Sen. Lisa Murkowski introduced a bill last week that would reauthorize funds for landslide monitoring work across Southeast Alaska, including in Haines.
At issue is the National Landslide Preparedness Act. The legislation was originally passed in 2020 and has provided millions of dollars each year to agencies including the U.S. Geological Survey for landslide-related work.
But the funding was only approved through 2024. So Murkowski is working to reauthorize it, but this time through 2035.
“We must do everything we can to safeguard our communities and protect Alaskans from fatal natural disasters, and that is why I will continue to advocate for the reauthorization of this bill,” Murkowski said in a statement.
State officials say the original funding has played a major role in fueling Alaska’s efforts to respond to landslide risk, which is intensifying with climate change. Southeast has seen four fatal landslides over the last decade, including one that killed two people in Haines in 2020.
With the exception of some dollars from FEMA, “pretty much the entire” state landslide program is funded by the USGS, said Jillian Nicolazzo, the acting manager of that program, which is within the state Department of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.
“Without the USGS funding, we don’t have another pot of money to use,” Nicolazzo said.
The state has taken on a range of projects as a result of the national funding. Perhaps most important is a statewide inventory on where landslides have happened. Nicolazzo said that project is nearly complete, and will feed into a broader, national database.
Nicolazzo said it’s an important first step toward better understanding where landslides have already happened – and where they’re more likely to take place in the future.
“If we can see that a certain soil type, or a certain slope angle with a certain soil type have had more landslides, then maybe we can say the susceptibility is higher in those conditions,” she said.
The federal funding has also fueled work focused on Southeast weather stations.
Most towns already have weather stations at their airports. Those are critical for aviation purposes but insufficient for monitoring landslide risk across a broader area. Take Wrangell, where a landslide killed six people in 2023.
“People who lived by the Wrangell landslide said there was a lot more rain than what had been recorded at the airport,” Nicolazzo said. “And they suggested that the weather patterns had also been different than what had been recorded at the airport.”
The program helps maintain existing weather stations, including several in Haines. The station on Beach Road, for instance, needs maintenance. Nicolazzo said it looks like some animals have nibbled on wires, and that a bear may have disrupted some solar panels.
But the program also funds the construction of new stations. Nicolazzo said that could happen in Ketchikan and Petersburg this summer.
The reauthorization bill has been introduced in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources is set to hold a hearing on the legislation this coming Tuesday.
