The Haines Borough Assembly approved $8,680 to fund a Beach Road landslide area stability monitoring effort by the Haines Avalanche Center.
Center staff Erik Stevens and Jeff Moskowitz have been involved in monitoring the area for signs of instability on a volunteer basis since Dec. 2.
“When the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) started its response to the landslide and the geologists came down from the state, there was an immediate need to gather as much information as possible. The EOC started a data collection team, which continued on a volunteer basis for a month or two after the event,” Stevens said. He said the monitoring has tapered off in recent weeks due to lack of time.
The lack of monitoring made the EOC uncomfortable. Beach Road residents are able to access houses at the end of the road, on the far side of the landslide path, via an ATV road put in by Roger Schnabel in January.
“There is a need to continue monitoring what’s going on over there so we can keep residents apprised if there’s anything that does occur, particularly as we start looking at going into our spring break-up,” EOC incident commander Carolann Wooton told the assembly on Tuesday.
The funds cover one-time administrative costs like liability insurance, as well as pay for two staff members working five hours per week for 14 weeks, until the state-commissioned geotechnical assessment of the Beach Road area is expected to conclude. Avalanche center staff are donating half of their time free of charge out of a desire to serve the community.
The budget the assembly approved lists monitoring tasks Stevens and Moskowitz will be responsible for, including documenting groundwater pressure, monitoring for earthquake activity, taking daily pictures of the area, monitoring the snowpack, maintaining a public precipitation tracker website and conducting a weekly ground survey of the area.
The funding request says the center will also host a community outreach forum to update residents about conditions and solicit feedback.
The assembly unanimously supported the measure, echoing Wooton’s desire to have a monitoring system in place as Beach Road residents continue to access the area.
“We, as a borough, aren’t out there watching the area ourselves, so they’re going to be the early warning to tell people to stop crossing,” assembly member Gabe Thomas said.
Although the Haines Borough has kept the area immediately to the south of the Beach Road slide path under mandatory evacuation since the event, on Dec. 18 it lifted the order for homes at the end of the road. Houses remain disconnected from utilities, but residents have been accessing them on an intermittent basis.
Both the borough and Alaska Power & Telephone (AP&T) are waiting on findings from a state-commissioned geotechnical assessment they hope will answer questions about the area’s short-term and long-term stability.
At Tuesday’s assembly meeting, Wooton said a findings report from field data gathered earlier this month is expected by the end of March. She said if the experts draw any actionable conclusions before the report is finalized, they will pass them on immediately to the borough.
Stevens said the funding for Beach Road landslide monitoring is distinct from the funding for the center’s normal avalanche safety program. It will help with some overhead costs, but the center is still in need of funding to provide regular avalanche forecasts throughout the winter season. He said the center will likely submit a funding request to the borough this year as the assembly works through the budget process.
Last spring, the Haines Avalanche Center requested $20,000 from the borough, a request the assembly ignored. In past years, the center has received between $1,500 and $5,000 from the borough, supplemented by fundraising from other sources.