The Skagway borough assembly has unanimously approved spending almost $3.2 million for a temporary solution to protect cruise ships, their passengers and the dock itself from frequent rockslides. Several slides have come down this year, hitting the railroad dock and forcing the closure of the forward berth, costing the community lost tourism business.
Even while using the forward berth, ships had to tender their passengers to shore using small boats from the other side of the vessel to avoid putting people the dock.
This year’s slides resulted in a loss of more than 100,000 visitors to the community as ships canceled their Skagway stops and went elsewhere. The vast majority of the town’s economy relies on cruise ship traffic.
The rock work is planned to make the dock safe in 2023 for two smaller ships, with larger cruise liners docking at the town’s ore dock under the alternative mooring plan. Mayor Andrew Cremata described the short-term mitigation as a “pivot” from the long-term mitigation plan which has a price tag of about $40 million.
Borough Manager Brad Ryan explained the short-term mitigation.
“It’s a scaling effort,” said Ryan. “A company is going to come to town called Rock Supremacy. They’re going to go up, and they’re going to roll the rocks downward with pry bars, and they’re going to use airbags. “They’re going to work on that south chute of that major slide. And that is because they’re trying to get everything to fail through that chute.”
According to Ryan, attenuators (flexible metal fence systems that slow down the falling rock) will be set up top at the steep hillside that towers over the dock. Midway attenuators will be placed about a third of the way down as “there’s a bump on the hillside, and that kicks rocks off and launches them outward,” Ryan said. The slide’s existing bottom attenuator, which was damaged after a Sept. 25 landslide, will likely be replaced.
Once scaling is complete and attenuators are in place, Rock Supremacy will test the equipment by rolling rocks down the mountain side.
In addition, the municipality’s geotechnical team recommends installing a laser survey station, with survey equipment laced along the rockslide to measure any movement. The borough has not yet received a price quote for the monitoring equipment.
An emergency declaration proclaimed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy provides some funding for landslide mitigation, but it’s a cumbersome process.
“They’re telling us they have a million dollars authorized right now,” Ryan said. “We have to make sure what we do is eligible. And we have to make sure everything gets filled out right. And we don’t break any procedure issues. They’re saying that they can get us more money after the million. But there’s no guarantee on that. … So there is a possibility that we might have to cover this,” Ryan said.
“We’ve been spending a lot of money up here,” said Assemblymember Deb Potter. “It’s … overwhelming at times. I think there are just things that we can’t say no to. I just don’t see an option. We have to do everything we can to get fencing up there.”
Assemblymember Orion Hanson also expressed his discomfort with the uncertainty of the funding but felt compelled to act.
“I feel sad every time when those rock slides come down. It undermines everyone’s confidence, every business. It’s a terrible experience for the customers, for the business owners or residents. The cruise ships don’t want to be anywhere near it. And I agree with Assemblymember Potter that we need to do something because standing by while we have rockslides every week, every several weeks, twice in a week, is not making us a world class destination.”
Hanson continued, “I don’t know how exactly we pay for this. I know the mayor is going to D.C. in a few weeks to lobby our delegation there for help … and while I don’t like voting for things that have an uncertain way to pay for it … I don’t think we have a lot of time to debate it.”
Ryan emphasized that while the intent of is to have the dock open for 2023, “I think the comfort level is going to be to lighter, not to walk people down the docks, at least in mass numbers.”
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