Demand for gravel keeping port busy

POINT MacKENZIE — Things are moving at Port MacKenzie. Port Manager Marc Van Dongen said a number of projects are underway and the area is buzzing with activity, including:

• Borough-owned gravel is being barged to Anchorage.

• The state Department of Transportation is upgrading Point MacKenzie Road.

• Pre-fabricated buildings are coming in for a housing project at Fort Greely.

• A warehouse is up and ready to take shipments of concrete from China.

• DOT is working on a bid package to lower the grade of the road to the port.

And, as Mat-Su Borough Manager John Duffy reports, the Tyonek Native Corp. is exploring the possibility of bringing ferry service for passengers, vehicles and freight to Tyonek from Anchorage and possibly Nikiski. That ferry service would use the M/V Susitna, the catamaran-style ice-breaking fast ferry the Borough is planning to dock at the port for commuter trips to Anchorage.

The gravel is what’s got the port running full speed these days, Van Dongen said. Barges are running 24 hours a day making multiple trips from Anchorage to Port MacKenzie. The gravel is being used for the Port of Anchorage’s expansion project; more specifically, the part of the project affecting Anchorage’s barge dock.

For two weeks, barges have been making a circle, hauling gravel dredged from the Port of Anchorage to the middle of Cook Inlet, dumping it, then docking at Port MacKenzie to be reloaded, Van Dongen said. The Port MacKenzie gravel is then dumped at the Port of Anchorage to replace the old gravel. Van Dongen said he expects the project to wrap up next month.

“That’s an ideal project; that’s a real short haul,” Van Dongen said.

Van Dongen said the gravel is coming from a Borough-owned ridge near Port MacKenzie. The projection is that 400,000 tons of gravel will be used in the project, and the Borough expects to earn $505,000 in wharf fees and $132,000 in royalties.

“That’s $637,000 that the Borough will generate in less than one month just from this one project here,” Van Dongen said.

He sees much potential for the gravel, 30 million tons of which are available at the port. In a previous job, Van Dongen worked to build an airfield in Noorvik.

“It took me two years just to find a rock-crusher in Wyoming,” he said, have it disassembled, sent north and brought to the site.

With gravel available locally for projects, “It would be a lot cheaper just to convey crushed material from Port MacKenzie,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiers-man.com or 352-2270.