The borough is asking a military training program to help assess and clear out a sunken barge and tug offshore the former sawmill property near 6-Mile.
It’s unclear how long the vessels have been stuck on the bottom but it’s likely been 25 or 30 years, according to current and past borough officials.
Though the vessels do not impede access by the scrap metal salvage barge operator that has a five-year lease on the borough-owned property, the sunken vessels could become a problem if Wrangell is able to attract a long-term user or buyer for the parcel that wants to bring in larger ships.
The borough bought the 40-acre former mill property for $2.5 million in 2022, wanting to keep the waterfront parcel intact in hopes of attracting an industrial or maritime tenant or buyer for the site on deep water.
The scrap metal operation has been the borough’s only tenant.
Removing the sunken vessels would be a boost in the property’s marketability, Borough Manager Mason Villarma said as he was finishing up the application for federal help on Friday. “They’re something that we’ve got to get out of there.”
The borough is applying to the Department of Defense Innovative Readiness Training program, which matches regular and guard forces with local projects that can provide training opportunities.
“The assistance will include conducting a cold-water dive and salvage mission of a sunken tug and barge,” the borough reported in a public notice of its intent to seek federal help.
“Innovative Readiness Training (IRT) is a collaborative program that leverages military contributions and community resources to multiply value and cost savings for participants,” according to the program’s website. “Communities typically provide materials and basic services, while military units contribute personnel and training resources.”
The tug, maybe 40 feet in length, and the barge of unknown dimensions are in separate locations, Villarma said. The barge, at the northernmost end of the property, is partially exposed at high tide, while the tug is at the southwest end in deeper water.
The borough started looking at the IRT program years ago. It came up again when Villarma and other borough officials met with Alaska’s congressional delegation in December 2023. The officials were in Washington, D.C., to ask for help for the community after the deadly landslide a month earlier.
Shortly after their discussions with U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, a U.S. Army captain with the IRT program called Villarma and said they have a team that specializes in cold-water salvage operations — and they were looking for a training opportunity in Alaska.
If its application is approved, the borough hopes an IRT team could visit the site and assess the vessels late this fall, then maybe return next year for the work.
Lifting the tug and barge out of the water would the first challenge; dismantling and disposing of the steel and other pieces would be the second part of the job.
Villarma said the borough has no interest in taking ownership of the vessels if they are pulled from the water.
Past borough officials said the vessels were part of the Silver Bay Logging operation that ran the sawmill in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Though the borough several years ago discussed with the sawmill owner cleanup of the sunken barge and tug, nothing was resolved and the vessels remained on the seabed.
Depending how far from shore the tug and barge are sitting, they could be either on borough-owned tidelands or state-owned submerged tidelands — or could straddle both.
The IRT program has worked on several projects across Alaska over the past 20 years.
A team from the Missouri Army National Guard in 2007 completed construction of a 14.3-mile road to the Metlakatla Indian Community. The project connected the community with the state ferry dock.
Planning work started in 1997, followed by construction of a base camp for the crews; blasting, excavating and hauling away material; installing drainage culverts, bridges and a road surface. The project took 10 years.
Teams started working in 2008 to help relocate the coastal community of Newtok to a new village site, Mertarvik, farther away from devastating river erosion. IRT teams put in fill, built a gravel road, heavy equipment shop, an evacuation shelter, a boat landing and several homes for the new community west of Bethel.
The first residents moved into Mertarvik in 2019.
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