Port chief has big plans

BIG LAKE — Mat-Su Borough Port Director Marc Van Dongen has a long-term solution for all sorts of problems.

One problem asks what Anchorage is going to do about the lack of a good connection between the Seward and Glenn highways. Van Dongen said if the city would move its crowded airport to Point MacKenzie where it would have room to grow, it could move small-plane aviation out of Merrill Field to where Ted Stevens International Airport is now. If you close down Merrill Field, you can connect those highways without a problem.

This may sound like pie-in-the-sky thinking to some people. But not Van Dongen.

“Once the (Knik Arm) bridge is built, within 20 years you’ll see air cargo move over first and then commercial,” he said.

None of that is Van Dongen’s bailiwick, though. He’s the borough’s port director. But there are plenty of plans afoot there as well. On Monday, he presented updates on a raft of them to the Big Lake Chamber of Commerce.

Rail extension

The long-anticipated plan to bring rail service to the port is well underway. The route has been divided into six segments, four of which are under construction.

“That’s $60 million worth of work all set to wrap up at the end of next season,” Van Dongen said.

He said the project has received $171 million from the state so far. It still needs $101.5 million to wrap up work.

There’s some worry about funding. Gov. Sean Parnell has put just $5 million in his next budget for the project. However, Van Dongen said that isn’t enough to begin work on the fifth segment, so he’s hoping for more funding.

“I’m confident it will happen, though,” he said of the project.

He ran through the numbers showing that billions of dollars in limestone and other resources in the state’s Interior would become more viable to mine if the port had rail service.

Barge dock

“We just finished more than doubling our barge dock,” Van Dongen said.

The new, expanded dock gives the port the same capabilities Anchorage has to load and unload barges. Actually, Van Dongen said, the borough’s capabilities are better. There’s deeper water at Point MacKenzie and barges don’t rest on the bottom at low tide.

M/V Susitna

The troubled ferry still sits in Ketchikan awaiting a buyer. Van Dongen said it’s disappointing the borough won’t get to run it as a ferry, but his estimates suggest if the borough did put the vessel into operation, it would have to be subsidized at a rate of $3.5 million per year.

“We’re trying to either sell or transfer the vessel,” he said. “I get inquiries every week.”

One bright spot is that the building that had been constructed to serve as a ferry terminal now has “several companies” leasing office space there, he said.

Port road

From 2011 to 2012, the borough reduced the grade of the road running to the port.

“This coming summer we’ll pave the last two miles,” he said.

Van Dongen said the 2011-12 project was a good example of how fast the borough can complete a job; 18 months after receiving money the road was paved.

Cathodic protection

The science of corrosion can be kind of interesting, Van Dongen said. The borough now uses pieces of aluminum designed to break down and spare the metal supporting its barge dock the same fate.

But those are almost gone at this point, as is the galvanized metal protecting the pilings for its deep-draft dock.

So the borough this summer will install a system that electrifies the water, slowing the corrosion process and thus offering the same protection as the aluminum and the galvanization.

Fuel tank farm

Central Alaska Energy is installing enough tanks in the port to store 6.9 million gallons of fuel. “I’m hoping that before the ice comes this winter they’ll be able to fill their tanks,” Van Dongen said. That will bring more competition to the state when it comes to fuel distribution.

The future

In the long term, Van Dongen said, he sees Port MacKenzie working symbiotically with Anchorage. He said ships that come full of consumer goods to the port of Anchorage could leave full if they went back with bulk commodities — coal, limestone, wood chips — from Port MacKenzie.

If Alaska eventually builds a rail link to Canada, that system could be a new port for the United States. Ships with Asian consumer goods that wait weeks to dock at a Lower 48 port could instead dock in Anchorage.

Planning for 50 years into the future isn’t something a lot of people do, and Van Dongen said he’d like to see that change.

“We just need to do a better job of that,” he said.

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