Arctic shipping and Northern Harbors: international port plans span more than a century for Nome.

• Author: Swagel, Will
• Position: TRANSPORTATION

It may come as a surprise to most Americans--and even to many Alaskans--that the Port of Nome is a very busy place. Between May and December, hundreds of vessels make port calls at Nome. And, driven by such geopolitical trends as high demand for gold and other minerals, commodities transshipment, increased oil exploration, and even international tourism, Nome officials are striving to keep port development ahead of demand.

"With the increase in northern shipping, we're seeing [the Nome region] as the next economic hot spot," says Denise Michels, Nome's six-term mayor. "We're trying to be proactive, instead of reactive."

The Port of Nome's 2013 Strategic Development Plan calls for a number of projects, some of which are already completed or will be underway in 2014. Called for are the addition of more dock space for varying size vessels both at the Port and Small Boat Harbor, a deep water dock on an extended causeway, uplands development, and lobbying for using Nome as the Arctic staging area for oil spill mitigation or search-and-rescue.

Nome has a vital role as a transshipment hub for the entire region, shipping fuel and cargo to towns and villages as far north as Barrow and all the way to Lower Yukon communities.

Planners are hoping to dredge the outer harbor deeper to allow larger vessels to be serviced at the biggest port north of Dutch Harbor.

When Nome officials took their list of legislative priorities to Juneau last year, the cover of their presentation featured an image taken from an October 1907 issue of Nome's Daily Gold Digger newspaper. The headline read: "Plan Mammoth Harbor for Snake River." The Snake River winds through the Port and into Norton Sound.

"A big harbor was planned at the time for all the gold and silver mines," says City Manager Josie Bahnke. "There have been plans for a hundred years to make Nome an international port."

Alaska's Most Northern Big Port

Joy Baker is Nome's long-time, plain-speaking harbormaster and was overseeing Port traffic since 1990 as the city manager's assistant, even before she got the Harbormaster title in 1997. Last year she was given yet another title, Projects Manager for Port and Harbor Development.

Baker says that around 2006, she began to see a significant rise in Port activity. "It started to spike," she says. "It wasn't extravagant, but you could see the spikes were there."

Nome saw 30 dockings in 1990. In 2012, 449 vessels (ships and barges) used the port. In 2012, 61 vessels anchored off the harbor, either waiting for dock space to open or because their vessel draft was too deep. Last year, the number of anchored vessels jumped to 150.

"We have three different issues going on here in my mind," says Baker. "We're trying to meet the demand of our regional fleet and transshipments as a hub facility. And to accommodate that vessel demand--[allowing them] to get in and get their work done and get their materials and heavy equipment and gravel to projects and their cargo and fuel distributed to the communities. The second component is that we're seeing more support vessels and more private vessels going over the top. We are getting some of the oil exploration research and development traffic. And then there is a third local component, which is the offshore gold rush."

She took a breath. "I...