Nome residents pose lingering questions about port expansion

Construction to expand the Port of Nome may begin as early as next summer, and in just a few short years, Nome could be home to Alaska’s only Arctic deep draft port.

Bigger cruise ships could bring more tourists. Cargo shipping traffic could increase. And instead of passing by Nome, vessels like the United States’ largest icebreaker, the 420foot USCGC Healy, could make resupply stops during their regular cruises through the Bering Sea.

Politicians and local leadership have claimed that the port expansion will be a positive development for the community. But it’s clear that some residents still have unresolved concerns and confusion about the consequences of the project. How will it affect housing, which is already a strained resource in the region? How will the expensive undertaking make good on its promise of local jobs and economic benefits? What kind of presence will the military have once bigger vessels can dock? And will the region be vulnerable to new environmental risks?

Those were some questions put to Port Director Joy Baker during her presentation of the project at the Strait Science lecture series last week. The expansion has been in the works for decades, and Baker has shepherded the project. “I love this project—It’s like the child I never had,” she said. As she is preparing to retire in May, the design phase of the port is now nearly finished, and funding has been secured for at least the first phase of construction.

During the Q&A, Sue Steinacher of Nome raised the issue of the housing shortage, noting that Nome’s service workers, who are primarily renters, “are already struggling to make it.”

“Is there somebody paying attention to how this is going to affect basically the haves and the have nots in Nome?” she asked. “I’m not trying to say I’m opposed to it. I just want to know somebody is looking at this, because I think it’s quite foreseeable.”

Baker said that the housing issue has come up in discussions about the port from the city to the federal level.

“It’s a hot topic and no one is ignoring it,” Baker said. “The intent is not to impact the local housing market.”

She did not cite any permanent solutions, but mentioned one way to avoid impacts to housing during the construction phase: Contractors are interested in bringing their own housing, likely in the form of temporary man camps. “Everyone is fully aware of the issue and trying to come to an agreement on the language so that they can decide the best way to write it in the contract,” Baker said. “Nobody wants to get the bad stigma of coming in and trying to take up everyone’s housing.”

But would the influx of workers strain other resources, such as law enforcement? Several studies have linked the presence of man camps to an increase in violence that disproportionately affects Indigenous women.

“If there are hundreds more people coming into town to develop this port project, and the city is going to help provide space to develop a workers’ camp, what is going to happen with law enforcement?” Anna Rose MacArthur, the new marine advocate for Kawerak, asked. “Is the law enforcement—the police department or troopers—expected to expand to accommodate the extra population?”

Baker said that she couldn’t speak for the Alaska State Troopers, and added that the City of Nome would have to decide whether it would hire more police officers. “We haven’t had those conversations, or I haven’t been party to them,” Baker said. She also said that the number of workers coming in for port construction was not expected to be in the hundreds.

“I think the contractor will be bringing in less than 100 people to build the project each ice-free season,” she said. “That may tick up just a little bit while they’re finishing phase one, and already starting phase two.”

A little more than a year ago, the project was broken up into three phases to make it more manageable, Baker explained during her presentation. In the first phase of construction, the stub at the end of the causeway will be removed, the causeway extended 3,500 feet, allowing larger vessels to dock in deeper water, up to minus 40 feet. Phase two will involve dredging the existing outer harbor basin so that the water depth increases from minus 22 feet to minus 28 feet, as well as dredging the deep water basin to minus 40 feet. In the third phase, the existing breakwater will be relocated about 150 feet further east, becoming a causeway structure with a road and two docks on it. And then this new portion of the existing outer harbor will be dredged to minus 28 feet as well.

The expansion, which is a joint endeavor between the City of Nome and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is expected to cost more than $600 million. When the U.S. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was signed, $250 million was earmarked for Nome’s port expansion for the federal portion of the expenses. The city has to pitch in ten percent of the federal costs, about $30 million to $50 million for the general navigation features, plus the entirety of the so-called Local Service Facilities which are the docks, the roads on the causeways and the installation of utilities.

Baker said this means that the City of Nome will have to pay. Baker showed figures from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ analysis, which claimed that the construction of the port, across four to five summer seasons, would bring 818 jobs to the region, representing $77.6 million in income and $100 million in secondary spending.

“I do believe that there’s going to be growth—job growth, economic growth,” Baker said. “And it’s going to translate out into the region, which was one of the main purposes of the project is to give this region a good economic boost.”

There seemed to be some confusion about how the port construction would translate to local jobs, especially for the villages. And some in the lecture wondered how many workers would be hired locally.

“There has already been consistent discussion about local hire,” Baker said. “In federal construction work, there’s always encouragement to hire local, especially in Alaska. If the talent pool that is needed can be met in Nome, then those people can apply for the work, especially the folks that are part of the union hall for the construction.”

One caller during the presentation asked if municipal bonds, such as general obligation bonds or revenue bonds, would help fund the port.

“At this time, we haven’t progressed in that direction, but it remains on the table,” Baker said. “It could always become a strong option. We haven’t started down that road yet, but two years from now, looking at the funding for phase three, either of those could be an option.”

Baker also clarified that no property tax or sales tax would fund the port.

“Absolutely not,” she said. “We have made that commitment. I think everyone understands that that’s unrealistic, to put that on the backs of the taxpayers locally.”

The Alaska Legislature included $175 million for the project in the budget it passed last year, which Baker has previously said would cover the first phase of the City’s construction costs. She also said that after the expansion is complete, the operation and maintenance of the port are intended to be funded by the users.

Politicians like Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan have been advocating for a greater military presence in Nome. Baker said that the U.S. Coast Guard has recently indicated that they are considering putting a vessel in the port.

“Things have really turned around and they’re actually looking at perhaps evaluating the purpose of and the costs and the reality of putting a ship in Nome seasonally,” Baker said. “We have no idea what they’re going to evaluate for putting in Nome, and of course, they would spend most of their time out on the water, they wouldn’t be just sitting at the dock. That’s not what they do. They’re meant to be on the water. They could alternate as a law enforcement vessel as well out on the dateline. So there’s there’s a lot of variables in that situation to depend on what the Coast Guard felt was the best use for that vessel in the Bering Strait, while being supported, recrewed and resupplied out of Nome.”

She implied that the U.S. Navy has not made any public commitments to use the port yet but would “more than likely” want to use it for resupplying and refueling instead of traveling all the way to Dutch Harbor.

Charlie Lean of Nome commented that China and Russia have been ramping up their fleets in the Arctic.

“To enforce the rules about fishing, about pollution and about just general maritime traffic, the U.S. needs to have a place to launch from or to resupply from, and currently that place is Dutch Harbor,” Lean said. “It’s very important that the northern port be available… It will become a very important place if there is an oil spill, if there is a shipwreck—and those things have happened.”

The Port of Nome has also been positioning itself to accept ship waste. Baker said that the International Maritime Organization’s Polar Code outlines that each port should be able to accept ship waste. “But due to the remoteness of our region, they established an exception to allow for a regional port reception facility,” Baker said. “And we have been raising our hands and waving the flag that we intend to be this region’s port reception facility.”

That means Nome would take black water, greywater, garbage and contaminated oil from ships, as well as regulated waste from the galleys of the foreign vessels.

“If we have the incinerator structure built, we can then accept those materials and properly incinerate them,” Baker said. She added that the incinerator building would be located at the landfill on Beam Road.

Steinacher brought up a concern about potential public health hazards related to waste brought off ships that come to Nome to be burned. “I do hope that it goes through a public review so that the public is buying into whatever it is we’re taking on to dispose of,” she said.

Baker answered by saying the whole process of transporting and incinerating these materials was federally regulated.

Austin Ahmasuk, the former marine advocate for Kawerak, later pointed out that there are often gaps in how state and federal regulations are enforced when it comes to maritime environmental hazards.

“There are numerous waste streams from ships that pose potential health impacts that are not enforced,” Ahmasuk said. “And what is frustrating is that ships can obtain waivers on how waste is regulated, all the while the federal government is reluctant to enforce environmental regulations.”

Ahmasuk said that the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have ignored his reports of violations. He said these regulatory bodies won’t enforce regulations “because of our remoteness…even when you give them evidence of a violation, whether it’s a vessel stack condition or one of the 40 waste streams that come from ships.”

A 2019 study that Ahmasuk and other authors published in the journal Marine Policy found that discharges of oil, sewage and greywater would increase as vessel traffic continues to grow. “The increasing pollution risk posed by vessels is causing great concern to Indigenous people in the region, whose culture and food security is based upon the harvest of living resources that are untainted by pollutants,” the paper concluded. During the Strait Science meeting, he compared each large vessel to a “mobile city.”

“Every kind of waste that you think a town generates, a ship generates,” he said. “And it is extremely difficult to get enforcement to handle these penalties.”