On the day we first heard the word Jökulhlaup in Juneau, the Mendenhall River began a dramatic shift eastward into backyards of Meander Way residents. Six years later it’s threatening to drop a few homes into the river. But instead of doing its job, local government officials are aimlessly wandering around the belief that only the federal government has the power to help private citizens protect their property.
The solution, discussed at Monday’s Assembly meeting, is to fortify the river banks with a riprap revetment alongside 28 Meander Way homes. It’s estimated to cost $7.7 million, three quarters of which would be federal funds funneled through the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). The debate is over who pays the $1.9 million balance.
If those homes belonged to the City and Borough of Juneau, a project to protect them would be the top priority on its Capital Improvement Project list. But the city’s position is CBJ will not derive any direct benefit. They proposed creating a Local Improvement District which allows them to charge private property owners “for special benefits conferred upon the property by any municipal improvement.”
In this case each homeowner would pay $78,000 or more. But at least five of them oppose it. One couple stated it far exceeded their available resources. Another argued it was inappropriate to charge the same amount to those less impacted by the problem.
The lack of unanimous agreement among affected homeowners forced Assembly members to explore alternative ways to assess the costs. Throughout the discussion, only Jesse Kiehl suggested CBJ should share financial responsibility for the project. He attempted to identify benefits it will realize and reminded everyone that “protecting lives and properties from natural hazards is a job of the city.”
That role is pretty well summed up by the main mission of the NRCS’s Emergency Watershed Protection Program. It was created to “help people and conserve natural resources by relieving imminent hazards to life and property caused by floods, fires, drought, windstorms, and other natural occurrences” such as the erosion problem on Meander Way. NRSC has already provided the design to CBJ free of cost.
Action to mitigate an imminent threat shouldn’t be considered an improvement though. A project that protects a property’s physical condition and monetary value is preventative maintenance
Repairing damage which has already occurred to eight of the properties isn’t an improvement either. In those cases, property assessments have been significantly lowered. A project that restores them to their prior value is more properly categorized as repair or reconstruction.
The revetments would be an improvement if installed during development, like the nearby Killewich Street extension completed in the 1990s. Meander Way was constructed just over a decade earlier, but still long after the hazards posed by the natural meandering of rivers like the Mendenhall were understood. Therefore, it could be argued CBJ has ownership in the problem because it didn’t require erosion protection be included in the development.
But the bigger question is, if Assembly members really think CBJ won’t benefit from the project, then how can they possibly believe the federal government will. Yet they’re eager to accept about two hundred thousand federal taxpayer dollars from NRCS for each lot supposedly improved to benefit of only private homeowners.
There’s a socially embarrassing irony to this contradiction. We have a small group of citizens facing a serious threat to their property who are relying on Washington, D.C. for financial aid while their local government can’t or won’t help. And that should trouble more than just the Assembly members opposed to the federal government’s tax and spend policies.
We’re all partly to blame for these circumstances. Society as whole has so thoroughly ignored the natural hazards of waterfront construction that it encouraged building on Meander Way despite the potential riverbank erosion disclosed in the subdivision covenant. And our auto and home heating emissions have covered the Mendenhall Glacier with carbon particulates that have accelerated glacial melting, the conditions for recurring Jökulhlaups and resulting floods.
But mostly, I think the proposed project would directly benefit CBJ. It’s the community goodwill that comes from taking care of its citizens, especially when circumstances beyond our control puts any of us in harm’s way.
• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector. He contributes a regular column to the Juneau Empire.
