Tideline Construction is making substantial progress clearing the 6-Mile site for its scrap metal recycling, rock crushing and construction operations, in addition to cleaning up the entire waterfront acreage for future development of the borough-owned property.

The assembly in May struck a deal with Tideline for the company to clear wood waste, flatbed railcars, concrete foundations and buildings from the former sawmill property. In exchange for the work on the entire 42-acre property, the borough agreed to give Tideline about 10 acres for its operations.

"It's huge ... it's been phenomenal to see the transition," Borough Manager Mason Villarma said.

The entire north end of the property is entirely clean, he said last week. "All the buildings are down that we wanted taken down," he added.

"We'll get 32 acres that are actually sellable," Villarma said in May after the assembly approved the work-for-land trade.

Work started on June 15 and will extend into fall, Tideline owner William Tonsgard said last week.

"It's going to be a good property," he said. "This opens the door for a lot of possibilities," for the borough to develop the cleared site.

The municipality bought the land for $2.5 million in 2022 from the former sawmill's owner, looking to develop the acreage for industrial or maritime use to help boost the economy.

The property was littered with leftover concrete footings, debris from the mill, a massive pile of sawdust - even an old flatbed railcar that had been used to hold up a waterfront embankment but which had fallen into the water.

The deal with Tideline was structured to trade 10 acres at the south end of the property to the company in exchange for work valued at $880,000 to clear the entire property.

"It wasn't exactly easy," Tonsgard said of hauling the 60-foot-long railcar out of the water and onto shore for shipping south for metal recycling.

"There are still other railcars there that hold back the embankment" which don't need to be removed, he said.

In addition to the railcar, Tideline's crew has removed boom sticks, concrete footings and foundations, unused structures and abandoned cars from the site.

"We removed the old 'beaver slide' as well ... and graded the ramp," Tonsgard said. Beaver slides were used at logging sites around Southeast to slide logs into the water to load aboard ships, he explained. "They're usually made with some beams or even boom sticks running down the face of a shoreline so a log loader can dump logs onto it and the load will slide into the water to be rafted to a ship."

One item that still needs to go is a spud, a temporary piling in the water that was used as a tie-up for barges, Tonsgard said. "It should have been pulled out of there."

The spud, at the north end of the property, is a navigational hazard, he said. "It does stick out of the water 10 feet at low tide."

The work also has included brushing the property, clearing mostly alders. "Right now, they're all green," Tonsgard said. But after letting them dry a little - so that they burn cleaner, with less smoke - the company will wait for the right weather for a controlled burn of the trees.

The crew also is waiting on one other project, but it has nothing to do with weather. Swallows have nested in the leftover sawdust piles, and federal law prohibits disturbing the nests.

The birds are protected under federal law by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service website states: "You may only destroy nests that do not have eggs or chicks within."

Tonsgard said he has been told the nests will empty out around the end of July.

The work plan is to knock down the sawdust piles, using the material to build a berm along the southern end of the property and then covering the berm with soil.

Tideline has a crew of five people on the job, which includes Tonsgard.

"It's not really unusual for us" to take on such projects, he said. "We've done these cleanups all over Southeast," including sawmills.

"The sawmill in Ketchikan was a big one I was involved in."

Tonsgard, who started Tideline in 2019, worked before that for Juneau-based Channel Construction, also owned by the Tonsgard family, which has been in business since the 1950s.

Tideline already has moved 90% of its equipment to Wrangell, including its rock crusher and excavators. The company also does construction work.

Channel Construction has operated a scrap metal recycling yard at the 6-Mile site for several years, leasing property from the borough before the land exchange deal.

In addition to continuing with collecting scrap metal from around Southeast and barging it South for recycling, Tideline is looking at recycling construction materials including concrete, which it would crush at the site, Tonsgard said.

Basing its operations in Wrangell will create several new jobs in town, the company said in its land-trade pitch to the borough.