Alaska
‘No perfect tax regime’: Alaska lawmakers list concerns over Dunleavy’s sales tax proposal
Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s proposed sales tax could clash with existing revenue measures in cities and boroughs across the state, lawmakers said during a House Finance Committee hearing on Thursday.
It was just one of a series of concerns raised on both sides of the political aisle during the first hearing on Dunleavy’s fiscal plan for balancing the state’s budgets in the long run.
The sales tax, which is the primary means by which Dunleavy is proposing to increase state revenue, would levy a 4% tax on purchases between April and September and 2% for the remainder of the year.
Dunleavy’s fiscal plan comes in the final months of his eight years as governor, after several years in which he proposed balancing the state’s budget with hundreds of millions in annual draws from state savings.
Several lawmakers pointed out that even though Dunleavy projected his sales tax would raise up to $800 million annually, his plan could still leave Alaska with annual budget deficits in the long run because of his proposal to insert the Permanent Fund dividend into the state constitution and guarantee an annual payout that could cost the state more than $2 billion annually.
Dunleavy’s plan was explained to lawmakers by Acting Revenue Commissioner Janelle Earls, Acting Tax Division Director Brandon Spanos, and revenue department Chief Economist Dan Stickel. Neither the revenue department nor the tax division have had permanent heads for months.
“There is no perfect tax,” Dunleavy’s revenue officials said repeatedly as they fielded questions from lawmakers. It was their answer when asked about the difference in impacts between a sales tax and an income tax; when asked about the impacts of the state tax on communities with existing local sales taxes; and the impacts on rural villages.
“There is no perfect tax regime. We wish we weren’t here talking about this either, but that’s the situation,” said Spanos.
Nils Andreassen, executive director of the Alaska Municipal League, spoke to lawmakers about the potential conflicts between Dunleavy’s proposal and existing local taxes.
“We should probably unpack ‘perfect,’” Andreassen said. “I think what we mean when we say there’s no perfect tax is that at some point somebody pays the tax.”
“There’s no tax that doesn’t impact somebody,” he said. “Are there ways to mitigate some of those impacts? Yes.”
Impacts on communities with local sales taxes
More than 70% of Alaska residents live in parts of the state that lack a sales tax, including in Anchorage, which funds local services primarily through property taxes. But the number of jurisdictions in Alaska with some form of a sales tax exceeds 100.
In parts of the Kenai Peninsula Borough, for example, the combined borough and city tax is 6%. In Ketchikan, the combined borough and city tax reaches 8% in the summer. The City of Kodiak levies a 7% sales tax.
Many of those communities have implemented exemptions for their local taxes in an effort to curb their burden, including carve-outs for senior citizens and caps on the total tax that must be paid from single transactions.
Dunleavy’s proposal would eliminate communities’ ability to implement unique exemptions by transitioning that authority to the state.
The elimination of local exemptions has the effect of going against voter decisions, said Andreassen. In Juneau, residents only recently approved a provision that eliminates sales tax applicability on food.
“Voters contribute to local decision-making when it comes to those exemptions, and the state is saying right now in this proposal, ‘All of what voters asked for in those communities will go away based on our new list of exemptions,’” Andreassen said.
The exemptions proposed by Dunleavy cover medical services, purchases made with food stamps and similar assistance programs, interstate commerce, internet access, sales to the state or the federal government, state licenses or permits, investments, jet fuel, insurance premiums, home sales and rent, among others.
But the tax would apply to most goods purchased by individual Alaskans, such as groceries, fuel and cars.
Under the governor’s proposal, the effective tax rate in 36 Alaska communities would be at least 9%, rising to 13% in some places — which would be among the highest in the nation, said Andreassen.
Rep. Andy Josephson, an Anchorage Democrat who co-chairs the Finance Committee, said that “at some point, the tax rate gets so large that it acts as a deterrent for local economies.”
During the hearing, Department of Revenue officials did not provide data or modeling on the impacts of a statewide sales tax on communities that already levy local sales taxes.
Spanos said the sales tax is “the regime that the governor believes is the best for the state.”
“Certainly we have concerns and the governor would like to not have a tax as well, but that’s not the situation we’re in. We have a fiscal crisis that needs to be resolved, and the governor feels this is the best solution for this time,” said Spanos.
Department of Revenue officials said lawmakers could propose new exemptions to the tax if they saw fit, but Josephson said Dunleavy had not given him indications that he was open to changes to his bill.
“You made it sound like we were welcome to engage in those sorts of adjustments. But I just haven’t experienced that,” he told Earls. “What I’ve experienced is, ‘I’ve got to vote for this bill the way it is,’ and I just don’t know how much allowance the Legislature has to go at it alone and make changes.”
Earls said the plan was “open to some conversation.”
“I can’t speak to exactly what the governor would accept, but I think it’s a conversation to be had,” she said.
Impacts on rural Alaska
Rep. Nellie Jimmie, a Democrat from Toksook Bay, said the proposal would place an undue burden on communities in her district, which includes many Western Alaska villages.
If the tax were in place, Jimmie said, residents who lost their homes and most of their worldly belongings in villages ravaged by storms last year would face the burden of many purchases that would not be exempted from the sales tax, like snowmachines. Costs associated with rebuilding the houses would be exempted, but not the costs of filling a new home with belongings.
That comes on top of highest-in-the-nation prices for food and fuel.
“How is a statewide sales tax meant to be equal when rural Alaskans face much higher costs for the same basic necessities, especially after a disaster?” Jimmie asked.
Earls said she’s “heard that concern from others.”
“I’m not exactly sure how to answer every single individual Alaskan,” Earls said.
The Department of Revenue did not provide any specific modeling on the impacts of the tax on rural Alaska communities, where commodity prices are higher.
“It sounds like a sales tax is equal,” said Rep. Neal Foster, a Democrat from Nome who co-chairs the Finance Committee, “but when you have the cost of milk and cost of fuel and cost of groceries and everything higher up in rural Alaska, that same gallon of milk is really being taxed more.”
“It is not OK,” Jimmie concluded.
Sales tax vs. income tax
Alaska is the only state in the country without a broad-based tax, having eliminated its income tax four decades ago amid a flood of new oil revenue. Andreassen said that the Municipal League supports adoption of a broad-based tax, but favors an income tax over a sales tax.
Rep. Alyse Galvin, an Anchorage independent, said Dunleavy’s proposed sales tax, when compared with an income tax, would have a disproportionate impact on households with limited means. That assertion was supported by data collected by researchers at the University of Alaska Anchorage, who were paid by Dunleavy’s office to review various fiscal plan alternatives.
Asked whether the governor had considered an income tax, Earls said that the sales tax was preferred because it would collect revenue from non-residents and tourists spending money in Alaska.
Galvin argued that an income tax would better capture funds from non-resident workers, who according to recent data make up more than a fifth of the state’s workforce.
“A lot of Alaskans think that it’s not right that people come up here to work and take the very best, highest-paying jobs, and yet they don’t put in to Alaska,” said Galvin.
Rep. Jamie Allard, an Eagle River Republican, countered that imposing an income tax would drive away military retirees like her who chose to reside in Alaska precisely because their military retirement benefits are not taxed by the state.
Department of Revenue officials did not immediately provide any data to the committee detailing the difference in revenue that could be raised from non-residents through a sales tax versus an income tax.
“As was stated earlier, there is no perfect tax. Any tax is going to have negative downsides,” said Stickel, the department’s chief economist. “That’s true of a sales tax. It’s true of an income tax.”
Enshrining the dividend in the constitution
Dunleavy’s tax plan, which also includes raising new revenue from the oil industry, eventually calls for phasing out the new sales tax, along with the state’s existing corporate income tax. At the same time, his plan calls for enshrining the Permanent Fund dividend in the state constitution in perpetuity and paying out dividends through a new formula that allocates roughly $2 billion annually to the payouts in the foreseeable future.
Some lawmakers said that even at the peak of Dunleavy’s proposed new revenue streams, the state budget will be strained, leaving no room to address the maintenance backlog of state-owned facilities, such as university and school buildings.
“I fail to see how enshrining a liability that outstrips the amount of revenue I’m raising in taxation creates anything but more instability and a need for more taxes,” said Rep. Will Stapp, a Fairbanks Republican.
“So why do we need this proposal, and what is the purpose of this proposal, when the proposal spends more money than it raises?” asked Stapp.
Stickel said that several things would have to happen for the governor’s plan to produce balanced budgets in the long run: New oil fields would have to yield significant revenue, the Permanent Fund would have to keep growing, and a yet-to-be-constructed natural gas pipeline would have to begin sending income to the state within five years.
Even if all those things were to happen, the budget would be balanced only if government spending growth were strictly limited in future years, giving lawmakers almost no leeway to increase spending on the maintenance of state-owned buildings.
“There is actually nothing in this plan that will create stability in capital investment in the state, building things, having people working through that building of things, and making life easier for those people by us building things and doing things and maintaining things,” said Rep. Jeremy Bynum, a Ketchikan Republican. “This plan does absolutely nothing for that, that I can see. What it does is it taxes my community to ensure that we’re enshrining a PFD.”
The governor’s fiscal plan has caused many lawmakers in Juneau to wonder: It is worth imposing new taxes to continue paying out Permanent Fund dividends?
By several estimations, Alaska could avoid implementing new broad-based taxes in the coming years if it halted the dividend payments altogether or reduced their size substantially.
It boils down to a question, Andreassen said: “At what point do you pay more in tax than you get in an increased dividend?”
The Department of Revenue did not provide data showing how Dunleavy’s proposed dividends, which would amount to more than $3,000 annually per eligible Alaskan, would compare with the new tax burden at different levels of income.
Bynum also said that Dunleavy’s plan negates one of the main reasons he has given for proposing it. Dunleavy has said that Alaska has the highest revenue volatility in the country, and that making the state’s revenue less dependent on oil, a global commodity, will improve the state’s business climate. But in the long run, Dunleavy is calling for the elimination of the new revenue measures he is proposing, and a return to dependence on oil and gas revenue to fund government services.
“We’re saying we want to have stability by imposing a sales tax because oil revenues are volatile. Then on the other hand we’re saying, ‘Just wait seven years and we’re going to go back to that volatility,’” said Bynum.
Implementation
The Dunleavy administration expects that overseeing the new statewide sales tax would require hiring over 60 new state employees in the revenue department at an annual cost of $10 million.
Andreassen listed a series of technical deficiencies in Dunleavy’s bill that he said made it “unenforceable” without significant changes.
Even if those changes were made, he warned lawmakers that implementing the statewide sales tax as proposed would bring with it significant costs for Alaska’s cities and boroughs.
“This isn’t going to be cheap for local governments to respond and implement,” said Andreassen. Changes would include altering city and borough codes, laying off existing tax collection staff, and transforming local budget processes.
“We just want you to be mindful as you move forward about the complexity of unwinding what is currently a fairly efficient and effective system at the local level,” said Andreassen.
From our collaborating partner “Living on Earth,” public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by host Steve Curwood with Alannah Hurley, executive director of the United Tribes of Bristol Bay.
In 2001, a Canadian mining company proposed a massive gold and copper mine at the headwaters of Bristol Bay, a pristine water system on the coast of the Alaska Peninsula that’s home to the largest sockeye salmon run in the world. The salmon support a thriving ecosystem and are a cultural and economic lifeblood for native Alaskans, who have stewarded the land and water for thousands of years.
As the company moved ahead with plans to build the largest open-pit mine in North America, those Indigenous communities joined together to bring it to a halt. In 2023, they secured a rare “EPA veto” of the proposed Pebble Mine, and the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize for North America recognizes an Indigenous leader in this fight.
Alannah Hurley is the executive director of the United Tribes of Bristol Bay. Her Yup’ik name is Acaq, her great-grandmother’s name. She is the winner of the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize for North America. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
STEVE CURWOOD: Before we start talking about your work protecting Bristol Bay, paint us a picture of the bay. What makes this such a special place?
ALANNAH HURLEY: Bristol Bay is an extremely special place. It has all the different types of terrain in Alaska, in one place. Where I live, at the mouth of the Nushagak and Wood River, we have everything from tundra and wetlands to mountains, freshwater lakes, freshwater rivers, the muddy waters of Nushagak Bay, [and] the beautiful, crystal-clear ocean waters as you go west towards Togiak and Twin Hills. It’s really untouched, pristine beauty—all of Alaska’s majesty in one place. It’s so pristine you can still hunt and fish and pick berries and eat them straight from the land. You can drink right out of the lake and rivers. It’s paradise.
CURWOOD: Bristol Bay has huge environmental significance, but it’s also important to many human communities. I had been told that it produces more than $2 billion of annual revenue from sockeye salmon fishing alone, it’s also an important food source and cultural site for Indigenous communities, First Alaskans. Talk to me about what the bay means to the people in the area.
HURLEY: There are three different Indigenous groups in Bristol Bay—the Yup’ik people, the Dena’ina people, and the Alutiiq people. Our homeland has been stewarded by our people for thousands and thousands of years. They’ve taken care of this place and entrusted it to us. Our lands, our water, and everything that that entails—the salmon, the moose, the caribou, the bears, us, our freshwater fish, our berries, our plants, our medicines—we very much view it as all very connected. Anything that happens to our lands and waters happens to us. It is everything to us. It is the health of our people, physically, culturally, spiritually. It sustains us. It nourishes us. We’re so blessed to be able to live in the ways that our ancestors have lived. That kind of foundation is really critical in understanding our perspective and wanting to protect our home.
CURWOOD: In 2001, the Northern Dynasty Minerals mining company proposed the development of what’s called the Pebble Mine. It would have been the largest open-pit mine on the continent, one of the biggest, I guess, in the whole world. What would have been the environmental impact of such a project?
HURLEY: The environmental impact of the Pebble project would have been devastation. If you look at a map of Bristol Bay, there are two major river systems, the Nushagak and the Kvichak. The Pebble Mine would be located at the connected headwaters of both. You literally could not have picked a poorer location, and in my opinion, it’s [the] creator’s test to the people: What are you going to choose? But you could not have picked a worse location to put a low-grade acid-generating project that would have to store tens of billions of tons of toxic waste in perpetuity.
That picture is not a question of if something will happen, but when, especially in an earthquake-prone zone, and in a very hydrologically interconnected place. They’re like the veins of the bay—all of that water is connected. Our people, very early on, came out opposed to the project, because we knew that it would mean the utter devastation of our watershed, our fishery and our people.
CURWOOD: Some say that there are literally hundreds of billions of dollars worth of copper and gold and other minerals in the area for the Pebble Mine. Sounds like a lot of money, but you didn’t see this as good news for your community if this got developed.
HURLEY: No, we did not. Early on, before we learned about what type of ore it was, where it was located, what it would mean, what the tilings would mean, people were actually excited for some type of diversification of the economy. Fisheries can be pretty volatile, and that’s how a lot of people would survive in the cash economy as commercial fishermen.
But it did not take long to learn about those things, the dangers and the threat and the risk that that would cause to our people, and very early on, the vast majority of Bristol Bay’s people said, “No way, this is not worth the risk.” You cannot put a price tag on our water and what salmon mean to us as a people. This would be an existential threat to our ability to continue to be Indigenous people in this region, and we will not stop fighting until it is stopped.
CURWOOD: My understanding of Alaskan politics is that at the state level, there wasn’t a huge amount of pushback against this Pebble Mine proposal.
HURLEY: Our people’s concerns were really falling on deaf ears at the state level. We saw the state rewrite our area management plan illegally, without proper input or public process or consultation with our tribes. We saw the governor at the time try to pave the way for a mining district, and we’re still working to rectify some of those issues in that rewritten management plan to this day. And we’re still having issues with the state government pushing a project on Bristol Bay and Alaskans that they’ve proven for the last 20 years that they just do not support.
Because our concerns were falling on deaf ears at the state level, our tribal governments saw the federal government as the place to put some energy, and that was where the petition to the EPA came from, because the state was not listening. They were doing the exact opposite, to really grease the skids for the company to move forward.
CURWOOD: How did the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency respond?
HURLEY: The tribes petitioned in 2010 to prohibit all mines like Pebble within the Bristol Bay watershed. The EPA came back and said, “We’re not going to act on a prohibition immediately under our authority under the Clean Water Act, but we are going to study Bristol Bay. We want to do an assessment. And we want to ask, is this place really unique, and what does this fishery mean to the state and people? If this type of development, large-scale hard rock mining, were to move forward, what kind of impact could that have on the waters and people?”
They took three years to do a bunch of studies. They were in a lot of different communities. There was a lot of peer review to answer those questions, and after that very long, drawn-out assessment, they determined what our people had been saying all along: that this type of development would devastate the water and everyone who was sustained by that water, and so that was really the basis for their action that came later.
CURWOOD: At the end of the day, how did things turn out with the EPA?
HURLEY: It was a bit of a roller coaster between the different administrations, but it’s really a testament to the dedication of our people and our region that regardless of the administration, regardless of winning and losing court cases, they did not give up. And so the EPA, in January 2023, finalized protections to stop the project.
CURWOOD: What’s the risk that the Trump administration number two could reverse all of that?
HURLEY: There is very much still a risk that that could happen. The company,Northern Dynasty, the state of Alaska and a few others have challenged the EPA protections in court, which we anticipated they would.
So far, the Trump administration has continued to defend [the] EPA’s action in court, but that is ongoing litigation, and we’re not putting all of our eggs in that basket with how unpredictable this administration has been in other arenas. We’re definitely remaining extremely vigilant. And we’re continuing to defend the protections in court, and we also are working on legislation that would address the other 20 active mining claims throughout the watershed.
While we’ve made great progress, unfortunately, Pebble isn’t the only mining claim in the region, and so we’re working really hard to put this type of development to bed for good, so that our kids aren’t destined to fight project by project, now into eternity.
CURWOOD: As executive director of the United Tribes of Bristol Bay, how important would you say tribal cooperation has been during this fight?
HURLEY: Tribal unity and cooperation has been absolutely critical. I think in any instance where a coalition is working to protect a place, having Indigenous people leading and center of the effort is absolutely critical. Local people need to be at the forefront of these fights, and without that unity in the bay, there’s no way we would be where we’re at today.
This story is funded by readers like you.
Our nonprofit newsroom provides award-winning climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going. Please donate now to support our work.
Donate Now
CURWOOD: You were involved in building that coalition, including Native Alaskans, but also other political constituencies, the commercial fisherpeople and such. What was it like to build a coalition like that?
HURLEY: In the case of United Tribes of Bristol Bay, it was really about centering and amplifying the tribal voice and holding the government accountable for government-to-government consultation. There was real unity in that.
I think anytime you’re building a coalition, it can be challenging. I mean, it’s hard to get five people to agree to where you’re going to go to dinner, let alone 15 tribal governments from different cultural backgrounds who historically didn’t always get along, coming together to fight a common enemy for our continued existence as Indigenous people. That threat really brought us all together in ways that we had never seen before, and that also translated out to non-native groups, commercial fishermen, the conservation community. These aren’t people who usually get along. We’re used to fighting over fish, not working together to protect them, and so anytime you bring different groups together, there’s going to be bumps in the road.
At the end of the day, the connections between people, the relationships and the commitment to work [got us] through hard moments—and there were a lot of hard moments. A commitment, especially by non-native folks, to be in a respectful relationship with native people and us having that requirement that if we are going to be partners, this is how we expect to engage, helped lay the groundwork for a successful coalition. That’s never easy, it’s never pretty, but it was really the people-to-people relationships, those connections, that held us together even in the hard times.
CURWOOD: You’ve spoken about your grandmother’s influence and the values that propelled you through this journey. What lessons have you learned that have motivated you to keep going?
HURLEY: My grandmother was Mancuaq; I was raised with her in Clark’s Point in Bristol Bay. And it’s hard for me not to get emotional talking about her, because even now, even in all the different experiences in my life, everything important, the most important things that have helped me navigate life in a way that has been good and, you know, really grounded in love and respect and kindness came from her. Also the ability to persevere when things are tough. She passed away in 2019.
I obviously still miss her a lot. She provided me with the foundation of values, of how to move forward and live in this world in a good way. Our people have had those teachings for centuries—timeless, timeless teachings of what it means to be a good, real human being on the planet. And that foundation has helped me in life in invaluable and countless ways, and it continues to do so every day.
CURWOOD: What do you see for the future of Bristol Bay?
HURLEY: The future of Bristol Bay is beautiful. We are still struggling with the impacts of colonization, but we have only begun our healing, our reclamation, our revitalization of who we are as Indigenous people.
We have been so lucky that even through all of those challenges, our people have been able to remember and retain and still pass on our values and way of life. I feel like the potential to be a model of sustainability for the world led by Indigenous communities in modern society is boundless, and I’m really excited and hopeful that our region can shift from having to put our energy in defense of our homelands, to now help build something beautiful and tackle some of the tough issues that we’re facing.
About This Story
Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That’s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it.
That’s not all. We also share our news for free with scores of other media organizations around the country. Many of them can’t afford to do environmental journalism of their own. We’ve built bureaus from coast to coast to report local stories, collaborate with local newsrooms and co-publish articles so that this vital work is shared as widely as possible.
Two of us launched ICN in 2007. Six years later we earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and now we run the oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom in the nation. We tell the story in all its complexity. We hold polluters accountable. We expose environmental injustice. We debunk misinformation. We scrutinize solutions and inspire action.
Donations from readers like you fund every aspect of what we do. If you don’t already, will you support our ongoing work, our reporting on the biggest crisis facing our planet, and help us reach even more readers in more places?
Please take a moment to make a tax-deductible donation. Every one of them makes a difference.
Thank you,
We are reviving Curious Alaska, a popular feature launched by the Anchorage Daily News in 2021.
The idea is simple: You have questions. Our reporters find answers. We share them with readers.
Maybe you’re curious about a landmark (like the Parks Highway Igloo, pictured below), or a tradition, a news event or a public figure from the past. Maybe you have a practical question about everyday life in Alaska.
On our initial run, we tackled more than 30 topics that readers inquired about.
Some examples of reader questions we’ve looked into so far include why we don’t have a Trader Joe’s here, whether there are snakes in Alaska, why sand dunes exist in Kincaid Park and the story behind cattle herds on remote islands in the state.
No topic is too offbeat for you to pitch. We’ll choose a question at a time and try our best to answer it. Send in yours using the form below. (Having trouble seeing the form? Try here.)
Science news, night sky events and beautiful photos, all in one place. Click here to subscribe to EarthSky’s free daily newsletter.
- A megatsunami is an incredibly large wave of about 100 meters (328 ft) or more. These huge waves are often triggered by events such as landslides.
- In August 2025, a megatsunami in Alaska happened when a landslide entered a fjord next to South Sawyer Glacier. The event generated a wave 1,580 feet (481 meters) high.
- Scientists believe a warning system could help alert any people in the area. It would be based on seismic activity in the area.
By Michael E. West, University of Alaska Fairbanks and Ezgi Karasözen, University of Alaska Fairbanks
2025 Alaska megatsunami shows need for warning system
On the evening of August 9, 2025, passengers on the Hanse Explorer yacht finished taking selfies and videos of Alaska’s South Sawyer Glacier, and the ship headed back down the fjord. Twelve hours later, a landslide from the adjacent mountain unexpectedly collapsed into the fjord, initiating the second-highest tsunami in recorded history.
We conduct research on earthquakes and tsunamis at the Alaska Earthquake Center. And one of us serves as Alaska state seismologist. In a new study with colleagues, we detail how that landslide sent water and debris 1,580 feet (481 meters) up the other side of the fjord. That’s higher than the top floor of the Taipei 101 skyscraper. And then the tsunami continued down Tracy Arm. The force of the water stripped the fjord’s walls down to bare rock.
The 2025 Alaska megatsunami
It was just after 5 o’clock in the morning on a dreary day. And fortunately, no ships were nearby. In the months after, some cruise lines started avoiding Tracy Arm. However, the conditions that led to this event are not at all unique to this fjord.
Landslides are common in the coastal mountains of Alaska. In these areas, rapid uplift – caused by tectonic forces and long-term ice loss – converges with the erosive forces of precipitation and moving glaciers. But a curious pattern has emerged in recent years: Multiple major landslides have occurred precisely at the terminus (end point) of a retreating glacier.
Though the mechanics are still poorly understood, these mountains appear to become unstable when the ice disappears. When the landslide hits the water, the momentum of millions of tons of rock is transferred into tsunami waves.
This same phenomenon is playing out from Alaska to Greenland and Norway, sometimes with deadly consequences. Across the Arctic, countries are trying to come to terms with this growing hazard. The options are not attractive: avoid vast swaths of coastline, or live with a poorly understood risk. We believe there is an obvious role for alert systems. But only if scientists have a better understanding of where and when landslides are likely to occur.
Signs that a landslide might be coming
The Tracy Arm landslide is a powerful example.
The landslide occurred in August, when warm ocean waters and heavier precipitation favor both glacier retreat and slope failure. The glacier below the landslide area had experienced rapid calving: large chunks of ice breaking off and falling into the water. And it had retreated more than a third of a mile in the two months prior. Heavy rain had been falling. Rain enters fractures in the mountain and pushes them closer to failure by increasing the water pressure in cracks.
Most provocative are the thousands of small seismic tremors that emanated from the area of the slide in the days prior to the mountainside collapsing.
We believe that this combination of signs would have been sufficient to issue progressive alerts to any ships in the vicinity and homes and businesses that could have been harmed by a tsunami at least a day prior to the failure … had a monitoring program existed.
Escalating alerts are used for everything from terrorism and nuclear plant safety to avalanches and volcanic unrest. They don’t remove the risk. But they do make it easier for people to safely coexist with hazards.
For example, though people are still killed in avalanches, alert systems have played an essential role in making winter backcountry travel safer for more people. The collapse at Tracy Arm demonstrates what could be possible for landslides.
What an alert system could look like
We believe that the combination of weather and rapid glacier retreat in early August 2025 was likely sufficient to issue an alert notifying people that the hazard may be temporarily elevated in a general area. On a yellow-orange-red scale, this would be a yellow alert.
In the hours prior to the landslide, the exponential increase in seismic events and telltale transition to what is known as seismic tremor – a continuous “hum” of seismic energy – were sufficient to communicate a time-sensitive warning for a specific region.
These observations, recorded as a byproduct of regional earthquake monitoring, warranted an “orange” alert noting immediate concern. The signs were arguably sufficient to recommend keeping boats and ships out of the fjord.
Alerts are possible
Our research over the past few years has demonstrated that once a large landslide has started, it is possible to detect and measure the event within a couple of minutes. In this amount of time, seismic waves in the surrounding area can indicate the rough size of the landslide and whether it occurred near open water.
A monitoring program that could quickly communicate this would be able to issue a red alert, signaling an event in progress.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s tsunami warning program has spent decades fine-tuning rapid message dissemination. A warning system would have offered little help for ships in the immediate vicinity, but it could have provided perhaps 10 minutes of warning for those who rode out the harrowing tsunami farther away.
There is no landslide monitoring system operating yet at this scale in the U.S. Building one will require cooperation across state and federal agencies, and strengthened monitoring and communication networks. Even then, it will not be fail-proof.
Understanding risk, not removing it
Alert systems do not remove the risk entirely, but they are a better option than no warning at all. Over time, they also build awareness as communities and visitors get used to thinking about these hazards.
Many of the most alluring places on Earth come with significant hazards. Arctic fjords are among them. The same processes that create this hazard – glacier retreat, steep terrain, dynamic geology – are also what make these landscapes so compelling. The mix of glaciers, ice-choked waters and steep mountains is exactly what draws people to these places. People will continue to visit and experience them.
The question is not whether these places should be avoided altogether, but how to help people make more informed decisions. We believe that stronger geophysical and meteorological monitoring, coupled with new research and communication channels, is the first step.
On August 9, visitors unknowingly passed through a landscape on the cusp of failure. An alert system might have given tour companies and people in the area the information they needed to make more informed choices and avoid being caught by surprise.
Michael E. West, Director of the Alaska Earthquake Center and State Seismologist, University of Alaska Fairbanks and Ezgi Karasözen, Research Seismologist, Alaska Earthquake Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Bottom line: A 2025 Alaska megatsunami sent a 1,580-foot wave of water up the Tracy Arm fjord. It revealed the need for a landslide-triggered tsunami warning system.
Read more: Landslide-triggered tsunamis becoming more common
-
Washington5 minutes ago18-year-old dies after shooting in Tenleytown
-
Wisconsin12 minutes agoWisconsin multi-county police chase, 2 people from Illinois arrested
-
West Virginia17 minutes agowvnews.com | WVNews | Trusted West Virginia News, Sports & Local Coverage
-
Wyoming24 minutes ago(LETTERS) Sun Bucks and Wyoming GOP endorsement
-
Crypto29 minutes agoLagarde Blocks Euro Stablecoin Push, Calls $300B Market a Stability Risk for ECB Policy
-
Finance35 minutes agoBofA revises Harley-Davidson stock price after latest announcement
-
Fitness41 minutes agoStrategic Exercise Techniques to Maximize Mood Elevation – The Boca Raton Tribune
-
Movie Reviews53 minutes ago1986 Movie Reviews – Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit | The Nerdy