Haines remains divided when it comes to the new, phased plan for Lutak Dock renovations, with residents speaking for and against the proposal at a June 3 town hall meeting.
The Lutak Dock face has reached the end of its service life and officially closed last year after Alaska Marine Lines (AML) completed construction of a new freight ramp, ensuring Haines’ supply chain remains intact, for now. The dock face’s instability still needs to be addressed, according to harbormaster Shawn Bell, as its failure could jeopardize current use by AML and Delta Western.
The old proposal for dock renovations, known as “1A,” involved demolition of the existing dock face and recapturing the current footprint. The borough has been pursuing grants for the project for several years without success.
“It’s been a real struggle in that we have a single project that costs $40 million to build. We’re not an extremely busy port or a large town. That makes it a really hard sell on grant applications to say, ‘Hey, federal government or state, give us $40 million even though this is what we show on cargo transports,’” Bell said at the June 3 meeting.
Recognizing the difficulty, the borough began brainstorming other ideas for restoring the dock face, he said.
The new plan for dock renovations is a phased approach, developed with help from R&M Consultants. Phase one involves filling in tidelands adjacent to the existing dock, next to the new AML freight ramp; phase two, demolishing the old dock face and putting in a bulkhead; phase three, reclaiming additional uplands to increase usable space; and a potential phase four involving development of the hillside above the dock.
Phase one construction, plus the design of the entire four-phase project, is estimated to cost $4.2 million, Bell said.
Phase two will cost approximately $21 million due to the price of steel and the effort involved in demolishing the old dock. As a stand-alone project, phase three would cost roughly $10 million, bringing the total project cost to an estimated $35 million if done step by step.
Bell said he thinks the price would come down to roughly $28 million if all four phases were completed as a single project, but the phased approach makes it much more likely the borough can secure funding.
A downside to the new plan is that uplands will no longer be adjacent to the dock face.
“We lose direct dock face-to-uplands interface, so when a barge pulls in there, you’ve got the roll-on/roll-off ramp for access, but you have to go back seventy-five feet, roughly, from the new dock to the bulkhead, which doesn’t necessarily lend itself to craning stuff back and forth,” Bell said, adding that he thinks there are ways to work around this.
The June 3 meeting was supposed to give residents the opportunity to weigh in on the first two phases of the renovations before the borough begins applying for grants, but most of the public comment centered on the question of whether the dock is fine as it is, or whether it should be renovated to allow for other industrial uses like an ore facility.
Those who favored dock renovations said it will promote jobs and community vitality.
“The people that are against expanding this dock are just being selfish,” Don Turner said. “The borough needs to be looking at long-term stuff, twenty-five or fifty years down the road.”
Turner said he’s had two grandchildren leave town due to lack of employment options.
Those who spoke against renovations said an ore terminal isn’t in the town’s best interest and it’s a waste of resources to upgrade a dock that is currently meeting the community’s needs.
“How badly do we really need the Lutak Dock?” Tresham Gregg asked. “The roll-on barge dock can supply us with our goods and take our products to the states, but obviously this is all about becoming an ore terminal, which is going to be a huge undertaking with many risks that will change our whole way of life. Is this the kind of future that’s going to make people want to come and live here?”
Despite completion of the AML freight ramp, the dock face needs to be addressed, according to Bell. He said this issue is separate from the question of expanded uses for the facility.
“The fact that the dock face could still fail hasn’t changed,” he said in a June 4 interview. “There’s no telling how that failure would actually look in the end.”
Assuming no one is on the dock when it fails, primary risks include loss of uplands, which the dock structure is currently supporting, and debris blocking barges from tying up, he said.
The dock face itself wouldn’t be addressed until phase two of the new plan, but Bell said phase one is a necessary step to ensure dock functions continue during the demolition phase.
“There’s a relatively small area for current operations, and if you then start the process of demoing and pulling back the dock face, you have a space problem for current operations. Cargo, fuel trucks, they don’t have enough space to operate,” he said.
A second town hall meeting about future uses of the dock, including an ore terminal, will take place June 24.