<figure class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_343218" style="width: 830px;"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" id="caption-attachment-343218">Don Habeger and Wayne Coogan walk on the top of a privately made berm that failed to protect Habeger’s home from flooding on View Drive in August 2025. (Photo by Clarise Larson/KTOO)</figcaption></figure>

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View Drive is the street hardest-hit by Juneau’s annual glacial outburst flood, and remains unprotected by the city’s temporary levee. The Juneau Assembly is hoping to avoid paying a portion of the cost for a federal program that would offer buyouts to those residents.

A federal buyout for View Drive would pay residents to leave, demolish their homes and transform the land into a park. But first, the city has to decide whether to sponsor it. At this point, it’s not clear if the Assembly will vote to do so. 

Mayor Beth Weldon was cautious at Thursday’s special Assembly meeting, where experts presented the city’s options.  

“I don’t think anybody’s ready to commit to anything tonight,” she said.

Brett Nelson is Alaska’s conservation engineer at the Natural Resources Conservation Service, or NRCS. The federal agency oversees a recovery buyout program. At the meeting, he explained that the City and Borough of Juneau would be responsible for 25% of the cost. 

If all 18 eligible properties participated, it would cost an estimated $25 million. That means the city would be on the hook for up to around $6 million. But he says it’s unlikely every household would take the deal.

The Assembly voted unanimously to request a waiver to pay. Nelson said it’s worth making the request, but he’s not sure it’s realistic that NRCS headquarters would approve it. 

“I’ll say this: it is not very often used,” Nelson said.

If the cost is not waived, the city could seek funding from other sources besides Juneau taxpayers, such as nonprofits. But there is one restriction on the city’s portion:

“The 25% cannot be from another federal source unless that other federal source comes with congressional language specifically indicating that it can be used as a match for federal dollars,” Nelson said.

He said it would take around a year to complete the process and that the agency would prefer to offer the buyout option to residents before the next flood, which is expected next summer. 

“This is an emergency program and we’d like to move as expeditiously as possible,” he said.

If the city does take on the project, NRCS will appraise the 18 homes on View Drive and then residents will choose whether to take the deal or stay. Nelson says there are two appraisal options: they can be done based on the value now, or as of the day before the 2024 flood — and the agency is leaning toward the latter.

That appraisal decision will apply to every eligible property and affect the overall price tag of the project, since homes are worth more before they’ve been damaged by repeated flooding. 

Engineers say that while a couple of properties on View Drive might benefit from a barrier, the whole street can’t be protected by the HESCO barriers that make up the temporary levee protecting most other Valley neighborhoods.

Mike Records is a hydraulic engineer at the Army Corps. He compared the hazard of putting HESCO barriers on View Drive to the danger of a mariner taking a dinghy across Lynn Canal during a storm. 

“View Drive basically sits on a moraine from the retreat of the Mendenhall Glacier, so that moraine is extremely porous,” Records said.

He said that means water would seep under a temporary levee and form a pool. That’s what happened to a property at the end of the street where residents decided to erect their own berm ahead of the flood this August.

“You’re building a reservoir — potential reservoir  — with homes in the middle and no way out,” Records said, referring to how View Drive is a dead-end street with a single entry and exit point.

He said he recognizes that it’s unfair not to protect View Drive residents who’ve faced flooding over and over, and that they’re in a “horrible situation.” But from an engineering perspective, he said the only way to protect households that decide to stay is to implement a long-term flood solution. 

Nelson says parcels that get bought out become restricted from development forever, so households that participate in the program couldn’t return to their former properties — even after a long-term solution is built. He says NRCS has already determined View Drive is eligible for a buyout and that federal funding would likely be available soon after the government shutdown ends, if the city decides to sponsor it.