Grants flow for Point work

WASILLA — A pair of grants from different sources will be applied to work in the Point MacKenzie area.

The first comes from the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority. The Mat-Su Borough is getting $310,910. The Knik Tribal Council and the Native Village of Eklutna are getting $107.637 each. Anchorage is getting $522,000 and the State Historic Preservation Office will receive $120,976.

Borough Manager John Duffy said the money earmarked for the Valley will be used to survey the proposed bridge landing and surrounding area for anything that is archaeologically significant.

“You have to, by law, identify and, if you find any historic or archeological property or artifacts, you need to mitigate and protect them,” he said.

Although the area has quite a rich history — the Knik townsite, one of the earliest white settlements in the Valley, is in the area, as are numerous now-abandoned Native settlements. Duffy said he doesn’t anticipate much will be found in the bridge landing area.

“We’ve reviewed a lot of that area because of previous efforts out there and we don’t suspect that there’s anything,” he said.

Still, he said, if something is found, it’s enough to change the bridge project.

“It doesn’t stop it, but boy I’ll tell you what, you redesign the project to avoid it,” he said.

The provisions in federal law governing this sort of thing are similar to those governing parks, he said.

“We’re facing that with the rail-line extension (from the Alaska Railroad’s mainline to Port MacKenzie) because one of the routes does touch two parks, two recreational areas,” Duffy said.

The second and larger grant is $3 million from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to expand the barge dock and the borough-owned port in the area.

U.S. Sen. Mark Begich announced the grant Friday. The money will tack an additional 7.86 acres onto the existing dock, Duffy said.

He said the grant is well-timed since the borough is beginning work to put in a rail-loop in the area and will be pulling out a lot of gravel and other material to do it. That gravel will be useful as fill for the dock or for another project — leveling out the road going down to the water.

“Now we can do some real efficiencies out there,” he said.

Having a bigger dock will also allow the borough to get a lot more done there. Companies that need an area to assemble huge shipping modules will have it. One in particular, CH2MHill, is looking to use the dock to assemble housing modules to be sent to the North Slope.

And, a bigger dock means the borough can look at expanding its deep draft dock. That dock uses a trestle bridge. Trucks moving to the ships have to turn around on the trestle to get back. The barge dock expansion will give the borough a place to build an exit ramp.

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