Dear cruise ship tourists,
Hi there. Our town is voting on an initiative to slow industrial tourism. Proponents want one cruise ship-free day per week for the community and the environment. Some of them feel the industrial tourism complex cares more about tourists than they care about us. Not me. Apart from tourist money I don’t believe the complex cares much at all about tourists.
One reason you might agree is right above your ship. Curious? Here ’tis.
The cruise ship docks where 1.7 million of you land are built at the bottom of a landslide zone prone to collapse when the ground becomes super saturated with rain. Fifty years ago in a scientific report on mass wasting potential of Juneau soils, D.N. Swanston warned, “By far the most hazardous area in terms of destruction of property and loss of life from landslides is that area at the base of the Mount Roberts slope extending from the corner of 3rd and Harris streets to the beginning of Thane Road.” Swanston identifies eleven major (his emphasis) known debris slides that are all still identifiable on the ground. He pointed out many smaller slides have happened through the years, mapped 21 gullies on Mt. Roberts slope above town, 15 of which having high debris flow hazard. For emphasis he concludes the section with, “…most of the Mt. Roberts slope above South Franklin Street and Gastineau Avenue must be considered as highly hazardous in terms of damage and potential loss of life from landslides.”
It may interest you to know boulders and trees hitting houses above your ships are common enough they may not make the news. In September, 2022 a slide onto Gastineau Ave crushed a house and damaged others. Juneau’s Emergency Program Manager said, “…thank goodness there was a phone pole and a guard rail and a truck that blocked it from going down onto Franklin.”
Slides in 1920 and 1936 buried South Franklin under more than 10 feet of debris. Houses slid down the mountain. People died. Slides are most common in the big fall rains but with changing weather patterns even July is fair game. Two months ago a slide body slammed the Strasbaugh Apartments on Gastineau forcing evacuation.
Do we learn anything? Oh, heck no. Since Swanston’s 1972 warnings the major players have built a waterfront Jenga game. For decades it’s been ever more and bigger docks, more and bigger ships. In the 1980’s the city built a parking garage with a library on top over the water–on pilings. Back then, when we still had a few days per week with no cruise ships, you could dive around the docks to pick up artifacts exposed by ship’s scouring the bottom with those huge propellers. Scour is a primary cause of bridge collapses and is part of the Jenga game. Today there’s a tour bus parking lot–built on pilings–next to the library. And adjoining them is the boardwalk, also on pilings.These structures are a lot like bridges. Imagine the vibrations and impacts on the bottom and shore from thrusters/azipods/propellers required to push 145,000 GT (gross tonnage) of cruise ship away from the docks against the wind. They create mounds and deep trenches in the silt. You wouldn’t be allowed to do that on the mountain side without a retaining wall but underwater no one sees it.
Undaunted by Newtonian physics, on July 20, 2023 the Alaska State Office of Administrative Hearings ruled in favor of plans to permit and build–wait for it– another cruise ship dock! Yes friends, the state says a 5th cruise ship dock, “…will not materially endanger public health and safety…” Our Juneau Assembly sided with that.
Here’s the kicker. The complex loving your money: the city, the State of Alaska, the Coast Guard, and the cruise ship industry knows all this. They know it because they created it, they permit it, and so far, not one of them, least of all those trying to stop the initiative, has stepped up to say they will take full responsibility and pay full restitution if a bunch of you are swept away in an unplanned shore excursion.
Dick Callahan, is a writer in the Cruise Ship Theme Park
*I wrote this as a ‘My Turn’ column to the Juneau Empire but was told there were too many letters to fit it in before the election. Thought I’d just leave it up here with a few citations included below. Left out some of the Jenga game due to word limits for opinion columns in the Empire; for instance twenty years ago Juneau removed 2,400 yards (about 3,600 tons) of bottom from in front of the pilings. Bigger ships need more draft ya know. DC
https://dec.alaska.gov/Applications/SPAR/PublicMVC/CSP/SiteReport/3269
*You can download the original 1972 DN Swanston article as a PDF here:
https://andrewsforest.oregonstate.edu/publications/424
*And here’s a terrific article on the 1936 slide by Anna Canny from KTOO published in January, 2024:
https://www.ktoo.org/2024/01/12/juneaus-deadliest-landslide-tore-through-downtown-like-a-mighty-grinder-now-its-a-fading-memory/
