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AIDEA board weighs Wrangell shipyard loans and a stake in Augustine geothermal
The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority's board will decide Wednesday whether to lend Wrangell up to $22.8 million toward a large-vessel shipyard and to buy a stake of up to $10 million in a company exploring for geothermal power on Augustine, the volcanic island in lower Cook Inlet.
The Wrangell shipyard is meant to repair and build vessels including state ferries, fishing and freight boats and Coast Guard ships, on a 42-acre former sawmill site six miles south of town. Under a resolution before the board, AIDEA would put up about $7.8 million, to be repaid as a loan, for the borough's local match on a $39 million project to develop the site, most of it paid by a $31.2 million federal grant. It would lend up to $15 million more to take the shipyard's design from about 30% to finished and to get its permits.
Repayment on the $7.8 million would be put off to give the Coast Guard time to commit to homeporting icebreakers in Wrangell or to help pay for a homeport or shipyard there, a commitment the resolution calls critical to the project. The Coast Guard has announced plans to homeport three new icebreakers in Kodiak and Seward.
The $15 million loan is tied to a data center. Wrangell's electric utility, which gets hydropower through the Southeast Alaska Power Agency, would sell AIDEA 2 megawatts of steady power for an AIDEA subsidiary, the Alaska Data Corporation, to help develop data center capacity in Wrangell. Revenue from those sales would help secure the loan. AIDEA has told the borough the power use shouldn't raise costs for other customers on the shared grid, according to the resolution.
No payments would be due for two years. If money to build the shipyard's first phase isn't committed by then, Wrangell would still owe the loan from any revenue it has. AIDEA could also hold back either loan until the Legislature, Congress, the Coast Guard or another source commits enough money to make it likely the shipyard gets built.
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About Wrangell
Wrangell, known in Tlingit as Ḵaachx̱aana.áakʼw and also called Fort Wrangell, is a city on Wrangell Island in Southeast Alaska near the mouth of the Stikine River. It is governed as the City and Borough of Wrangell by an elected assembly.
Wrangell shares hydropower from Tyee Lake with Petersburg over a transmission line run by a regional power agency. Its economy rests on fishing, including Dungeness crab and salmon, and on marine work such as shipyard projects. Storms, heavy rain from atmospheric rivers and wildfires near Sandy Beach are recurring hazards.
The town carries Tlingit heritage alongside its history as a Russian and American military post. It is a neighbor of Petersburg and Ketchikan in southern Southeast Alaska.
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