Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

The Chilkoot Indian Association (CIA) is partnering with the Haines Borough to secure funding to repair local roads damaged by the early December storms.

Last week, CIA submitted a letter of intent, the first step in the application process for the Federal Highway Administration’s Emergency Relief for Federally Owned Roads Program (ERFO Program). Working with the borough and engineering firm proHNS, CIA submitted cost estimates for public infrastructure repair needs around town, transportation coordinator Nick Kokotovich said.

“This is a fantastic way for the borough and the tribe to collaborate on what we can receive from outside funders,” trial administrator Harriet Brouillette said.

The ERFO program is designed to fund repairs for federally owned roads and tribal transportation facilities that have suffered damage during natural disasters. CIA is key to making borough roads eligible for these funds.

“Normally, the borough wouldn’t be able to go through ERFO to get funds for Young Road or Beach Road,” Kokotovich said. “But all of the side streets are on our inventory list, which is why we applied for the funding as a tribal government.”

Kokotovich declined to say how much money CIA requested. He said if ERFO funding comes through, it could be used to cover emergency repair costs CIA and the borough incurred in the immediate wake of the disaster, as well as the cost of bringing the roads back to pre-disaster condition. Any additional improvements would need to come from another funding source.

Kokotovich said he’s heard there’s a decent chance the ERFO funding will come through. “According to everybody I’ve talked with, they said make sure you get that application in because they are very good about getting emergency funding for communities,” he said.

Applying for ERFO funding is also a necessary step for FEMA eligibility. The borough must have first exhausted other potential funding sources before FEMA will cover public facility repairs, according to borough public facilities director Ed Coffland.

At present, Gov. Mike Dunleavy has activated the state’s public assistance program to help Southeast communities rebuild after the December landslides and flooding. If FEMA public assistance becomes available, the state will cover 25% of the cost of rebuilding public infrastructure and FEMA will cover the rest.

Like the ERFO Program, FEMA and state public assistance will cover the cost of bringing roads back to pre-disaster conditions, or current borough code standards, Coffland said. He said this may give the borough the opportunity to make minor improvements to some roads that, for example, don’t meet minimum width requirements.

In December interviews, Coffland said he hoped the rebuilding effort would involve improvements to roads’ stormwater collection systems to ensure adequate drainage during heavy rain events.

In a Tuesday interview, he said borough staff are still working on this plan.

Neither FEMA nor ERFO will cover costs associated with improved road drainage since current borough code doesn’t have any requirements for designing roads to withstand storms, Coffland said.

It’s possible that the federal programs could cover the cost of drainage improvements if the assembly updated borough code to include new drainage standards, Coffland said. Otherwise, the borough will be responsible for drainage improvements on its own and will need to decide on an individual basis whether improvements are worth the cost, he said.

On Tuesday, the state submitted a preliminary damage assessment for the Southeast storm to FEMA, the first step in applying for both individual and public assistance from the federal government.