Army Corps seeks contractor to keep Anchorage's harbor dredged through 2029

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Thursday asked companies for proposals to dredge Anchorage's harbor from 2027 through 2029, the work that keeps ships reaching the Port of Alaska.

The port serves about 90% of Alaska's population and handles about half of the goods coming into the state, according to the Corps.

Keeping it open takes dredging every year. Cook Inlet has some of the largest tides in the world, and shoals let sediment settle in the harbor, leaving spots too shallow for ships, the Corps said in 2020. It has kept the harbor at 35 feet deep since the 1960s.

The new contract calls for removing about 900,000 cubic yards of fine-grained material a year. The contractor would have to keep the dock and terminals open to ships the whole time. An option would add 350,000 cubic yards a year of sand and some cobbles from the marked channel ships use to get through Knik Arm Shoal into the harbor.

In 2020, the work fell to a hopper dredge called the Westport, which the Corps described as a "crimson and white boat" that sucks material off the bottom and can dump it at least 3,000 feet offshore, where currents won't carry it back. The season usually runs May 1 to Nov. 1, when the port is free of ice, and work stops whenever a beluga whale comes within 50 meters of the dredge.

Nome's port director said last month the Corps had no 2027 maintenance dredging money yet for Nome and several other Alaska ports, with Anchorage the exception. She said the Corps had more chances to find the money.

The Corps hasn't published a cost estimate, and the award depends on funds being available. Proposals are due Dec. 7, and an earlier notice anticipated an award in January.

Congress approved a deep-water harbor for Anchorage in 1958. The Defense Department counts the port as one of 17 strategic commercial seaports in the country, and it delivers jet fuel to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, according to the Corps.