Peter Bangs says he’s already spent $100,000 of his own money protecting his home from the Mendenhall River and this year’s record flooding wasn’t high enough to reach his property, so he’s not thrilled with being forced to allow a wall of military-grade flood barriers in his backyard and being billed for at least some of the costs.
Concerns such as his were common among Juneau residents attending two flood-protection events at Thunder Mountain Middle School this week co-hosted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the City and Borough of Juneau. A two-hour presentation and question period on Tuesday evening was followed by a three-hour open house where people could talk with various officials Thursday.
The city is considering a four-mile levee of such barriers, which the Corps of Engineers would provide free, along the river that could remain in place for roughly a decade. But somebody — presumably the city and/or property owners — would have to pay for installation and maintenance.
The Juneau Assembly on Monday is scheduled to give initial consideration to creating a Local Improvement District at a cost of up to $7.8 million, with some or all of that money subsequently being collected from property owners where the barriers are placed.
Bangs, who said Thursday he invested heavily in riverbank armoring two years ago that kept record floods the past two summers from damaging his property on Marion Drive, questioned if there are practical and less intrusive options for residences such as his.
“If a map shows that we’re not even to get that high — we’ve never flooded — I don’t want to have something and then also get a bill from the city for it,” he told one of the Corps of Engineers experts during the open house. “And so that’s what’s frustrating for me.”
“My question was what if homeowners here — say us, we’re not even going to be inundated under this projection — can we put up some other type of protection?” he said. “There’s a whole bunch of flood protection options on the market. Can (pay for) ourselves our own cofferdam or something else that we can put up for a week a year and then take it down?”
Nate Rumsey, deputy director of public works for the City and Borough of Juneau, points out where military-grade flood barriers would be placed on properties along the Mendenhall River under a proposal to build a semipermanent four-mile levee now being evaluated by city leaders. The explanation occurred during an open house Thursday evening at Thunder Mountain Middle School to discuss flood prevention options in Juneau. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Empire)
The expert, Dan Allard, was staffing a table where miniature replicas of the Hesco barriers being discussed were displayed. The actual barriers, made of geotextile fabric are three feet square at the base and four feet high, are designed to be filled with sand or other material and linked together by their wire frames.
Allard told Bangs that concerns such as his are being discussed in meetings with city officials, who ultimately will be responsible for if and how the levee is installed. Nate Rumsey, CBJ’s deputy director of public works, said in response to a similar question from a resident at a different table that local officials are adjusting their thinking about the possible barrier deployment as they study the flood-prone areas.
“When we first set out to do this we thought we were going to be able to create what is essentially an access road behind (properties) so that we could have a way to access the barriers and place the barriers,” he said. “I don’t think that that’s going to be feasible anymore. What we’re now looking at instead — and we started to have this conversation today, but we were unable to finish — is where are the access points going to be so that we can first construct this thing and then, secondly, maintain or access it so that we can do repairs.”
A key dilemma expressed by CBJ and Corps of Engineers officials is a long-term solution to protect against glacial outburst floods from Suicide Basin — such as a drainage tunnel through a mountain near the basin or a levee at Mendenhall Lake — will take at least a decade due to both the scale of a project and federal regulations involved. Meanwhile, experts have stated the annual floods that have damaged more than 300 homes the past two summers are likely to continue, lending urgency to some kind of fix by next summer.
“This is where we’re in a little bit of a catch-22 for the information that we have available right now and what we think we could possibly do prior to when we could anticipate the next event to happen,” Rumsey said. “We’re trying to cover as many of what we know are the affected properties.”
People will get plenty of opportunities to weigh in about specific proposals as they come up before city leaders, Rumsey added.
“There will be public processes that happen that require community support for and that’s why we elect Assembly members,” he said.
CBJ Public Works Director Denise Koch said during Tuesday’s meeting the tentative plan is to start installing the Hesco barriers, if that project is approved, in February or March of next year. She said $7.8 million Local Improvement District being proposed would be for the first phase of the project between Marion Drive and Rivercourt Way.
The Juneau Assembly last month approved spending up to $2 million for installing the barriers, so Koch said addressing how the rest is paid — with city, homeowner and/or other funds — will be part of the community discussion during the upcoming months.
“We don’t have another very short-term option,” she said.
Skepticism and uncertainty about how well the Hesco barriers will work were expressed by some residents who said they didn’t feel they got satisfactory answers to scenarios such as patching or replacing damaged barriers when they are submerged by flood waters.
“The Army Corps of Engineers and Hesco cannot provide to you what it should look like when it’s working because they don’t have any examples of it,” said Noah Teshner, whose been helping neighbors deploy sandbags after puchasing 10,000 of them this summer, while talking to Rumsey on Thursday. “We are a case study.”
Keith Anderson, a consultant with Flood Defense Group who previously worked for Hesco for 17 years, repeated assurances on Tuesday that he provided to Juneau Assembly members at a Nov. 4 meeting. He said some of the scenarios described by residents, such as a tree striking the levee at high speed and being dragged along the barriers, have never resulted in a situation where a large breach occurred due to a loss of multiple barriers.
Both of this week’s events also featured extensive advice to homeowners about how to safeguard property with sandbags and other items, making evacuation plans that include essential items to quickly collect, and preventing dangerous situations by unplugging appliances and shutting off fuel tank valves.
People also need to plan for unpredictable factors such as locating pets and alternative escape routes if the normal street out of a neighborhood is blocked, said Philip Martinez, another Corps of Engineers flood expert, during Tuesday night’s meeting.
“If you do have a car make sure you have a full tank of gas on evacuation day,” he said. If there isn’t a lot of advance notice before a major flood hits “always keeping your car half-full around the time of year is helpful. And always carry an emergency kit in your car.”
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
