial changes, without doing permanent changes in those areas. Why can't you use your emergency powers to work up there? It would help everyone.

So I think that everyone has brought up lots of great ideas, and they're not the first time that we've heard these ideas. I know I'm, you know, Sam's been great about making sure and sharing great ideas with us. You know, if we, we could just study this for the next 5 years and we could study channeling and we could study all of these things. We used the information available. We worked with our experts at the Army Corps of Engineers, worked with our federal partners to come up with the best solution that we felt like we could get implemented in a short amount of time.

Are there other solutions out there? Who knows? There's, there's an endless amount of solutions out there that some require More study, less study, and all of those need to be part of our next steps. They need to be part of our long-term. They need to be part of our Phase 2 steps.

But we were operating with this, with the timeline of really wanting to implement something before this next field season. So you bring up lots of great ideas. Everyone's brought up lots of great ideas.

We took all of the ideas, worked with Tor and docks and HESCO barriers is the only thing that we can do before 2025. That's right. We will continue to look at all of these other options as part of, of moving forward in flood mitigation. And, and right now, you know, we're, we're really focused on trying to get these installed by that deadline, and then we'll move on to being focused on a lot of these other items. That wasn't really an answer, but thank you.

Yeah, so I think your question was, um, whether we could use our local declarations to go ahead into state and federal land, um, because we have these emergency powers, right? Yeah. Okay, so our powers are limited under, you know, federal, state, and then the state gives us certain powers because we're a home rule city. We cannot use our emergency powers to go onto federal land and do federal things. Um, whoever it was that worked for the federal government, you guys should, you know, talk to your boss if they want to give us the ability to do that.

If somebody wants to say under, we're going to give you those emergency powers, I think a lot of this stuff would move faster, but we cannot use our local declaration to do that. I, I think— did that answer your question? Oh yeah, I just was thinking of like, uh, places like California where the fire, an actual imminent emergency instead of an existential threat, is moving through and destroying towns. They go right on that land and they just disc miles and miles of dirt to stop them. They don't ask.

Yeah, I agree, I agree with, I agree with you. I think that, um, you know what, all of those examples they're using, you know, there's federal firefighting, um, um, rules and regulations, there's state firefighting regulations. We, we are, we have a lot of, um, really good tools as municipality, and like statewide, Juneau has some of the best tools because of the type of municipality we are, but we are still really limited And that's, that's frustrating.

My last one, this is Claire. I just really want to echo that moving forward with the barriers without understanding the upstream or downstream effects isn't, isn't just like, oh, we did it because we think that we needed to do something. It's irresponsible. It's dangerous. It's scary.

And we're like, oh, we're going to put these barriers in. We don't know what's going to happen. That's effing terrifying. Like it could— what we actually said is we're going to put these barriers— before we put these barriers in, we're going to model what a 20-foot flood looks like through Michael Baker and an H&H study, because we agree with you that we want to have the most information possible. So, and, and the reason for that is because we're operating in the sprint and it's a timeline that we have, and we wish we had a different timeline.

Way. We really do.

So with that, my understanding from the FAQ is that we're moving forward with all the work before that gets done because we don't have the time to do it, right? And if I'm getting the wrong impression from the FAQ, I'm sorry, but that's really what I— I've read it several times and that's what I thought. So my understanding, you put these barriers in, you don't get the second segment. My guess, napkin math, looking at the areas inundated you're going to flood out the building we're starting. And I'd love to be wrong, but what are you going to do when you're halfway through that project and you get the inundation studies, the H&H, and it says, holy crap, we are about to wipe out all the public infrastructure and we'll hit the old folks homes and say, what do you do then?

We don't— in consultation with the, the experts, we don't think that's what the H&H study is going to tell us. But we should start to get that information in February before any construction starts. Good answer. Thank you. Thank you for being here tonight.

Since this is the first time you guys have hosted a CBJ-hosted meeting about the flood that is a two-way communication with community members since August of 2023, where you are the hosts— I think that's my understanding, so correct me if I'm wrong. We did one in November here, um, a two-way communication. That one was hosted by Army Corps as we were told, I believe. That, that was— so this is the first time that you all in leadership have been up here and willing to have this debate, so thank you. Also, I am a resident of View Drive, so I learned tonight one of 10 houses not likely to be covered by this HESCO, and that logic makes sense, not because they're not as badly affected, but because it's your obligation to try to focus where you can get the highest density impacts.

That said, as a View Drive resident who's now 2 years in a row being flooded, with 2023 not being a disaster declaration, so not having access to FEMA, we were very lucky to have flood insurance in 2023, and we're lucky to still have it. So 2 things I wanted to mention regarding the LID process. I think it's really unfortunate that the assembly was not presented with more opportunities for different types of funding, because now for a second year in a row, my household is watching nothing happen in any way for our street or our planning. We are hearing that we might be at risk of losing flood insurance if we go on probation as a community. I know that behind the scenes, city staff has a lot of work to do to make sure that all the different things that have happened since 2023 flooding can get up to speed and make sure we stay in good standing.

But I do agree with some of the comments earlier saying flood insurance in my household is much more important, um, than a lot of other things. And the LID process has been disappointing because I'm watching all of you guys in the sprint focus on an LID funding mechanism. And tonight, Manager Kester, you just said you're thinking maybe in a year we'll have a hazard mitigation plan. And you said No programs would be eligible for the city right now if we had a hazard mitigation plan. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant for HESCO, because I was excited thinking as soon as we got FEMA disaster declaration this year that my household would be eligible for all the different state and federal programs that could give grants for things like other types of individual mitigation.

I found out we are eligible for $0 of that until CBJ gets the hazard mitigation plan up to par and up to speed again. So I just hope you meant that there were no grants for HESCO, but just know people in my house and on my street are waiting with bated breath until we have that hazard mitigation plan so that we can access programs to help care for our properties, as you guys said. I also wanted to mention that when the Army Corps had the meeting here and erosion was brought up, there was a slide and erosion was specifically on the side of the slide that was immediate available flood fighting actions that could be taken. And my recollection was that the reason that was not recommended by Army Corps is that they only front the cost of the initial erosion or dredging, sorry, the initial dredging, but then later wherever the community is would be on the hook for maintaining it. And that might need to be something folks watch the recording of.

It was very interesting to me to hear from I think Mr. Allard, that that is something that could theoretically be done either up or in or at the very end of the river. But then another man in the crowd over here that day said, what if we weren't on the hook because it's federal waterway and the feds had to do it? So there was this exchange. But tonight when dredging was brought up, all the answers tonight, and I'm seeing you don't seem to have any recollection of this even though you were at that meeting, But the answers you gave were completely different. So I just wanted to kind of point that out.

I think that there were actual dredging options, and I would encourage those to be looked at as like a flood fighting thing or a permanent but not a permit necessary thing.

So that's, I think, it for now. But my household is suffering because we don't have a house. Hazard mitigation plan. So I just want to let you know. Oh, the last thing I wanted to say is I do wish we did not have an LID process.

I would rather help pay for this for Phase 1, even if my house is not protected. You mostly had comments, not questions, so comments registered. Will you expedite the hazard mitigation planning process? Absolutely. Can you try to make a commitment to get that done by July 2025?

July 2025 is not possible. Will you have a community group that can meet with you guys to talk about what should be in that plan? There is definitely a lot of public process in the hazard mitigation planning process, which is why it takes another couple months.

Potato. Thank you. There are a lot of people in this room, and all the people that are here in the, in the audience, you know, we have to take time out of our lives. That's what people are leaving. I mean, we're all busy.

Um, this is important to me. I'm here because I have skin in the game, okay? And that most of these people do. That's why they're showing up for this meeting, okay? Um, of all the people in this city, the people that show up here are the ones not only that have skin in the game but show up.

That really should matter. You should know as a public servant, these are the people that you're here to serve. So the comment is Read the room.

So going from there, let's say you're right, we put this plan together, you put up the big wall, everything works great.

Of everybody in the world, who's the most likely to care and notice and show up at a meeting afterwards? It's these people. We're on the same team, except We're the ones that pay for mistakes because we've got skin in the game. So, um, if it goes right, who's going to thank you? It's going to be us.

Who gets to decide if the project works? We do. We're the ones that live in the district. Um, we own the houses you're trying to protect. That's, that's what I've heard.

You're trying to protect us. Listen to the room. Um, if anybody in the world can decide if the project works, it should be us. But if that's true, it also means we could decide that the plan didn't work. We don't know.

I've heard over and over again, you guys aren't the experts. We can't—. I can't engage with experts. I can't hear anybody that people says, yeah, we know that. But there— you can't use science and hide behind science.

A bunch of us understand science. Science is easy. It's a tool. It doesn't tell you anything. It just allows you to make decisions.

But if you don't ask the right questions, it can lead you astray. So pretending it's, it's not a scientific thing. It's a question of what are the people that are going to get hurt want, and the people that actually care enough to show up and express their opinions. Um, you've got this system where you say, well, 51% of the people don't vote, well, that means we can pass it. Doesn't make any sense at all.

The question is, it seems to me, and we, I mean, we check what percentage of the people here want this plan to go through. I think that, that's much more important than people that don't show up, that don't care whether they live in the district or not. I am offended. I live in the district. This is my house.

This is my life. But if I lived in the rest of Juneau and I've been smart enough, not like most of us, and we hadn't bought the stinking flood zone that we didn't know about, if I bought across the other side of the valley, I'd be thinking, why am I paying for their problem? I mean, it's not like— I mean, if a tree falls down and hits my house, that's my problem. I screwed up. I bought a house in the wrong place.

I don't want to move. I like my neighborhood. I like my neighbors. It— we can't fix what the river is. But I'm kind of wondering, why are we saddling this on all the rest of Juneau?

Not that— I mean, it just doesn't write any more than— is it because we want it? I mean, this is the question. Does the rest of Juneau just want to pull money out of their pockets? Well, they can do that anytime they want to, but to demand— that just doesn't seem right. So, um, if— how about this?

A year from today, you call a meeting, and guess who's going to show up? And you give us a chance to decide if we're happy with what went on, with the decisions that you made. I will bring brownies. If I'm happy with the decision you guys come up with, I bet some of these other people are going to be willing to step down and say, you were right, I was wrong. You know, I'll admit if I was wrong about this.

But an awful lot of people are saying, hey, wait a minute, don't rush into this. When you make bad decisions, well, you're in a hurry. And when you're in a hurry, slow down, because if you make a mistake, it's really bad. So if you want to put skin in the game, It's really easy. Most of you are public servants or public employees.

All you got to do is pledge right now, if things don't go so that this room isn't happy, you just quit your position and resign from government and, and stop. Don't take the pension. That's a really heavy burden on putting on a, on a public employee. Everybody here has a house, a home, a family at risk in this thing. We've got skin in the game.

If you said, hey, I will take the pledge, I know I'm doing the right thing, I'm willing to put my future career on the line. I will personally respect that, but I haven't heard that from any of you. You're saying, well, we want to help you, but the room is not saying that we're feeling helped. We're feeling stressed by this pressure. So, uh, that seems severe, but you know, this is just putting it at the scale of losing my house.

Um, please listen to the room. You know, it seems to me that the majority of this room is not on board with your plan. Um, if we're the public you pledge to support, there's a long-established rule. You guys have heard of it— first do no harm.

Thank you.

Uh, thank you very much for the presentation. I genuinely appreciate the, the Tetris slides. That was super helpful, uh, for understanding it. I have a short comment and maybe a request is how I'll phrase it. I stopped by the post office on the way here and there's still 40 packets left to be picked up that were not delivered, 40 of the certified mailings.

So that's concerning to me. I think there's a good chance that this lid will pass. And so there comes my request, and that is to be very, very mindful of public safety. The napkin math that I've done estimates somewhere in the realm of 1,400 dump truck loads just to build the HESCO barriers. That doesn't include riprap, that doesn't include the bank stabilization, you know, foundation that you've talked about for the HESCOs themselves.

That essentially turns these areas into a major construction site, you know, and I just really hope that there'll be a lot of pre-planning for how that will, will be conducted, where the equipment will be parked, what hours will be worked, um, just safety concerns. And then thoughts about how, uh, how is it going to impact, impact the roads, um, the compaction to yards and future drainages. Let's do some forward thinking on, on all of that. And I'm just asking for that public safety part of it. The second part of that request would be, uh, to consider installing remote monitoring for the HESCOs if they get put in place.

Put up a camera system so every square foot of that HESCO line can be monitored remotely and, and notification can be instantly delivered to homeowners if there's a breach. I think it would benefit CBJ as far as the cost to monitor it and to respond if there's a breach. Thank you for your time.

If you're reading the room, I'm all for it, but you know, not everyone is. I have two questions. One is whether or not we might need more than the 4-foot extra that you're talking about, because if once we start protecting all that and it's not flowing over the half the valley, that's going to kind of raise what's left in the river. And so we need more than 4s. I just make— how you settle on a 4?

So the initial thought was looking at the high water marks and figuring we needed to— the high water marks are 24 and needed to be 4 feet above that. And so that was the start of my logic. The Michael Baker modeling will also tell us what happens by keeping the water in the river and what happens with those— where, where essentially we, we'll what we call the grade line, the water surface would be at flood increases. And what this, you know, what the intent would be at that 16 plus, you know, plus the water in the river. So we will go back and reevaluate at that point to see if there's flaws in our logic or if our assumptions are sound.

But that's also why, you know, when Mike got off the plane today, the first thing he did is went right to the river. And that's why we're walking the river constantly trying to look at different scenarios. And as questions come up, as we're thinking about things, trying to figure out, especially now with low flow, how far down, how tall is the bank, and how much water is actually jumping over the bank that's coming, that's going to stay in the river, and what percentage is that really the channel flow, stuff like that. So we are very mindful and studying. The other question, it was not more of a comment, is the $500,000 for the, the reinstallation, the contingency, that seems low to me.

I don't know how you came up with that number, and— but my, I guess my assumption is that our $6,000 will cover whatever it is, even if it does take more than $500, that it'll, it'll cover.

That number, we don't actually have to remove that many obstructions. And these guys can speak to it a little bit, but they're— the HESCO barriers are extremely flexible. So we're going around things, we're going through things in some instances. So that was— that number was come up as part of the project budget. And you know, you're right, in 5 years or whenever we get around to reinstalling that, we might have to wrestle with with that number.

Good evening. It's nice to have a chance to have a conversation. When the flood first happened, it was an amazing experience, and I will never forget the first The first city face I saw was Mayor Weldon. That's a Shelton. But as the weeks continued and staff were at Melvin Park and the support came in, it was really something.

I told my husband, we can do this, we can get through this. But this has had many phases. I didn't expect the, the absolute vacuum I would feel when the emergency crew left. I've since learned about disasters and learned that that's part of the process. But there was nobody.

And I got involved in a community group and I discovered that everybody else felt the same way. And there were homes in disrepair and anxiety. I didn't expect that there would be this LID, HSCAR stress that is top of the charts. So there's lots of questions and I'm just gonna try to get a few of them. Help me understand how it's acceptable When the Army Corps said that by the time Phase 1 is done and Phase 2 will be ready, that will— there will be no study to determine the unintentional downstream consequences.

I can't do that to my downstream neighbors. It's— and they said it in a public meeting, so I don't understand how we can proceed when that's a possibility. Can anybody address that? I— that might have been earlier information prior to us having Michael Baker in the contract. We currently have a hydraulic study in progress right now that will inform us on what the HESCOs do and what property, you know, what will happen when we keep the water in the river and what's going to happen downstream.

So our actions are going to be informed with this information that we will be getting. So here's the tough question. You put the HESCOs in and they fail and water goes where you're not expecting it and they can't get back to the river and somebody dies. Who's liable? Who's responsible?

Liability is a hard question. Yeah, yeah. And the answer to that question, really, at the end of the day, is if that really tragic circumstance happens, then we'll figure it out when it happens, likely in court. Um, that's, that's like— I, I know that's like not the answer anyone wants. It's not the answer that I want to give, but that's, that's probably the answer.

And, you know, in terms of— well, I'll stop there. I know you— who is putting— who will be installing the HESCOs, and will they be responsible for proper installation, maintenance, taking care of them? CPW will. The city will? And your employees?

Well, They won't— we won't necessarily be using all employee labor. We'll likely be contracting out a significant portion of it. But CPJ will be responsible for installing HESCO barriers. Under the supervision of Army Corps and the HESCO and Keith, the HESCO leading HESCO specialist, who, by the way, couldn't answer any of our questions about HESCO failures. At all.

We asked if he'd seen a video of the river when it's raging after an outburst. He hadn't. He had no answer about Davenport, Iowa, where the HESCO failed. Just reasonable questions. We're not out to get you guys, and we're not out to get them, but these are reasonable questions from really intelligent people who say, wait just a minute.

Uh, Davenport, Iowa is where the pavement failure occurred, is that correct? Yeah, in a parking lot with a wall. And so I addressed that earlier, and that's why they're not being being placed on an asphalt surface. They're being placed on a natural surface in Shot Rock like we've discussed. Can you address, um, the town in Alaska, Kilvana?

Can you address that town where they've had high school barriers and it's due to erosion? Probably Kivalina. That's it, sorry. Is that a coastal failure? No, that's, that's another town that's falling into the, into the, into the coast.

Can win this case. I mean, I think the best thing to do, because you've got some specifics, would be to, you know, follow up with Army Corps, because without like studying those details or knowing those circumstances, it's hard to— I did Google "EPA failures" to see, because I wasn't sure. I also understand that when the Army Corps was approached on the challenge, that they were initially recommending sandbags because they didn't know. About HESCO. And it wasn't until they talked to somebody in, in on the Mississippi City River that it was brought to their attention that that was an option.

So I feel like it's been presented that this is this tried and true plan, and I'm not really sure that's the case. And I, I'm really uncomfortable doing anything to my downstream neighbors, and I don't want to see another death occur. One individual did die after the fact from the flood, and I don't want to see people complacent thinking that they're protected by these barriers and something going wrong and there being a loss of life. Because here's the beautiful thing, we get notice, we have advanced notice. So FEMA taught me one thing, they taught me that you can't tell the river where to go.

You stand back and you watch where it goes and you figure out how to get out of the way until you can come up with a plan. And when I heard that for the first time, I felt peace. I thought, okay, it's gonna flood, it's gonna flood, but we get this notice. So that no one needs to die. So we get our property up out of the way.

I know this isn't maybe popular, but you get our property out of the way. You have a great evacuation plan. You take care of people with special needs like me so we get out. You move vehicles to a safe location so nobody loses cars. And you let it flood until we figure this out instead of causing unintentional consequences that could be even bigger.

And nobody has to die. There doesn't have to be loss of life. Yes, there's loss of property, but we're already there. We lost all of our equity in our house. We're already there.

We have flood insurance. It can help repair some of it. I get your sense of urgency, but I just want to tell you that there are some schools of thought that just say, okay, it's gonna flood, and I'm gonna accept that. We're gonna roll up our garage doors. We're gonna get stuff out of the way, and we're gonna be safe.

And so there is another option that maybe you haven't thought of, and that's it. So I don't— I refuse to be afraid. I'm not gonna be scared. I don't want to be afraid. I don't want to make a decision that's hasty, and I don't support a hasty decision that doesn't feel well thought out.

And when I ask, what is the emergency plan if a HESCO fails, and nobody can tell me that you don't have a plan, then I have to say a hard stop. No, there needs— you just have to think about that. What if a barrier fails? What's the plan to address that? Can you?

If you can't, then maybe it's a thorough evacuation. But I hope you hear me. So just to be clear, the HESCOs are a flood emergency barrier. We would still be recommending evacuations from the valley and from the projected inundation areas based on the projected flood elevation. We're not going to encourage anybody to stay in that area.

And so the evacuation, as was spoken earlier tonight, we have advanced measures, we have better communication communications, we have better ability to provide that. We're going to use it. And so it's not that we're— if it fails, it's because you did not heed the warning to evacuate. It's not because we didn't warn you. But can you understand some of the concerns I had?

I, I completely understand, but I just want to be clear that this is not the bulletproof barrier that you can, you can stand behind. This is a temporary flood emergency barrier that we are going to recommend everybody evacuate from the area. This is not going to say you can live in your house through the flood. We still want you to leave and protect your stuff. And like I said earlier, protect your own homes and take it under your— take, take your own responsibility for that.

I appreciate the time to talk. Thank you.

Evening. Uh, my question is this: all property values. Okay, our home is no longer worth what the city has taxed people. No, now you're charging me $6,000 plus to put barriers up. How much is my house worth now?

Is it below what it is at the city assessment? I want to ask the real estate people here, what do they think? What do they run into? Because I guarantee you my house is not worth what it was. I'm not blaming you, okay?

What I don't want to see is my property taxes be at $5,000 a year. My house is worth less, and it should be way low. And that's going to be more of a burden on us because personally We cannot really sell our houses to anybody who has a brain cell. No. So we did have a process to petition the assessor to request a reduction in assessed value, so hopefully you participated in that.

Um, what did you come up with? So the, uh, that formula or whatever, uh, those reductions in assessments are on an individual basis based on those property owners petitioning to have their assessment reduced. If so, so based on someone saying, I believe that my property is undervalued, or my property is overvalued because of the damage that is suffered through stratification, and my damage, I want my assessment reduced. The, the general setting of the assessment rule happens, sets the value of your property on January 1st, and that process is ongoing. So So unless— if you petitioned to have your assessment released, then you will be getting that information sooner.

If you didn't petition, then the assessors will be, you know, making that determination, and those letters, uh, notices go out in July. Okay, let me be clear about this. It was brought up when we bought our home. It was not a flood zone. We are told you don't need to buy flood insurance.

Now we had to buy flood insurance. We were told we have to go through FEMA because private, uh, insurances will not do it. Any house in the valley, no matter what the value is, it is no more than $250,000 for the house itself and $100,000 for personal property. My house should not be above that. It should not be above $250,000, if that's all I can get.

And I don't know if you guys live in the valley, but a lot of people do. It's an investment, and I would hope to see that our values, per the city's assessment, no higher than $250,000.

I hope, I hope you shared that with the assessors in that process for petitioning. But like I mentioned, uh, the, the assessed valuation comes out in July, and I can guarantee you the assessor's office is taking into consideration, uh, damage from, uh, the August flood.

I want to say I hope you're right and that we do get justice on this. It's not your fault, I got that, but we should not be charged for something that's not of that value.

That, that's just, that's just my opinion. And did you petition the assessor? I didn't know I could do that. I encourage all of you to be on our, get on our public response email list because we send out all the press releases and all the information, uh, for this meeting, for all those things. Thank you.

First, I want to say thank you for holding this, and I can't imagine how difficult this is because you're in this leadership position and you have to consider probably about 1,000 things, and this is like 5 of those 1,000 things. So I can understand probably just a fraction of what you might be considering. I don't really have a question, I have more statements.

I came into this really hesitant because I was here last year. I got very lucky, my family got very lucky, we didn't get like the flooding. But there was an opportunity then to start this, you know, somebody mentioned going to the meeting that was held last year And hopefully there was some kind of forethought into what would happen this next year. Nothing has been getting less in terms of the environment. You know, like the glacier when I was in high school, I skinny dipped in the glacier.

I wouldn't recommend it, but it was frozen because the ice kissed the water. It did. You couldn't walk out to the glacier and walk along rocks. There was not— that wasn't actually a thing. So we went out there to take family photos.

The glacier is so far back now, it's bananas to me. So there had to be some kind of forethought that this was coming. So I feel like when I was at home earlier, I was frustrated because I feel like some of this thought should have happened a year ago where we wouldn't be in this place where we're at phase 1 now or phase 1 like a few months ago. But then again, I have no idea the process. And I know that somebody said something earlier about, oh, there's no red tape.

I know there's red tape. I work for a government contractor and the red tape was bananas at my level. I can't even imagine what it is at your level. But you came into this thing saying that people had a lot of really good ideas. You guys got a lot of good suggestions.

And I think one of the issues that I felt was happening is talked about dredging. There was no response to why dredging didn't work in the terms of if you went out and dredged it right now, how long would that take? What equipment would have to come? So when you guys gave your answers, it wasn't like you were— you just said it wouldn't work. And then, and cutting, God, I can't even imagine what would have to go into cutting a pathway, the planning that would have to go into straightening that portion of the river and then redirect it.

I am not in any way an engineer, but I couldn't even imagine what that would take, the planning for that. So you say the timeframe isn't enough. It would've been helpful to have some of that information to make your argument stronger, to say that the Tesco barrier is the way. I mean, not the only way, there are obviously other ways, but this is the timeframe that you say we have, which I— I know August seems like it's far away, but it's not. It's not.

It seems far away, but it's not. And I think everyone here, if they really think about it, they realize that it's not. There's so much stuff that has to happen. It's freezing outside. What can we do right now?

Those are the things that, because we're in the impact zone, we're just thinking there's got to be something that's faster and not always taking into consideration everything else that has to be taken in. The environment, the weather, what kind of equipment we need, do we have that equipment here, all of those things. I just feel like if you're going to hold something like this, in terms of being able to answer the questions, like if somebody asked you, what is— he was really great about it. He said, what is your plan if it doesn't work? If you don't have one, just say it.

Because I feel like that's what you wanted to say and you just did it. You ran around in a circle about it. If you don't have a plan, if there isn't something that can be done— because this is what you're saying, is that this is the time frame we have and the Hesco barriers is the best plan. That's the best plan, then stand by it. If there isn't a plan after that, then say it, because what, what that builds is distrust.

If you can't tell us that there isn't something else after this, if this fails, then it fails because there isn't enough time. And you've already said that about 24 times that there isn't another— there isn't enough time for all the other plans that other people suggested, then that has to be your stance. And I feel like you lost a lot of people when you weren't able to just say that. And I'm sitting up there, and I also feel like you kind of got the raw end because you said a lot of things— the H&H and the MBI— and I feel like people didn't hear that, but I think part of that is because of the, the answers you couldn't give or the answers you wouldn't give. So the pumps that you guys said that was considered as a long-term, tell us why it was a long-term and not a short-term.

Because we couldn't get the pumps here, because installing the pumps takes a year, and in a year we're going to have flooding in the valley. Maybe perhaps it does cause a death. And that's what you're trying to mitigate. That's fine. But say it.

Or, or why the dredging isn't. What were the— if you really thought about it, it was something that you really went through and you— and you did it. It ended up from all the engineers that you had sitting there, it couldn't be done. Why it couldn't be done? Because it just felt like you said it couldn't be, but you didn't have anything substantial that backed up why it wasn't able to be done.

And then It does feel like in the end, the HESCO barrier was just the thing that was what you ended on, not what you, you weeded out and decided this is the best thing because everything else couldn't be done. I believe it. I think about what it's going to take to install the HESCOs. The guy asked, what if it doesn't get installed? What is, what is the plan if it doesn't get installed?

And you said if everything works out exactly as planned, we should have plenty of time. Well, I'm telling you what, not everything works out exactly as planned. So if it doesn't work exactly as planned, he asked, what do you— what do we do? And you just couldn't answer. You just couldn't say.

The truth is, the plan is if it doesn't work, we have all of the emergency responses that we had last year. We're going to do our best to make things work but we don't have an extra plan. We don't have a way to stop the flooding. We already know you don't have a way to stop the flooding. This isn't a way to stop flooding.

It's a way to mitigate flooding till we can find a permanent solution. So I appreciate this very much. I just feel like you were lacking in being able to provide some answers that I think if you were in this position, you would want. Want those responses. Let me just try to summarize why we can't, why we can't, uh, use pumps to pump out water in Minnehaha Lake.

Because we don't have— no, no, no, I understand. The second one, uh, the second one, why can't we just dredge the river? Because we don't know the consequences of dredging that river, and we'd have to study it. The third one, what will we do if we aren't able to install the HESCO barriers, uh, before the next bluff, and we will absolutely respond. Homes will flood, uh, we will provide sandbags, and we will do the best things we can.

And there is one more thing that you feel like we did not answer tonight that I just want to give you my true— cutting, cutting— that's going to require more study and more permitting than we have time for, right? Those are my 2 minutes. No, no, 100%. What I'm saying is that when you— when they're asking the questions, you just said we, we thought about the studies, but They're saying, what if you cut now? Did you guys say, hey, what if we cut now?

You guys said no, if we cut now, it's going to what? It's going to take 6 months to get all the equipment up here to cut. And then we have no idea what's going to happen down the road because these people are saying, if we just bring something, I'll go take my chainsaw and I'll cut a hole. I think that is a ridiculous idea. I'm not saying that's a good idea.

I'm saying that These are things you guys thought of cutting, cutting through right now. I can't imagine what that's gonna take. I imagine it's gonna take more than the HESCO barriers, to be perfectly honest, even though people think that it's not. But you are trying to get this audience, these people that, like the guy said, have skin in the game, to understand why the HESCO barrier is the way to go. And the, the reason they feel like it isn't, or to feel like I feel like as I'm sitting here, is because some of those answers, they weren't answers.

You know, they just said it's going to take a lot of planning, it's going to take a lot of stuff. I, I agree with the H&H and the MDI. I think that makes perfect sense to me. It's going to tell you what those things are supposed to do. I'm just saying you can't come up here and say it just—.

We just couldn't get it. I totally hear you.

And an unfortunate reality is that we've had the time we've had, and the time that we've had has produced the answers that we have. And a lot of what you're asking for, the extra detail, the show your work sort of stuff that goes into like fully analyzing, you know, cutting through the river, treating the lake as a reservoir, you know, whatever other idea is, that's what the general investigation study does. That's why it takes so much time, because we understand that the community wants— we want— everyone wants a full understanding of each of the options that are out there, and we just haven't been able to do that yet because the time hasn't existed. Hello. I'll be brief.

I've been trying to stay out of this one. I used to work with this city. I used to be a floodplain manager. But I'm retired. I recommend it.

But it's more fun to sit there than it is up there, except for when you're getting charged a lot of money. But my point that I just want to bring up, Lemon Creek has been controlled through dredging for many decades, at least. Anyway, I worked on a permit to get Lemon Creek dredged to reduce the flood problem. Took about 4 months. It wasn't insurmountable.

It's some pretty rough hearings, a lot of oversight from Fish and Game and all the, you know, usual suspects, but it was approved. If there is a problem with a certain part of the Mendocino River sediment, sediment is accumulating and the river is not carrying its capacity, might look into how we are legally allowed, we meaning the community, allowed to dredge Lemon Creek to manage it for flood risk. And, you know, what was, what was that structure? Because it's not that different now than it was then. Although this has got a lot of eyes on it, and Lemon Creek is kind of everybody's kind of afterthought.

But Lemon Creek has a serious flood risk problem. It's due to high sedimentation. It's not a Yokohama situation. But the only reason it doesn't flood is because it's being dredged frequently. Otherwise, Lemon Creek, the whole valley would just get, you know, washed with floodwater just because it's a high sediment load.

So I'm just going to leave it there. But my question is, how is Mendenhall River different than Lemon Creek when it comes to fertilization? So that's it. Unless you have an answer. I don't, but I appreciate that.

I just mostly want to say thank you to everyone up here and the mayor and city council, because I don't know what I—. You know, I, I live on the river. I've flooded 2 years in a row, and the, the support we got this year was phenomenal. And I can't imagine being in your place because frankly, there is no— I mean, when I first heard the plan, I thought there's no way you're going to get this done. There's just— it's government.

There's, you know, it's a great thought, but it looks like you're making that progress. And frankly, the easiest thing to be would be to say, let's go for the long-term plan. Let's, let's study this for 10 years and let's, you know, somebody mentioned the Fairbanks flooding. I think that started in '77, it was finished in '87, and I personally don't have the, the, the ability just emotionally to go through 5 more of these floods while we figure something out. So the easiest thing for you guys would be, be, yeah, pass the buck, just go with the long term.

But I, I really feel for you because it's there— this is a no-win, because whatever you do, there's going to be somebody that feels they're negatively impacted, their LID's too high, they didn't flood so they shouldn't be in it. And there's lots of good reasons, but I mostly just want to say thank you, because it's kind of a, you know, there's— it's a no-win job you've got. But I, for one, just really appreciate what you have done And I didn't want to be— by not saying something, I didn't want you to count me as maybe somebody that was against the plan. So thank you.

Well, the biggest gentleman, uh, got rebutted with the idea that, uh, our house prices going down. We all know that our house prices have dropped dramatically. Sales of houses in the district have dropped dramatically. We contacted the assessor's office to ask to start the process for reduced valuation, and the immediate response was, if you start that process, we will come out and inspect your house to see if you've done any improvements. Well, I live in a flood zone.

The dramatic— the point is, the value of my house has dropped. Whether I put the improvements in, that's all sunk cost. So it seems—. Is there any way that you guys can contact the assessor's office? And you should set up an area-wide—.

You know what the area is, you know what the houses are. It should just automatically be something that you can go through the City Assembly and say, let's reduce as a fair basis based upon current real estate trends to help these people that are stuck in this district and just have our property taxes reduced. Is that a possibility? So the assessor's office operates under IAAO standards, which is an International Assessing Officers Association. Those standards are adopted under code, and the assessor works underneath those standards.

So the assessor will follow their process. Katie and I, the city manager's office, we're pretty hands-off of the assessor. They follow the code, and, you know, us interfering with the assessor's office is generally frowned upon. And so the assessor's office will start their work assessing all properties in the borough as of January 1st of this year. They'll take into account all of the factors that they usually take into account, and History, flooding is certainly one of those factors.

Okay, I appreciate that. And you know, that hands-off is the right thing. It didn't seem— it was very offensive, you know. Is there any— I mean, the whole idea is we don't know if they're going to— it would have been nice if they said, we'll take into account the house, the fact that your house was flooded. That would have been very appropriate.

So your, your response is good. I'm just not entirely comfortable with this idea because everybody here, I know their housing, their— our taxes went through the roof. I mean, it was a dramatic bump right after the flood. So are we saying it's just going to be delayed by a year and you guys are going to be supporting us to say that that should be stopped, reversed? Evaluations of— so any— when you, when you pay your property taxes in the fall, that's always based off of the value of your house as it existed January 1st of that year.

So you didn't see any impact because the flood happened in August. Okay, right. So I'm not promising you anything. I can't promise you anything. It's a pretty hands-on with the assessor, but that's, that's the work that the assessor does, is they look at January 1st, they pick that point in time, and they assess all properties in the borough as of how they existed on that date.

Okay, thank you. Thank you for taking the time to answer questions. Um, I've got a couple Well, one on the assessor, um, if you— our property is on the river. We did not— we were not affected by the flood. However, we have probably the second longest stretch of currently proposed Hesco barrier line, which limits access to probably about 3/4 of our property.

Our property value has gone down, but no damage was done to our property would our property be assessed accordingly because of this HESCO barriers and everything along, or does it have to be affected by the flooding? That's a good question. I don't know, but we can find out. Okay. Um, I know you guys are in a tough spot, but you signed up for it as engineers.

I'm an engineer. That's what we do. We solve problems. So thank you.

All right, it is, uh, 8:30. It looks like we're winding down. I want to thank everyone for hanging in there, for coming tonight. Um, let's thank Bo in the back for staying late and opening up the theater and doing sound for us. Thank you, Bo.

Please reach out at [email protected]. Lots of good questions, lots of good comments. And yeah, yes, you can sign up for emergency alerts there too, so you can make sure you participate in our emergency warning system. And the, the, if you don't have your certified mailing, that entire packet is online. There's a form there for objecting to the LID.

Uh, the public hearing is February 3rd. I'm sure we'll see many of you there. And, um, happy New Year. Thank you. It was empty there.

It was pretty much empty. Yeah.

Great job.

Yeah, I don't need the water. I am like, oh, well, well, well.