Alaska seeking solution to flooding

Temporary barriers helped this year, but long-term answer still elusive

- BY GENE JOHNSON, CLAIRE RUSH AND CEDAR ATTANASIO

THE MENDENHALL Glacier in southeast Alaska is a popular tourist attraction.

The glacial flooding that sent residents of Alaska’s capital city scrambling this week has become an annual ordeal for those who live along the picturesque river that winds from the nearby Mendenhall Glacier.

This year, a giant wall of reinforced sandbags erected with the help of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers held back the worst of the flooding in Juneau, to residents’ great relief. The damage was nothing like what happened the last two years, when flooding was rampant and some homes washed away.

But the wall is merely a temporary barrier. The effort to devise a permanent solution is complicated by what scientists don't yet know about how human-caused global warming will affect the yearly outbursts of water from an ice dam at the glacier. Juneau is just one of many communities around the globe struggling to engineer a way out of the worst damage from climate change.

"We can’t keep doing this,” said Ann Wilkinson Lind, who lives on the banks of the Mendenhall River. “We need a levee or some other permanent fix. ... This is an emergency situation that can’t take 10 years for this study and that study and every other study. It needs to be done now."