The Juneau Assembly voted Monday to extend the Mendenhall River levee meant to protect Valley homes from annual glacial outburst floods. This comes after new inundation maps were released last week, showing how the levee should work.
The HESCO barriers were initially set to stop at Rivercourt Way. But if a future flood is larger than last year’s 16-foot event, the new maps show downstream infrastructure could be saturated, including two schools, a library, a post office and Safeway.
“It’s apparent from these maps that we need to do more to protect our community from higher events,” said City Manager Katie Koester.
The Assembly approved the first phase of the levee’s extension down to Kax̱dig̱oowu Héen Elementary School. That section will be built on city property and cost an estimated $500,000. Koester said the levee project is roughly $2 million dollars under budget and there are leftover HESCO barrier materials. City funding that was not used for the initial levee will pay for it — this will not include money from property owners that paid into the Local Improvement District.
But to protect the homes and businesses even further downstream, the Assembly also discussed a second phase of the extension, from the elementary school to Brotherhood Bridge. Koester said this would affect private properties, and could mean that the city may propose another local improvement district or a local tax district.
The city has not yet laid out a plan for how that would work, nor have they mapped how the barriers would work in a possible second phase of the extension. City officials said a further extension will be discussed at the Committee of the Whole Meeting on June 2.
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