Juneau Assembly asks flood disaster victims on View Drive to help pay for their own buyout
- Jasz Garrett
- 18 hours ago
- 7 min read
Residents at one household now regret bringing the NRCS program to the attention of city, express disappointment at its approach after federal approval
By Jasz Garrett
Juneau Independent
View Drive residents say they are facing an “impossible question” in an informal poll received by the City and Borough of Juneau last week.
A couple who brought the idea of a federal disaster buyout to CBJ say a lack of transparency isn’t allowing them to make an informed decision about whether or not to help pay a 25% local cost share for the project. Some people in the Mendenhall Valley neighborhood previously expressed similar concerns about a lack of information clouding their judgment on preparations before a record flood occurred for a third straight year last August.
There are 18 homes on View Drive and, if every property participated in the program, there could be a $6 million local cost share, according to City Manager Katie Koester. The decision to seek feedback from the neighborhood was made during a Juneau Assembly Finance Committee meeting Jan. 7.
The informal ballot sent by the city is nonbinding and notes it will be used solely to inform the Assembly on the level of interest in the buyout program, according to a letter accompanying the poll.
Mayor Beth Weldon said in an interview Friday that even before the informal ballots have been returned, there is more interest than the city thought, likely meaning staff and Assembly time will be dedicated to further exploring the project.
“I don’t know if everybody's interested, but we’ve had a few emails back saying, ‘Well, I’m interested, but what about this? And what about this and what about this?’ Well, all those details have to be ironed out,” she said.
A large unknown remains the official value of individual properties, which the National Resources Conservation Service would assess.
The rough estimations given in the informal ballots are preliminary and range from $200,000 to $500,000 per property. Opting into the buyout program would mean the View Drive property becomes a hazard and can never be redeveloped, according to NRCS.
A response is due back to the CBJ Engineering Division by Feb. 16. The results are scheduled to be presented to the Assembly during a Committee of the Whole meeting at 6 p.m. Feb. 23 to finalize the decision to participate. While the project is voluntary for property owners, it requires formal commitment from the sponsoring entity — the city — to proceed.
Weldon said two View Drive residents have approached the city about the buyout project, but the city had not yet heard from the rest of the neighborhood.
In the spring of 2025, View Drive resident Elizabeth Figus formally requested that CBJ pursue a recovery buyout project for her neighborhood through NRCS’s Emergency Watershed Protection Program, and the city did so.
The Mendenhall River crested at 16.65 feet on Aug. 13, 2025. View Drive residents suffered major damage even after hurricane-proof measures were taken at one home and a berm was built around another. According to Figus’s partner, Malachi Thorington, his household is still recovering while debating whether or not to pay the cost share.
“When you’ve just gone through yet another disaster and you have funds basically waiting in the wings, you don’t really know how to proceed,” he said. “It seems bordering on irresponsible or negligent to put tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars into rebuilding or stabilizing your home if it’s only going to be torn down again.”
He said for the past six months they have been in “a strange state of limbo,” although money has been spent in the neighborhood to stabilize houses through winter.
Figus said the informal ballot their household received on Wednesday blindsided her. The ballot has two choices: be willing to participate and pay the project cost share, or check the box that says “I do not intend to participate in the View Drive Property Buyout project if required to pay the project cost share associated with my property.”
“That’s what we need to know, because we’re not going to be able to come up with $6 million if the whole neighborhood said they’re going to want to buyout and whatever a couple people do, we have to be fair across the board,” Weldon said.
She said somewhere between zero and $6 million, “the neighborhood’s going to have to pay if everybody’s interested.”
Thorington said their household now regrets bringing the NRCS buyout program to the attention of CBJ, a statement he included in an email to Juneau legislators on Thursday.
“Their way of handling this program appears to be negligent and bordering on dangerous because of how non-communicative and flippant CBJ has been, with the City Manager’s office intentionally not providing appropriate information to the City Assembly,” Thorington wrote.
He said his goal of making Juneau legislators aware of the situation is related to his broader concerns about the city’s leadership decisions influencing young families to leave the city and state and the possibility of other resources coming up with additional funding for the 25%.
For his home, an informal ballot estimates an approximate assessment amount of $220,000. Homes would be appraised at their 2024 value by NRCS, before a flood peak that year of 15.99 feet. It’s unclear to residents if they would be expected to pay the assessment amount upfront.
“First and foremost, most people don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars lying around,” Thorington said.
The buyout program is voluntary and homeowners could back out after receiving an official assessment amount, according to NRCS.
If the city moves forward with the project, it would be the state’s first buyout project under the Emergency Watershed Protection Program. Back in August, NRCS State Conservation Engineer Brett Nelson recognized that giving up a home was not an easy decision. He told the Assembly at the January finance committee meeting that in other states where buyouts have been deemed necessary for flood mitigation, the city typically pays 25% while NRCS is responsible for 75%.
CBJ applied for a waiver for the 25% non-federal cost share in the fall and was denied. The city reached out to third parties to pay the local cost share, such as the Southeast Alaska Land Trust and other nonprofit organizations, according to Koester.
“Organizations are certainly sympathetic and interested, but not interested in so much as they’re able to convince millions of dollars at this time,” she said. Koester recognized that the situation is an emergency that needs to be addressed quickly.
Weldon said the city was determined to be the likely sponsoring entity during the program’s application, but that did not mean CBJ would be responsible for the 25% cost share. She also said the city’s fiscal situation has changed following the October municipal election, when Juneau residents exempted food and utilities from sales tax.
“We were going to look at other kind of grants and those kind of things, but between then and now we’ve heard that a lot of those grants we can’t use,” she said. “And also, like I said, the fiscal situation has changed, right? We had money to help; now we don’t have as much money to help.”
Thorington said if CBJ was direct with residents about not having the money to do the 25% cost share and said it was not an option, he would find that acceptable. But instead, it feels like “they are just trying to drag this entire thing out as a way to say, ‘Oh no, they don’t really want this. Maybe they don’t even need this. We did our due diligence to try to help these people, but they just don’t want to be helped.’”
He said he wants other Juneau residents to know View Drive residents want honesty and that this scenario could set a potential standard for how disasters are handled in Juneau and Alaska in the future, adding the informal poll could “persuade, if not force, most or all residents to decline this program completely.”
The mayor acknowledged communication needs to happen with View Drive residents, but said the Assembly’s schedule is full with budget meetings.
“The best way to do it would have the Assembly and the View Drive residents meet, but we just don’t have time in our schedule for that,” Weldon said. “So it’s going to have to be through staff. Right now, they have a lot of questions, as you might imagine from that ballot, and we just don’t have the answers yet.”
The NRCS buyout program is the neighborhood’s only presented choice to escape the Mendenhall River’s torrent, as View Drive was deemed ineligible for HESCO barriers due to soil stability and home elevations, according to CBJ.
As such, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is not authorized to provide temporary flood protection for the area. Additionally, the neighborhood is built on a peninsula-like strip of land surrounded by the Mendenhall River, causing concern that HESCO barriers there could act more like a dam than a levee. Weldon added the situation is further complicated by some properties being in the regulated floodplain.
“We have to remember these are community members, they’re people that are affected by the flood, so we’re trying to give them some relief too,” she said. “It’s just they’re just a so much more complicated situation. So it’s a tough one.”
At the January finance committee meeting, Koester said the property owners have an individual decision “whether or not to take their chances and wait for an enduring solution.” She said the city and federal delegation are doing everything in their power to speed the process along.
But while a lake tap has been chosen as a long-term solution to annual glacial lake outburst flooding for USACE to study, it could still take years to become a reality, if found to be feasible. There is no authority yet to build or fund the lake tap project.
And View Drive residents say they have been taking their chances for too long already.
After the 2025 flood, View Drive resident Angela Smith said that, like her neighbors, she was considering emptying the entire bottom floor of her house and never refilling it because “it’s just going to flood again.” Floodwater first inundated her garage in 2016. This past August, more than five feet of water entered the garage, and six inches of water covered the first floor.
“We talk about it all year. All year, we try to think of things and ‘What if this and what if that?’” Smith said. “I don’t like it being a part of our life.”
• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz@juneauindependent.com or (907) 723-9356.
