Borough entertains Pacific islands’ M/V Susitna ferry idea

PALMER — Since August, the Mat-Su Borough has been in talks with the Mariana Islands, whose government is getting steadily more interested in taking on the M/V Susitna.

“The amount of detail they’ve been asking for at this point is everything they’ve needed to know to take delivery of the vessel and have it operating this spring,” said Emerson Krueger, a planner at the borough who has lately become kind of the local point man on the ferry.

Sending the ferry to the Pacific Island U.S. territory would be a relief to the borough assembly, whose members are nearly unanimous in their desire to get out of the ferry business as quickly and as cheaply as possible.

“Since they’re another qualified entity we can transfer the ferry to them and the (Federal Transit Administration) will forgive us their investment in the ferry,” Krueger said.

That is, the FTA will let the borough off the hook for the ferry money, but not for the $4 million Port MacKenzie ferry terminal building it constructed with FTA money, because the terminal building can’t be sent to the Marianas Islands.

“With the terminal there’s no way to move that without destroying it,” Krueger said.

The Marianas, he said, have gone so far as to try to figure out what they should charge as a fare for runs between the islands of Roda and Guam or Roda and Saipan.

The ferry was built as a military prototype at a shipyard in Ketchikan. The project was shepherded through congress by the late Sen. Ted Stevens, who also brought home the money the borough has used to outfit it for civilian use and build that terminal.

But while the M/V Susitna is complete and floating in Ward Cove, the borough has no money to build landings in Anchorage or in the Valley. There is some money, but not enough and it’s been frozen until the borough can get more. The borough thinks it needs $30 million and says it has little hope of getting it.

So while the ferry sits in Ketchikan, it costs the borough $88,000 each month to keep it berthed there, insured and staffed with a skeleton crew. That’s why the assembly has been very vocal about wanting a solution immediately.

But Krueger pointed out that even if tomorrow the Marianas said they wanted the vessel as soon as possible, that might not be the end of it.

“It would be extremely challenging and possibly expensive to move the vessel in the wintertime,” Krueger said. “It’s a relatively small marine vessel. It’s not a huge ocean-going marine vessel.”

Everyone involved will likely want to leave it at Ward Cove until spring.

“I imagine there’ll be a lot of talk and hopefully a lot of interest in the vessel, but I don’t see anything happening until April,” Krueger said.

Between now and then, lots of things could happen. The Marianas could lose interest. Someone could show up with a better offer. The borough is currently talking with someone about handing the ferry over to a nonprofit to make runs in the Dutch Harbor area.

Krueger said the borough doesn’t know yet whether it is a viable option to transfer the FTA-funded ferry to the nonprofit.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.