Sitka will go five weeks without a state ferry

Sitka will see minimal state ferry service this winter. Scheduled sailings of the Matanuska have been canceled until late January while the vessel undergoes more steel plate repairs in a Ketchikan shipyard, leaving Sitka cut off from the ferry network for more than a month.

As a stopgap measure, the Alaska Marine Highway System ran the Kennicott into Sitka on Dec. 8, but the vessel is not scheduled to return until Jan. 11.

The 58-year-old Matanuska is not expected to resume service until the fourth week in January,

With the ferry system stretched as it is, the Kennicott is covering a lot of communities by itself, running from Bellingham, Washington, through Southeast and out to Kodiak. As a result, the Dec. 8 and Jan. 11 Sitka visits are all the Kennicott is able to muster, said Sam Dapcevich, state Department of Transportation spokesman.

With hundreds of millions of dollars likely heading to the Alaska Marine Highway System under the federal infrastructure bill signed into law by President Joe Biden on Nov. 15, Sitka Sen. Bert Stedman said he hopes to ensure it is not used as a reason to further cut state funding for ferries.

“When we take a look, I would include pretty much all the coastal delegation, we’ll be very concerned that the funds from the new infrastructure plan don’t just supplant normal state funding,” Stedman said. “In other words, they give you $200 million extra to build something and they take $200 million out of your back pocket. … We’ll be working on that issue and tracking that.”

With the state’s next gubernatorial election less than a year away, Stedman said some things will hinge on who wins that race.

“We’ll be trying to make sure that the federal intent to help the marine highway is actually implemented, and we won’t know the conclusion of that until the next election and the next governor settles in with their policies,” the senator said.

Fixing the ferry system’s problems, he said, is going to require a sizable fiscal appropriation.

“We still have significant gaps in marine highway service that can only be fixed with increasing the operations appropriation. … And the classic example of that is Sitka ferry service — it’s virtually eliminated,” Stedman said.