The Habegers build a berm around their house on View Drive on July 22, 2025. (Photo by Clarise Larson/KTOO)

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Homes on View Drive were hit the hardest by Wednesday’s glacial outburst flood. Now, as residents there dry out, they’re mulling over a federal buyout program to leave the street for good.

The city reported Friday that 47 homes flooded, but most of the damage was minor in areas protected by the city’s new temporary levee. View Drive is not protected by that levee.

The day before the flood, Don Habeger said he felt confident his home at the end of View Drive would make it out dry. But Wednesday evening, a loud generator pumped water from his bottom floor as he answered the door.

“If you look closely, you can see that the house did flood, and so we have recovery yet once again,” he said.

He had tried to avoid that. He and his neighbors paid thousands of dollars to build a colossal berm over the past month in a last-ditch effort to save their homes ahead of the glacial outburst flood. It failed. The berm stayed in place, but water still rose about 20 inches into Habeger’s ground floor — higher than the record-breaking flood last year.

Habeger had put his faith in the berm, so he didn’t take back-up measures like putting up sandbags or moving his furniture to the second story. 

“There’s somewhat of a numbing effect in your mind after one of these events, and it’s difficult to get on to the next day or the next day, and so I’m just trying to get through today,” he said on Wednesday evening after floodwaters receded.

Volunteers are helping him and his wife tear out wet insulation and dry what can be salvaged from their flooded family room. 

At this point, the Habegers see two possible paths forward: fight the flood again next year, or cut their losses and move away. They’re not sure which path they’ll take.

Don Habeger and Wayne Coogan walk on the top of a man-made berm built at the end of View Drive on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025. (Photo by Clarise Larson/KTOO)

View Drive is a dead-end street in Mendenhall Valley surrounded on three sides by Mendenhall River. Some properties here have flooded for more than a decade, but the past three years have been catastrophic. That’s because outburst floods have grown bigger as Suicide Basin has expanded to hold more water, and the city’s temporary levee didn’t extend to this street. 

Scientists don’t yet know how big the floods could get, and staff at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers say a long-term solution that would protect the entire Valley, including View Drive, is years away. 

Brett Nelson is Alaska’s conservation engineer at the Natural Resources Conservation Service. The federal agency oversees a recovery buyout program, which pays people to move out of natural disaster zones. 

In July, he met with city staff and some residents of View Drive to explain how the program works to purchase homes, demolish them and transform the land into a park. 

“People need a little time to mull the situation over. And that was basically the intent of that initial meeting,” Nelson said.

Nelson estimates the total project could cost somewhere between $18 and $20 million, assuming every View Drive homeowner decides to leave. But the program is voluntary and some people may choose to stay. 

Right now, the agency is in the process of appraising the 20 properties on the street. Nelson said that process is a bit complicated. 

“There’s two options: They can either be done based on the value, right now, the day the appraisal is being done, they can be valued, or they can be appraised as of the day before last year’s jökulhlaup,” he said. “The catch is, all the properties have to go the same direction.”

The agency has the final say over how homes are appraised, but Nelson said they want to respect residents’ wishes. That appraisal decision will affect the overall price tag of the project, since homes are worth more before they’ve been damaged multiple times. 

If the buyout moves forward, Nelson said the cost would be split. The federal government would cover 75% and a local sponsor would cover 25%.

City Manager Katie Koester said she’s exploring potential partnerships with conservation nonprofits that could help pay for the city’s portion if the Juneau Assembly votes to move forward after the appraisal is done. 

“The Assembly has been very supportive of us engaging in that conversation, but it is an Assembly-level decision,” Koester said.

Elizabeth Figus lives on View Drive and is drying out after a third year of major flooding in a row. She sees the buyout program as her best option since the city hasn’t made plans to protect her street, but she has questions at this early stage in the process. 

“Are we going to be assessed at like, way below what we would expect or need even to, like, pay off our mortgage and move on?” she said. “Perversely, are the people who haven’t gotten wet yet just going to be getting some sort of handout that also might make the Assembly say we can’t afford this?”

Figus also said it would make sense to compare the cost of turning the street into parkland with the cost to protect it somehow. 

But Nate Rumsey, the city’s deputy director of engineering and public works, said the city hasn’t done an official assessment of what it would take to protect View Drive. He said it’s probably not viable to put HESCO barriers there because the soil might not hold up under their weight. Last year, a sinkhole opened in the middle of the street due to flooding. 

Floodwater rises into Douglas Smith’s house on View Drive on August 13, 2025. (Photo Courtesy of Douglas Smith)

Several fans blow in Douglas Smith’s ground-floor bedroom, where a layer of fine grey silt covers the floor after floodwaters breached the height of the aluminum siding he’d installed. 

He said that he loves his community in Juneau and planned to spend the rest of his life here. Now, he’s thinking of taking a buyout and moving somewhere in the Lower 48.

“At this point, if that works, we’ll probably take it,” he said of the buyout program. “It’s probably our best option, because there doesn’t appear to be an option for protecting the house, and you know, what else are we going to do?”

Difficult decisions for View Drive residents and the Juneau Assembly are expected in the coming months, once NRCS issues its assessment of the street. Nelson said that if the buyout moves forward, the process would take around a year. 

Find more glacial outburst flooding coverage at ktoo.org/flood.