The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers held a public meeting in Nome to gather comments on their tentatively selected plan for a deep-draft Arctic port.
Residents gathered at Old St. Joe’s in Nome to learn more about the proposed plan – and to voice their concerns. Port Commissioner Charlie Lean worries the city will have to shoulder an enormous financial burden to complete the project.
“One of the issues I worry about is the various sponsorships or matching funds that are required,” sai Lean. “When you look at the matching funds as a whole, that’s on the order of $40,000 per man, woman and child — each — in Nome to make the match. So the city of Nome’s not going to be able to afford to pull this project off without some outside cooperative sponsor.”
The complete renovation, which is projected to cost about $211 million, would be federally funded to the tune of $98 million — leaving the City of Nome (and any potential sponsors) on the hook for the remainder.
Nome’s Port Project Manager, Joy Baker, said that while the project design — and price tag — is far from final, the current outline allows the city to test the waters when it comes to cost-sharing partners.
“I see the expansion of the facility increasing the attractiveness of the facility. We’ve had folks reach out to us for what expansion and development is going to occur. And we think as that continues to grow, the attraction will grow,” said Baker.
Baker said, for now, the goal is not to simply net one sponsor with deep pockets — but to entice users from several industries that might utilize and benefit from the expanded port, to share in its cost.
Other public concerns dealt with possible environmental and cultural impacts of the project. Nome resident Amy Russell-Jamgochian says she is concerned about an archeological site near the mouth of the Snake River.
“That site was determined eligible…for people to study and learn more about the pre-contact history of this area. So it is a very significant site for the cultural history here in Nome,” said Russell-Jamgochian.
She said artifacts from the site, which is slightly upriver from the port, could have migrated into the present-day harbor. Russell-Jamgochian is concerned that dredging the Nome harbor to a depth of -28 feet, as the plan calls for, will move — and potentially obscure — artifacts before researchers can get to them.
Mike Noah is the Army Corps’ Chief of Environmental Resources. He acknowledged that under the current plan, dredged material would be relocated from the inner harbor to the surrounding beaches. But he said this would have also happened naturally, before the harbor’s existence.
“At this point we’re talking about dredging some of that up to deepen the harbor, but the material we’re talking about dredging is material that was destined to move along the beach,” said Noah.
Noah said the man-made harbor has captured much of the sand, minerals and beach material that would otherwise have migrated down the coast. And part of the Army Corps’ plan to mitigate environmental impacts is to restore that beach material to its natural pattern of movement.
This may come as pleasant news to members of Nome’s mining trade hoping to cash in on the fresh turf — provided their claims lie to the east of Nome’s harbor. Noah said the plan is to place dredged material on the eastern side of the port, as the natural wave patterns of Norton Sound would have carried “beach nutrients” from West to East.
All of this is a long way off, however. The tentative plan still has to pass through multiple reviews at the state and federal level before going to the Army Corps’ federal chief. And while a public comment period for the project’s reporting stage has ended, Noah said the Corps is encouraged by the level of public involvement — and welcomes additional comments throughout the review process.
Editor’s Note: A version of this story aired on KNOM identifying Amy Russell-Jamgochian as the director of Kawerak’s museum projects. Russell-Jamgochian did not identify herself by her professional title when giving public testimony, and was speaking as a private citizen.
