Many claims have been made in recent months that have led to confusion about the Lutak Dock renovation project. The CVN evaluated several of those claims below.
For decades Haines imported and exported freight and fuel via the Lutak Dock, a facility with a large bulkhead built in 1953 at 4 Mile Lutak Road by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. After decades of use and corrosion, and several modifications and partial repairs, a 2014 structural assessment found the aged dock to be unsafe for shipping and likely to fail without major renovation.
To protect Haines’ supply chain, Alaska Marines Lines (AML) — the main freight shipper in town — finished construction of a roll-on/roll-off ramp (RoRo) two years ago, and the dock’s barge-loading and -unloading facility closed. Since the grim 2014 structural analysis, the borough has prioritized renovating or replacing the dock. Officials have said a major failure could cause safety and environmental issues. They also have stated that the dock, in addition to serving Haines’ freight and fuel needs, is a regional asset: a deep-water port on the road system, linking the interior to maritime shipping routes.
The borough secured a $20 million federal grant last fall for the dock renovation project. The state has committed to contributing $3.2 million, and the borough has set aside $2.4 million in matching funds.
Last week the borough assembly approved a contract of up to $310,000 with Turnagain Marine Construction to begin the design-build project. The contract, which included a new conceptual design for the dock, generated pushback from Lynn Canal Conservation (LCC) and other community members who oppose shipping ore concentrates at Lutak due to concerns about environmental pollution and truck traffic. There has been debate about to what extent the renovated dock is needed and whether it could or would be used to ship ore.
1. Alaska Marine Lines’ roll-on/roll-off ramp is sufficient for Haines’ freight needs.
LCC claimed in an email to members earlier this month that “AML’s RoRo could keep meeting our needs even if the town grew to 3,300 people.” While weekly cargo shipments across the RoRo have served Haines’ basic needs, the Lutak Dock still fulfills a variety of important functions: Delta Western transports fuel across the dock. Both Delta Western and Alaska Marine Lines tie up at the dock, even when unloading or loading via the RoRo. Gravel and contaminated soil from the Haines Highway cleanup project have been loaded onto barges across the dock face. And the dock’s uplands are used for storage.
Harbormaster Shawn Bell told the CVN it’s “hard to say” if the dock’s closure in 2020 restricted shipment of important cargo to or from Haines. “It’s certainly possible that potential customers have chosen alternate means because of the closure and simply not engaged. I have seen occasional barge traffic make landings on private property but don’t know if the dock closure affected their decision or not,” he said in an email.
While the RoRo plays a key role in keeping Haines’ supply chain intact, borough officials have raised concerns that its failure — or the dock’s failure, which could impact mooring and storage — would disrupt shipments of essential goods, like groceries. The ramp temporarily sank in June 2021, but AML fixed it within a few days. While it might be argued that Haines does not need a large bulkhead to meet current local freight demand, to say the RoRo meets all current needs lacks context.
2. Failure of the dock is imminent.
Borough officials have claimed that failure of the 70-year-old Lutak Dock is imminent.
A 2018 report by R&M Consultants determined “it is unlikely that the existing dock will remain usable for another 10 years. Localized failure can be expected at any time.”
A 2014 structural assessment by PND Engineers found that the dock had “reached the end of credible 60-year service life” and was operating “on borrowed time.”
PND Engineers said the “facility is ‘near the edges’ and that in our view it is prudent to begin the process to replace the structure to meet current minimum standards under operating conditions and potential seismic loading.”
Damage has been caused by decades of corrosion and heavy use. Sinkholes have been observed on the dock, and the 2014 assessment said an earthquake or continued operation and loading could cause a structural failure. It concluded “highly loaded vehicles may suddenly fall into an undetected hole with potentially severe consequences to persons, and equipment and property.”
3. The dock renovation project is not related to the question of ore export.
Some borough officials have made this claim, but it lacks context.
There is no evidence that borough staff and contractors devised dock designs with specific intentions to facilitate ore export, but borough staff and officials have said or implied publicly for years, including on a federal RAISE grant application last year, that a renovated dock could be used to ship ore.
Two engineers who have been contracted with the borough on the dock project have said they didn’t consult with mining companies or make decisions with ore in mind. R&M Consultants engineer John Daley, who helped draw up the phase three design concept earlier this year and is now contracted as the project’s owner’s advisor, told the CVN last spring that shipping ore at Lutak Dock “never came up in our discussions (with the borough) and was not a design requirement” for the phase three concept.
Still, renovation of the Lutak Dock has long been tied to the issue of ore. For the past decade borough staff and officials have marketed the dock as a potential asset for Yukon industries, including mines. In the 2012 Haines Borough Comprehensive Plan, in federal grant applications and at public meetings with mining industry representatives, renovation of the dock has been tied to potential shipment of ore. And private organizations, including the 2012 Haines Port Development Council and more recently the Haines Chamber of Commerce, have facilitated discussions with regional industry leaders, including Yukon mining interests, regarding the dock’s future.
Furthermore, the issue of ore is relevant because the dock renovation project coincides with the decommissioning of Skagway’s ore terminal next year. Yukon mining industry representatives have said publicly that Haines is the next best option for ore shipments. Without Skagway, their other option is Stewart, British Columbia, which is much farther south.
4. The Turnagain Marine conceptual design perfectly serves the expressed needs of regional mining interests.
Lynn Canal Conservation (LCC) made this claim in its email to members. The conceptual design proposed by Turnagain Marine does serve needs expressed by Yukon mining industry representatives at a March 24 Port and Harbor Advisory Committee meeting.
But the claim is misleading in the context of another statement in the LCC member alert: that the new design “promises a new ore terminal – I mean ‘bulk cargo handling facility.’”
There has been confusion in recent public discourse between the term “ore dock” or “ore terminal” and a dock that could be used to export ore.
An ore dock or terminal is a facility specifically designed to load ore concentrates or other similar bulk cargo onto ships. It involves a permanent conveyor system that efficiently transports vast loads of ore concentrate from port storage onto large ocean-going vessels. Skagway has an ore terminal that has long serviced Yukon Territory mines.
That is not the kind of facility that the borough administration has advanced at Lutak. The current concept is to renovate the dock to be similar to, but bigger than, its current specs — a multi-purpose freight and fuel dock with a large bulkhead. Turnagain Marine president Jason Davis told the CVN that the concept for Lutak is similar to a separate Turnagain dock renovation project on Shemya Island in the Aleutians, where there is no industrial mine and “absolutely no possibility” of ore shipments. The dock there — a military shipping facility at Eareckson Air Station — would be used primarily for fuel and basic provisions, Davis said. That dock would be smaller than the proposed Lutak Dock, with about half the length of deep-water dock face, but Davis said it could accommodate similar ships as Lutak.
Still, even though a renovated Lutak Dock under the current conceptual design would not be a specialized “ore dock,” it could be used to ship ore concentrates.
Yukon industry representatives told the Port and Harbor Advisory Committee last March that they could use a containerized bulk handling system for ore export. That would entail trucking ore concentrate to Lutak in sealed containers, which would be lifted and flipped by a crane and emptied into an ocean-going vessel’s hold. That “Rotainer” system does not require an “ore terminal” — just enough room on the dock for the crane to operate and enough berthing space and deep water for a bulk carrier to moor.
“The ideal situation would be to have the sort of dock face that you have now,” Yukon joint transportation and infrastructure committee co-chair Kells Boland, who was referring to demand for Yukon ore shipments, told the port and harbor committee March 24. At that time, the conceptual design entailed demolishing the existing dock face and building an elevated trestle as a second access point to moored vessels, in addition to AML’s RoRo. Yukon industry reps said use of the Rotainer system might have been feasible even with that design.
In Turnagain’s application for project design and construction, the company proposed a new concept. It would encapsulate the existing dock, rather than demolish it and build a new platform. Compared to the concept proposed last spring, Turnagain’s concept would result in more dock space, including a dock face of 700 feet, and greater access from the port to cargo vessels. The concept also includes doubling the load-bearing capacity of the existing dock (as of 2003), which Turnagain president Davis attributed to a need to meet the highest seismic safety standards.
5. The borough misrepresented the dock in its federal RAISE grant application.
LCC said borough staff misrepresented the need for the dock in its federal RAISE grant application when they stated that in the event of a dock closure, “barged goods would need to be trucked into Haines at a significantly higher financial and environmental cost.” LCC said the dock had been closed for a year at the time of the application and that freight operations transitioned “seamlessly to the RoRo with no interruption in services.”
A section of the Lutak Dock is still open and barges tie up to that section. Fuel and other goods are still transferred over that section of the dock. The roll-on roll-off ramp partially sank in June 2021, but was fixed before any interruption in service occurred.
At Thursday’s special meeting, Mayor Douglas Olerud disputed LCC’s claim and cited the failure of the RoRo eight months after it went into service.
“We were about 48 hours from having our freight trucked from Skagway for one week,” he said. “If the face of the dock fails, we do not know how that may or may not affect the ability to tie up a barge at the current RoRo dock for Alaska Marine Lines. It would depend on the size of the failure and where the failure was.”
6. The borough has violated the Alaska Open Meetings Act in private discussions about the dock.
LCC claims the borough has repeatedly violated the Open Meetings Act (OMA). Borough staff have denied OMA violations. Although borough staff initially said former Port and Harbor Advisory Committee-chair Terrance Pardee violated the OMA after a March meeting when Yukon mine representatives presented without notice, they later walked that assertion back and said the topic of “Lutak Dock” was sufficient notice per borough code. A court would ultimately need to rule as to whether a violation took place, and LCC would need to file a court action within 180 days of the alleged violation if it decided to press the issue.
Nowhere in the OMA exists language that requires “subject matter” to be noticed. Under Alaska Statute 44.62.310, notice must include the “date, time and place of the meeting.”
Borough manager Annette Kreitzer, in a memo to the public, noted that the meeting “could have been advertised with more specificity, but code requires the subject and the subject ‘Lutak Dock’ was advertised.”
Similarly, Mayor Douglas Olerud said although more details could have been included, notice was sufficient when the August assembly “field trip” to the Lutak Dock was posted, another meeting LCC claims violated the OMA.
LCC also claims that the “Lutak Dock Working Group met behind closed doors with no notice and no meeting notes doing the public’s business outside the public eye in violation of the OMA.”
According to the state’s Office of the Governor guidance on the OMA, “a meeting of an advisory-only body is a prearranged gathering to consider a matter on which the entity is authorized to advise and assist the decision-making body and is subject to the provisions of the (OMA). The (OMA) doesn’t specify a number, so two or more members, if the gathering is pre-arranged for the purpose of conducting any business of the entity, could constitute a meeting.”
Kreitzer said the group met once last winter to provide technical feedback to her and the harbormaster, not the assembly, which is the decision-making body.
Olerud said staff wanted technical advice from Delta Western and Alaska Marine Lines representatives to ensure the dock designs were compatible with their operations.
“This was to…work with the two companies that were using the dock, and that we see as the major users of the dock going forward, to see if the dolphins were in the correct spot for the size of the barges that they were bringing in,” Olerud said at Thursday’s special meeting.
7. The contract includes a new conceptual design for Lutak Dock that bears no resemblance to the most recent design for Phases 1-3. The new design has seen no public process thus far.
This was a claim made by LCC in an email to members. While true, it lacks context. Turnagain’s concept is similar to an R&M Consultants engineering design that the assembly, Planning Commission and Port and Harbor Advisory Committee approved in 2017 that was estimated to cost $37 million. The project would have essentially rebuilt the Lutak Dock by encapsulating the dock’s existing cells and reclaiming several cells that have been partially excavated. The borough was unsuccessful in getting grants for the project, so the assembly later approved a phased approach.
At Thursday’s special meeting, Olerud said Turnagain’s proposal closely matched what the community had already supported in 2017.
“It was just moved out into deeper water, but they feel they can build it within our budget whereas the original plan would have been significantly over,” Olerud said.
Kreitzer told residents that meetings to comment on the Turnagain dock concept “begin with the approval of the Turnagain Marine contract, which allows the company to present its ideas to the public through meetings of the Port and Harbor Advisory Committee and the Planning Commission.”
The assembly voted unanimously Thursday to approve the $310,000 contract with Turnagain Marine to design the Lutak Dock project.
“Turnagain has presented a concept that, with approval of the contract, will go to the Port and Harbor Advisory Committee and the Planning Commission to begin to vet publicly,” Kreitzer wrote. “The email misstates the purpose of the assembly’s action.”
8. Ore could be shipped across AML’s RoRo dock.
Borough officials have made this claim, which is technically true but lacks context.
Ore concentrates could be loaded onto barges via AML’s RoRo. But they could not be loaded over the RoRo onto ocean-going vessels headed for Asian smelters.
Yukon mining representatives said they could ship ore at a reconstructed Lutak Dock without a specialized ore facility by using a Rotainer system — a crane that would dump ore from sealed containers into a bulk carrier’s cargo hold. That system would not work via the RoRo, the representatives said.
According to R&M engineer John Daley, however, any dock capable of supporting typical industrial containerized cargo could conceivably be used to support ore export.
“This includes the existing AML (RoRo) Dock and the (now formerly) proposed Phase 3 access trestle. The ability of an industrial dock to handle a container of ore is much the same that any road or highway that could handle a truck with a container of building materials or consumer goods could also handle a container of ore,” he wrote in a memo to the borough.
Constantine Metal Resources, which operates the exploratory Palmer Project northwest of Haines, said in an amended technical report published earlier this year that it would plan to barge concentrate via AML’s RoRo at Lutak to Skagway, where the freight would be loaded at the ore terminal onto ocean-going vessels headed for Asian smelters. Skagway, though, plans to decommission its ore terminal next year. Constantine’s report recommended conducting trade-off evaluations on constructing a private port facility in Haines.
Other forms of ore transport across RoRos are feasible. AML uses a RoRo at Wrangell’s municipally owned dock. Wrangell harbormaster Steve Miller said that in the 1990s, minerals were transported from the Red Chris Mine to Wrangell’s dock in one-ton mineral bags. The bags were loaded into containers and offloaded onto a barge over the RoRo.
*Clarifications: The initial version of this article referred to two engineers as “third-party,” when in fact those engineers have been contracted with the Haines Borough to work on the Lutak Dock renovation project. The article also has been updated with additional information about Turnagain Marine’s dock project on Shemya Island, which was initially characterized as “almost identical” to the company’s Lutak Dock concept. Lastly, the original article did not include the detail that Turnagain’s concept includes increasing the load-bearing capacity of the Lutak Dock.