Port of Nome barge ramp repairs completed
Construction on the Port of Nome’s barge ramp, which began earlier this summer, came to a close last week.
“The launch ramp was completed last week and is fully open,” said the Port of Nome Harbormaster Lucas Stotts. “It’s all completed, all done and in full use.”
Summer construction took more time than initially anticipated but was completed before the sea started to freeze up.
The construction contractor completed their work Wednesday, October 20, and allowed vessels under 30 tons to haul out that same evening, and vessels over 30 tons to haul out the next morning.
“Nobody took us up the first day, but since then, we’ve had a trickle of people coming out over the last week,” Stotts said. “We still have a few of them in the water, but they’re not waiting on us or the availability of the ramp. A couple vessels have work they’re trying to do, finish up mining, that sort of thing.”
The new ramp is the same in almost every way, Stotts said, but said construction and updates were badly needed.
“The new ramp construction is a 12 percent slope, just like the old one, and the same dimensions,” he told the Nugget. “It’s just straighter, newer, cleaner, and much stronger. It’s a much stronger ramp than we had already, so hopefully this will last us another 30 plus years.”
The barge ramp is the main ramp at the Port of Nome for all users, Stotts said.
“It is our main launch ramp for subsistence, all the way up to commercial guys, from dredgers to fishermen, as well as cargo on that ramp for the whole region,” he said. “It was sorely needed piece of infrastructure, and we actually need more places that have ramps just like this leading to more upland space, so I can see that being something we look at developing more in the future.”