“Could they put pretty flowers in it?”
Assembly member Wade Bryson asked this as 466 Juneau homeowners along a two-mile stretch of the Mendenhall River wrestle with control over their properties as temporary HESCO barriers are installed this spring.
City Manager Katie Koester replied riverfront property owners should work with the project manager through a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to determine exactly what can be done. The City and Borough of Juneau will mail out the MOU and a notice to property owners, but Koester added project managers are conducting site visits in the field starting Tuesday.
Koester said at an Assembly meeting Monday that the semipermanent barriers being provided by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) are en route to Juneau. This is the first phase of the project. Last month, the Juneau Assembly unanimously approved a flood protection plan requiring property owners to pay nearly $6,300 each for the barriers after 117 filed objections, well short of the number necessary to reject the plan.
The barriers and installation cost $2.4 million in total, and four contractors are beginning site assessments this week.
“I think it’s important that the property owners along the river know that we are not required to have their signature in order to do this project,” Koester said.
While property owners cannot opt out of the installation, they will have some say in how and when the construction is done.
A notice to property owners outlines the CBJ’s responsibilities during the flood protection project, such as proper installation, maintenance, determining alignment, and working with property owners to establish times. The notice asks property owners to provide access to their site, identify hazards, and notify CBJ if any damage to barriers occurs.
The MOU allows property owners to document special circumstances, such as a deck that requires special accommodation or construction that must be done at a particular time.
“If property owners have questions related to their property like, ‘Hey, I want to make sure this fence gets documented and I want to make sure you move it instead of taking it down because I’m still going to need the fence for my dog’ those are things that we can work out,” Koester said. “But terms that are not negotiable are compensation for placing the HESCO barriers on property and things like the length of the term. We, of course, would like these barriers to be up for as short a time as possible, but we just don’t know how long that will be.”
The barriers’ life expectancy is 5-10 years. During public testimony on the Local Improvement District (LID), property owners at risk of glacial outburst flooding from Suicide Basin said that they wanted to see a long-term solution. The American Relief Act of 2025 contained $20 million for investigations, including glacial outburst flooding. Koester said the money was awarded in December 2024, but it hasn’t been approved by the Office of Management and Budget to go towards a long-term flood study.
Koester said CBJ was supposed to hear a response in mid-February on a work plan submitted by the USACE requesting $10 million to begin the investigation study. However, the USACE has not received administrative approval, and as of Monday, there was no updated timeline for when that might be.
When Assembly member Paul Kelly asked Koester for an anticipated timeline on a short-term flood modeling study by CBJ-contracted Michael Baker International, she said “soon.”
The MBI study will provide river modeling beyond the currently available 16-foot Flood Inundation Mapping and incorporate the newer changes in the river. It will also analyze and incorporate deployment of HESCO barriers and refine HESCO Phase 1 alignment. The modeling from MBI was originally projected for late February or early March at a January meeting.
More information on the LID can be found here.
• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz.garrett@juneauempire.com or (907) 723-9356.
