About midday on Friday, an Alaska Marine Lines employee called the Haines harbormaster to let him know a new sinkhole had formed on the Lutak dock.
Borough staff spent the weekend repairing the hole that harbormaster Henry Pollan said was at cell 12, near the center of the dock, about 20 feet from the guardrail.
Pollan said Monday the hole itself was only about six to eight inches across at the surface, but the cavity it revealed once a crew started digging was about six feet deep.
“This was unique,” Pollan said. “It almost looked like a boreshaft.”
The hole was in a part of the dock that hadn’t had one before, and Pollan said they dug it up and figured out that water flowing on top of larger rock at the base of the dock – behind its cells – had carved out a cavity.
“We dug it out and filled it with appropriate [fill], compacted it and we’re back open for business,” he said.
Pollan said the discovery of the sinkhole, and process of fixing it, didn’t stop operators from using the dock.
“We have a good, hearty, well-seasoned crew. All of the operators followed the safety plan that we have implemented out there,” Pollan said. “We all notified each other, Delta Western, Alaska Marine Lines/Lynden Transport, and the Haines Borough.”
Pollan said the discovery of the new sinkhole hasn’t changed anything about dock operations – it’s at least the fifth such sinkhole he can remember being discovered on the Lutak Dock since 2012.
“It definitely just illustrates that we are running out of time,” he said.
Consultants have been saying that to the borough for years, including a 2018 report by R&M consultants which determined that “it is unlikely that the existing dock will remain usable for another 10 years,” a 2014 structural assessment by PND Engineers that found the dock was “operating on borrowed time.”
Pollan said he and water and sewer plant supervisor Dennis Durr are going out Tuesday to map this new sinkhole and others that have opened in the area over the past few years for a public works map.