Summer’s work adds to port

POINT MacKENZIE — As the summer draws to a close, the borough says it has made definite progress on two major projects to bolster its port.

All-told, the borough says 70 jobs were created this summer on the two projects — the first expands the existing barge dock and the other installs a railroad loop close to the port.

The barge dock, said Dave Hanson, the borough’s economic development director, added around eight acres to the existing dock. The idea is that with a bigger dock there will be more area to stage materials for export and to assemble things like modular housing or gasline pipes shipped to the port.

The barge dock would also serve as a landing for a second trestle bridge if and when the borough expands its deep-draft dock. The deep-draft dock is where the big cargo ships tie up.

Hanson said the barge dock — paid for with $3 million in federal stimulus money, $750,000 in state money, and $1 million worth of borough-owned rocks called riprap — is all but complete.

“We were out last week, last Friday,” Hanson said Thursday. “That dike is 35 feet high and 100 feet across and they were filling it right up with gravel.”

He said that two weeks from now all that will be left is to cover it with three feet of high-quality gravel. Or, at least, gravel that’s better than what they’ve used so far.

“You don’t use good stuff for fill,” Hanson said.

As for the rail loop, Hanson said that project is essentially the Port Mac-Kenzie end of a larger plan to bring rail to the port from the Alaska Railroad’s main line that runs more or less parallel to the Parks Highway.

The idea there is to have a loop so trains can pull in and offload material without having to turn around. The borough says that when it’s all said and done, the loop will accommodate 100 train cars.

It’s a big project. This portion of it was funded through a $17.5 million state grant two years ago. This year the state gave the borough an additional $35 million for the rest of the route. That’s not quite enough to finish it off. The borough thinks it will probably need $22 million more. But it has enough money to get started.

But work won’t begin this summer. Hanson said the borough is waiting right now on the federal government, which has to approve railroad routes. The federal government, in turn, is waiting on an Environmental Impact Statement being prepared for the project.

“We’re hoping to have that in September or October,” Hanson said. The idea would then be to go out to bid as soon as possible and hopefully start moving dirt in the spring.

The loop is being built as a “bimodal” facility, meaning trucks and trains will be able to use it to offload cargo at the port. For now it’s just a road. The rails will come later.

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