Last week, the 10-member Visitor Industry Task Force (VITF) gathered at the Mendenhall Public Library to receive public testimony on the draft recommendations the group put together for presentation to the Juneau Assembly. The recommendations come after Mayor Beth Weldon, who created the VITF, issued a charge issued last year to create dialogue and find potential improvements to the way Juneau’s visitor industry runs and impacts residents.
As an advisory board, the task force only makes recommendations to the Assembly and does not have the power to directly set policy.
From “Downtown Congestion” to “Helicopter Flightseeing,” the draft recommendations were separated into various categories related to the visitor industry and numbered 42 in total.
Labeled as high-priority recommendations, the VITF draft suggested that city officials commission studies that would create metrics quantifying downtown congestion and collect data comparing helicopter noise to 2001 baselines. Other high-priority draft recommendations are that the city collect and make publicly available data on water quality, air quality, and public health.
As public testimony on the draft recommendations began pouring out, many of the concerns were about the same thing: decreased quality of life for residents.
Jo Boehme, a 32-year Juneau resident, brought up concerns about the pendulum having swung far past the point of over-tourism.
“For decades the Assembly has received feedback from the public about diminished quality of life for residents as the cruise volume increases, and almost all of the recommendations (…) could be mitigated if the cruise passenger numbers are less: congestion on the roads, volume of whale watching boats… issues with noise,” Boehme said.
This was a point echoed by Brandon Hauser, an Auke Bay resident who mentioned having had a positive experience working in the tourism industry 20 years ago. Over the last two decades, however, Juneau’s tourism scene has dramatically grown.
Hauser’s main concerns were over the “Helicopter Flightseeing” category in the draft recommendations, questioning when the recommended noise study would actually be conducted. He also suggested adding questions to the Resident Sentiment Survey that allow for residents to share the potential mental health impacts of cruise ship tourism.
“If we consider that the majority of residents cannot barbecue on a sunny Friday without consistent noise pollution, or that one must contend with a sizable amount of tourism when trying to hike a trail or go fishing or go to a restaurant, I believe that it’s an important factor to track in the survey,” Hauser said.
Further, he brought up that the draft recommendations had the lowest allocated funds going towards environmental and public health monitoring. This past season, multiple ships pulled into Juneau and offloaded passengers for shore excursions, shopping, and dining amid ship-wide norovirus outbreaks. With the cruise season extending into October, there has also been increased concerns over the spread of influenza from the ships into town.
“I’d like to see more than a simple monitoring of the CDC outbreak page (…) and likewise as opposed to just checking the DEC data website, how can we more vigorously investigate the increasing acidification levels of the Inside Passage and how that will impact the commercial fishing industry, not to mention our ability to consume seafood without heavy metal accumulation in our bodies,” Hauser said.
Hauser is referring to large cruise ships burning heavy fuel oil, a fuel associated with toxic washwater that gets directly dumped into the water. Components of this washwater have been shown to bioaccumulate up the food chain, leading to cancer in marine mammals and respiratory difficulties in humans.
Other residents called for more intelligent tourism, citing other destination communities that face housing shortages, soaring prices, increased commute times, and loss of community identity due to over-tourism. Multiple people called for recommendations that focus on residents’ lived experience and realistic long-term liveability, suggesting the task force focus recommendations on promoting small cruise ships and independent travelers who travel in ways more aligned with these goals than cruise lines.
Having considered this testimony, the VITF is scheduled to finalize its recommendations for the assembly today, Nov. 12th.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the newsletter on the Alaska Legislature, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Bluesky. Reach him at matt [at] thealaskacurrent.com.
