Port MacKenzie open for business: does the future hold a ferry system or bridge across troubled waters?

• Author: Van Dongen, Marc
• Position: BUILDING ALASKA

Port MacKenzie has come a long way since construction started on a pioneer access road and barge dock in the fall of 1999. Since that time, the barge dock has been completed; three-phase electrical power has been extended 11 miles to the port; telephone/fax/Internet capability has been added via microwave reception; a 1.25-mile road and 18-acre pad have been constructed for stockpiling woodchips; a 1,200-foot-deep draft dock has been constructed; and a multi-use conveyor system has been installed from the top of a 120-foot bluff, across the barge dock, to the deep-draft dock. Other improvements include a security building that was constructed by the Job Corps in Palmer, a public telephone booth, and a filter rock ramp for landing craft use on the south side of the barge dock.

Progress continues as the port focuses on five main goals to jumpstart development at Port MacKenzie:

* to install utilities

* construct a deep-draft dock

* upgrade and pave the last 15 miles of the Point MacKenzie Road

* have a year-round ferry operating between Anchorage and Port MacKenzie

* and complete a rail link to the port from the Parks Highway

NATURAL GAS ARRIVING

Now that electric and telephone have been extended to Port MacKenzie, the next utility to come to the port will be natural gas. A $250,000 grant has been awarded from the Denali Commission to design a 15-mile, 8-inch spur from a 20-inch main line at Ayrshire Road to the port. The design should be completed in 2006, and the gas line will be constructed when funds become available.

Construction began on the deep-draft dock in July 2004 and the dock was substantially completed on Dec. 22, 2004. Immediately afterward, NPI LLC, a woodchip company based in Wasilla, extended their 5-foot-wide conveyor to the end of the 485-foot trestle connected to the deep-draft dock. West Construction did a remarkable job of constructing the conveyor system under extremely difficult conditions in time for the arrival of the first Panamax-size vessel at Port MacKenzie on Jan. 31, 2005. The Keoyang Majesty is the world's largest woodchip vessel at 725 feet long, 105 feet wide, and a draft of 42 feet. This vessel was loaded with more than 83 million pounds of birch wood chips destined for South Korea during the coldest week of the winter. Despite temperatures averaging minus-15 degrees with wind chills down to minus-50 degrees, NPI was able to successfully load this initial vessel. By the end of 2005, NPI loaded a total of...