Anchorage won $191 million for the port that feeds Alaska

Anchorage just won the biggest legal settlement in its history, and every dollar is going to the same place: the docks that keep Alaska fed. The Municipality of Anchorage settled a 12-year lawsuit against the federal government on Tuesday for $180 million — about $191 million with an earlier judgment — all of it committed to rebuilding the Port of Alaska, which brings in roughly 90 percent of the food, fuel, and goods Alaskans use.

The port's docks are old and need replacing before they fail, a job estimated at around $2.7 billion. The question all along has been who pays, because whatever the government doesn't cover gets passed to Alaskans as shipping surcharges on everything that crosses those docks.

Every federal or state dollar secured for construction, the city says, trims those future surcharges by about $2.50. Mayor Suzanne LaFrance says the settlement, together with state and federal money already in hand, shields Alaskans from as much as $694 million in future surcharges on food and everyday supplies.

The money is, in a sense, the government paying for its own mistake. Back in 2003, the federal Maritime Administration acted as Anchorage's agent to expand the port — and the work didn't meet code. The city sued in 2014, won a large judgment, and Tuesday's deal ends the fight.

Port users had long argued that because the feds botched the original job, Washington should cover more of the rebuild rather than leaving the bill to shippers for decades. The settlement does that in part, though it doesn't erase the surcharges entirely.

The work is already moving: crews have begun driving the first massive steel piles into Cook Inlet for the new Terminal 1, and the settlement money is expected within weeks.