The assembly has thrown its support behind encapsulation for the Lutak Dock, the design concept most similar to that of previous dock contractor Turnagain Marine.
The concept calls for building a steel retaining wall to stabilize some of the existing dock face, with the rest of the existing dock demolished. Winning out over two other options, including one floating-dock option that had been favored by some residents, the choice seems all but final; borough consultants from engineering firm Moffatt & Nichol Tuesday warned a decision to change course down the line would be “catastrophic.”
The assembly nearly-unanimously endorsed the operational benefits of encapsulation, but some questioned whether the concept — described by Moffatt & Nichol as the most expensive — could be built large enough given limited funds. Engineers have not yet said how much of the dock can be encapsulated in budget, just that it will be enough for grocery and fuel deliveries.
Moffatt & Nichol will now further develop the plans for the encapsulation concept, targeting the end of July to put the concept out for bid. A new firm will then be chosen from the bidding process to finalize engineering and build the dock.
Tuesday’s meeting saw proponents of the encapsulation design highlight specific advantages: assembly member Cheryl Stickler pointed to easier federal permitting for the concept, and assembly member Gabe Thomas pointed to reduced changes to fuel deliveries over the dock.
“I don’t like taking that risk of moving the fuel shed. Being innovative costs money,” Thomas said. “If I have to cut (the design) down to half the size but don’t have to move the fuel shed, that’s what I’ll do.”
Assembly member Mark Smith said he thought other designs were liable to “break faster” and were less safe, which Stickler said was one of her main concerns as well. Moffatt & Nichol engineer Paul Wallis had pushed back on both of those assessments earlier in the meeting and at the previous planning commission meeting.
Delta Western president Henry Palmer endorsed the encapsulation option in a letter sent to the assembly just before its meeting on Tuesday.
Skeptics acknowledged the operational benefits of the encapsulation design but questioned its viability given the project budget — roughly $22 million, including contingency funds.
The borough last year considered an encapsulation design from Turnagain downsized to fit within the $22 million budget. But ultimately even that was deemed impossible for the money, and a further downsized design likely too small to be “useful.”
“It’s hard to pick one of these if we’re going to right-size it later,” assembly member Kevin Forster said. “If it shrinks later the level of service changes. I buy that (encapsulation) is probably the superior product, but is it attainable for us for what we’ve got?”
In some ways, Wallis validated Forster’s concerns.
“I wrote 15 years ago that encapsulation (for the Lutak Dock) was a great idea, and I still think it’s a great idea,” Wallis said. “But you know what it’s a good idea for? A dock you can fully encapsulate. You can’t afford that.”
All courses of action at this point involve demolishing much of the existing dock, Wallis said.
Forster asked for “some kind of assurance” that a still-functional encapsulated dock could be built with the money, but the assurance Forster was looking for doesn’t seem to exist.
The concept drawings thus far don’t specify how large the final dock will be; Wallis said his firm will “right-size” the dock once the design is further developed. Right-sizing, in theory, will mean a design that is within cost while maintaining the ability to deliver fuel and groceries over the dock — the performance requirements the assembly has asked for.
Even once Moffatt & Nichol’s work on the project is finished, the resulting design won’t have any solid price-tag associated with it. The margin of error on cost estimates at that point will be 30% below and 50% above, Moffatt & Nichol vice president Shaun McFarlane told assembly members.
“There is no cost certainty that is achievable at this point,” he said. “Thus is our challenge.”
What is there is the engineering firm’s assurance that it can be done.
In many ways, the assembly and the public have ceded control to Moffatt & Nichol — one of the features, benefits even, of the current procurement process, the firm has said.
In November, McFarlane said the current arrangement, compared to procurement with Turnagain, reduced the number of windows the borough had to directly weigh in on the design process.
“There’s often an appetite that develops to go back and rethink things that could’ve and should’ve been put to rest at the concept development stage,” he said at the time. “I think given the different ideas that you have with the community, a more straightforward design-build is the best way forward.”
With that process in place, assembly choice Tuesday was limited to broad concepts, leaving Moffatt & Nichol to handle “scope, scale, and budget” concerns, Wallis said. Despite public debate over those very concerns, they’ve largely been locked in by previous assembly decisions. That includes the call to have Moffatt & Nichol budget and design for grocery and fuel delivery, not larger dock operations.
When it came time to make a final call, the assembly went 4-2 in favor of encapsulation, with Forster joining Smith, Stickler, and Thomas in the majority.
Assembly member Eben Sargent voted against it, saying he preferred one of two options: waiting to confirm encapsulation until it was more certain the funding could build a large-enough encapsulated dock, or choosing a cheaper option and using any excess money to add further uplands.
Assembly member Craig Loomis did not participate in the debate, saying only in comments after that “our grandkids are going to be paying for maintenance on that thing for the next 100 years,” and that the borough “would not get what (it) expects” from the design.
As for Forster, given his reservations, he said his yes vote didn’t come easily. He remained frustrated by uncertainty over price and viability.
“I don’t think anybody who’s a decision maker sees this from all the perspectives: permitting, dock use, financial, long-term,” he said. “Am I confident in that vote? no. But my intention all along has been to get us to a place where we have a municipal freight dock that will last into the future.”
There was an audible sigh of relief – even some applause – from many in the assembly chambers following the vote.
That’s not wholly new; there was also applause and relief last year after the assembly agreed to rework its contract with Turnagain, but that deal later fell through.
If this time is different, more solid indication will come later in the timeline: the project is scheduled to go out for bid in the summer and construction is estimated to be complete late 2029.
Moffatt & Nichol will stay onboard at least through the project going out to bid, and potentially longer if the firm is retained as advisors during the construction process.
The firm’s project leads, Wallis and McFarlane, have become familiar characters in recent months. The two have been a constant presence on Zoom during borough meetings, Wallis the more front-facing figure, with long monologues and colorful metaphors, including one that has come up a number of times about painting polka-dots on the dock.
In November, harbormaster Henry Pollan had described their firm as “the most equipped in the region” for the job.
But during debate recently, some residents questioned their leadership, including Fred Gray, who sits on the borough’s Ports and Harbors Advisory Committee and was formerly Delta Western’s Haines terminal manager.
Gray, citing his experience working hundreds of barges “from Dutch Harbor to Wrangell,” said the engineers had given bad advice to decision makers and the public on the merits of one of the design concepts, the floating-dock option.
Gray at a Ports and Harbors meeting this month said the engineers were understating the future maintenance costs of a floating dock given that, according to his assessment, it would have structurally vulnerable hinges.
At the same meeting, Gray also said it was “obvious (Moffatt & Nichol) have never had barge operations, because you wouldn’t say catwalks are standard procedure in the marine industry in Alaska.”
The non-encapsulation designs were slated to have dock operators working off catwalks more than they do currently, which Gray said was a safety risk.
Gray attributed those alleged errors to political pressures. Wallis generally said they weren’t errors, but rather that Gray was operating on incorrect information. As evidence of the floating dock’s viability, he pointed to the Moffatt & Nichol-designed floating cruise-ship dock at Icy Strait Point in Hoonah.
“We’ve heard ‘we’ve never seen it done that way,’” he said. “Well, we may have done things people haven’t seen done that way.”