Protections for endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales are complicating the project.
A dive crew hired to inspect some areas found gaps in a structure that is supposed to hold back tons of gravel and new land. Parts of the new dock face must be replaced or repaired, according to construction managers.
Shipping companies are concerned. So are Anchorage Assembly members. But Port Director Bill Sheffield said he's confident the construction complications will be overcome, funding will come through, and the huge expansion will be completed.
The city-owned port is vital, the former governor said. Almost everything most Alaskans eat, wear or drive comes through it. The project can't stop now, he said.
"This is the biggest project going on in the state of Alaska, and the port serves 85 percent of the population," Sheffield said.
The project is intended to replace the current dock on pilings with a new port. The dock dates to before the 1964 earthquake. It's corroding and expensive to maintain, port officials say.
Bit by bit, crews are erecting a wall of steel in Knik Arm that, if it's all built, will extend the port into the Inlet as well as north and south -- 1.5 miles long in all. The space between the existing shore and the steel wall is being, and will be, filled with gravel and dirt.
The latest price estimate is $750 million to $800 million, double the $375 million estimated three years ago. "But it might even be more than that," Sheffield said.
The project was to be completed by 2015; Sheffield now puts the finish at maybe 2017 or so.
Shipping companies say it might not be until 2020.
THE BELUGA FACTOR
The steel wall has been under construction since 2008. Giant hammers operated from cranes drive long, narrow sheets of steel into the seabed. They are creating what eventually is supposed to number 300 connected horseshoe-shaped cells designed to enclose the gravel and dirt fill.
But stoppages related to endangered belugas have slowed the work, said Diana Carlson, Alaska operations manager for the firm overseeing the construction, Integrated Concepts and Research Corp., or ICRC.
To protect the whales, crews cannot hammer for the four hours around low tide.
They can't do it if whales are in the safety zone, which extends about eight-tenths of a mile from the construction site.
They can't do it if the seas are too rough or the glare is too much for observers to spot whales.
They can't do it if ice is in the safety zone.
All told, ICRC estimates that crews have lost 1,800 hours of pile-driving time just since last July, when protections for the whales increased.
The whale protections add up to about $5 million a year in direct costs, plus maybe $10 million to $15 million a year in inefficiencies when work must stop then start back up, Sheffield said.
Besides a shorter work window, beluga protections also limit the type of hammer that can be used. Crews were unable to use a high-energy impact hammer as much as they wanted and instead had to use a vibratory hammer, which complicated the sheet pile driving, Carlson said.
The contractor for much of the work has been QAP. It was to complete 104 cells in 2008 and 2009. It finished 82 and partly installed another 11, ICRC said. Its contract was for $95 million; it's been paid $88 million. They are now in negotiations, Carlson said. QAP officials didn't return repeated calls.
ICRC is seeking bids from another contractor to finish the work and to repair or redo some cells that it says were damaged during installation.
The project designer, PND Engineers Inc., hired a dive crew to inspect for damage in three cells in which the pile didn't go in smoothly.
The inspection found three places where the pile pieces were bent and out of joint for a length of several feet, and a fourth area where it was hard to tell.
In one area, the gap was big enough for the diver to reach in and touch a side wall about 3 feet away.
Another 22 or so cells with difficult-to-drive sheet pile will be inspected by divers this year, according to ICRC.
CRANES FOR SALE
One of the expanded port's first sections scheduled to be finished -- a big new area on the north side, where cargo ships will dock during the rest of the construction -- is two to three years behind the schedule published on the project website and relied on by the shipping lines.
Horizon Lines Inc. is one of the two big cargo companies that dock in Anchorage. It bought three new giant cranes for $25 million to unload containers at that newly built area as soon as early next year, said Ken Privratsky, the Anchorage-based senior vice president of Horizon's Pacific group, including Alaska.
But the area isn't done.
"It's not going to be ready until probably now at least 2014, and so we're selling the cranes," Privratsky said. "I can't afford to have $25 million in capital investment sit idle. That's a fact and it's probably, in my mind, the worst possible signal for this city, relative to that project."
The other big cargo line, Totem Ocean Trailers Express Inc., or TOTE, also is experiencing headaches. Its ships have had to leave the dock early during extreme low tides because of construction-related silt in its berth.
"As a tenant here, we can't afford for it to remain like this. We need this thing to get funded and get finished," said George Lowery, TOTE's Alaska director.
TOTE doesn't use cranes, so its new berth is not as involved to build and should be ready by 2012, ICRC said.
Technically, the project is within the rough time frame proposed in 2005 during the environmental assessment phase, Carlson said.
Barge dry docks are ahead of schedule and generating revenue, she said. But other parts, like the north extension, are behind.
NO STIMULUS MONEY
So far, $257 million of the $800 million projected budget has been secured from federal, state and port funds, plus some borrowing. About $35 million hasn't been spent, Sheffield said, far shy of the $275 million needed for the construction planned through 2014.
He requested $226 million in federal economic stimulus money last year but got nothing. "We could be doing more work than we are doing. But we don't have the cash flow, and it slows us down," Sheffield told the Anchorage Assembly last week.
The port has borrowed $40 million and can borrow another $35 million through a credit line. It is waiting to hear whether Gov. Sean Parnell will allow $20 million in funding the Legislature approved last month.
Sheffield said he has other funding ideas but isn't ready to detail them.
Alaska's congressional delegation backs more port funding but doesn't have the clout it did when U.S. Rep. Don Young and former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens chaired powerful committees and steered money to the project.
Assembly Chairman Dick Traini last week appointed a special committee to monitor the port project, including time lines and financing. Assemblyman Patrick Flynn, whose district includes the port, will chair it.
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