Port of Anchorage and Port MacKenzie work together: proximity promotes reciprocal economic development.

• Author: Goforth, J. Pennelope
• Position: TRANSPORTATION

The Port of Anchorage and Port MacKenzie are both located on the upper end of the Knik Arm of Cook Inlet. Anchorage is located on the east shore, MacKenzie on the west. Other than sharing the same body of water, the two ports seemingly have little in common. One does a tremendous volume of business today, the other hopes to be doing the same tomorrow. MacKenzie is still building infrastructure, Anchorage is intermodal with rail, trucking, and airport access. MacKenzie has a little over 9,000 acres of "uplands" while Anchorage has about 130 acres of industrial parklands.

For existing a mere mile and a half as the gull flies across Knik Arm, the two ports couldn't be more different. Yet from a business perspective, their very proximity promotes reciprocal economic development. The two ports intersect at one critical point: combining their relative strong points. As the Port of Anchorage's Port Director Stephen Ribuffo put it, the two ports should not be in competition. "If you sensibly carve up the kingdom and play to strengths: Anchorage imports and MacKenzie exports," he says.

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Location Matters

Don't confuse Point MacKenzie with Port MacKenzie, both located in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. A brief look at the nautical chart will tell you why: the ubiquitous mudflats that form the primary coastal feature of the shores of Cook Inlet create a wide apron of shallows around the point punctuated by rocky outcrops. Port MacKenzie--construction of which began in late 1999--is situated at the optimal position several miles northeast of the point along the west shore of Knik Arm where the coast drops off sharply. Here there is sixty-five feet of water off the dock, making it a deep draft port naturally. Another good reason to locate in that spot, explains Port Director Marc Van Dongen, is the swift current that scours any buildup of silt brought downstream by the rivers that feed into the inlet. Economically that is a huge boon since the port doesn't need to be dredged on a regular basis to ensure ship traffic. "This saves millions of dollars annually," he says.

While MacKenzie was built by design on the best spot for shipping, Anchorage was built at the mouth of Ship Creek to accommodate the building of the railroad in 1915. Even in the early days of the port, when it was called Ship Creek Landing, most vessels anchored out a half a mile or more from the mouth of the creek. Cargo and passengers were ferried by shallow draft "lighters" from the larger ships to the shore. Early piers were built using piling driven deeply into the mud for smaller craft to tie up to. Today the Port of Anchorage has about thirty-five feet of clearance at mean low tide for the tankers and cargo container ships that dock there. The area has to be dredged every year by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

Still both ports do depend on the dredging of the shipping channel to Knik Arm as the treacherous currents cause constant shoaling that changes "the depth radically from year to year," according to a US Coast Pilot, which ships use to navigate the channel. Ships are required to have Alaska ship pilots to guide them through the changing seascape beneath the waters of Cook Inlet. Both ports also have to cope with a semi-diurnal forty-one-foot tidal range, second in North America only to the famous Bay of Fundy tidal range on the East Coast of Canada. This tidal range is also responsible for keeping the lower Knik Arm from being locked up by ice in winter. The changing tide breaks up the ice into a sea of mini icebergs called ice pans instead of a solid...