$68.7M for Port of Alaska Shoreline Improvement
Erik Hill
The Municipality of Anchorage has a $68.7 million grant from the US Department of Transportation to permanently fix the north end of the city-owned Port of Alaska.
Reinforced Shoreline
The money will be used to reconfigure and realign the shoreline within the area north of the existing general cargo terminals as well as for the demolition of a sheet pile wall, removal of approximately 1.3 million cubic yards of material, and construction of a shoreline revetment of armor rock.
“This grant award comes at a crucial time for the Port of Alaska and municipality as we work to rebuild and modernize Alaska’s most important piece of infrastructure,” says Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson. “Progress like this puts us one step closer to delivering food security for Alaska through a seismically resilient and modern Port of Alaska.”
The grant for Anchorage is part of more than $703 million the US Department of Transportation announced for forty-one projects in twenty-two states through the Maritime Administration’s Port Infrastructure Development program, made possible by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and additional Congressional appropriations.
Recognized as a US Commercial Strategic Seaport by the Department of Defense, the Port of Alaska is the only tsunami-proof, inbound cargo port in all of Southcentral. The port welcomes everything from fuel tankers to 100-plus passenger cruise ships, facilitating the steady flow of the state’s most important products. In 2021 alone, the port handled more than 4.9 million tons of fuel and cargo.
A rehabilitation project at the port in 2019 moved about 50,000 tons of armor rock from a quarry in Eklutna.