The Haines Borough will not seek federal grant funding this year to rebuild the Lutak Dock.
The decision comes after a community meeting last week where the ports and harbors advisory committee, the planning commission, the borough assembly and other community members met to discuss design and funding options for the dock.
Several of the meeting’s attendees, including Donnie Turner and Jim Studley said a plan was needed to address how to move forward should the dock fail and that the borough wasn’t ready to apply for federal grants this year.
According to engineering reports, the Lutak Dock is “living on borrowed time” and fails to meet structural standards in several areas.
“At this time, this grant-round in 2017, we will not be applying for any available federal funds and the reason is primarily we are not in agreement on the design, and of course we are not in agreement on how it will be funded,” Borough Manager Debra Schnabel said in a separate interview.
After a series of community meetings during the past year, the borough decided to move forward with a $37 million design, known as 1A, that maintains the existing footprint.
Last month Schnabel recommended the assembly approve a scaled-back design after a federal grant application was denied. The less expensive design would decrease storage space at the dock. Both port and harbor advisory committee and the planning commission objected to the scaled-back design.
At last Wednesday’s meeting Schnabel discussed which federal grants were available, the low likelihood of the borough receiving those grants and how much money the borough would need to contribute to the various design options. She also presented a new PND Engineers’ design option, which was submitted to meeting attendees the same day as the meeting.
Planning commission chair Rob Goldberg said he preferred PND’s design of all the options.
“It essentially does what 1A does by retaining the cells we have now, but it comes in at $3 million cheaper than the R&M proposal,” Goldberg said.
Others focused on the dock’s structural concerns.
Studley said the immediate concern should be what to do about a potential dock failure, not which design to choose.
“I can’t support going forward on this,” Studley said. “Not one of these designs is going to prevent catastrophic failure tomorrow. Not one. What are we doing about that? We can’t use the word catastrophic and call these solutions.”
Some at the meeting, citing engineering reports, spoke to the imminent “catastrophic failure” of the Lutak Dock.
The term doesn’t appear in the PND or Echelon engineering reports.
In a separate interview, PND Engineers Vice President Dick Somerville said he wouldn’t use the term “catastrophic” to describe the situation, but that individual cells of the dock could fail.
“I don’t want to say that’s catastrophic, but I’m not so worried about that term than what could happen there,” Somerville said. “If there’s anything heavy stored on top of the dock, or at the face of the dock, that could be subject to loss. It’s just all supposition on how it’s going to fail.”
Turner said the borough should focus on the facility’s roll-on roll-off ramp in case the dock fails and Alaska Marine Lines can’t use forklifts on the dock. He said he wasn’t ready to make a decision using information that they hadn’t had time to process.
“I don’t think you’re ready to do a grant in October.” Turner said. “For us to make a decision on something we just got half an hour ago or 45 minutes ago would be irresponsible.”
Brenda Josephson said the borough should pursue emergency funding from the state, given the poor condition of the dock.
Schnabel said in a separate interview that she hopes to organize more community meetings on the issue and has sent PND’s design option to the ports and harbor committee and planning commission for further review.