$19M contract for Ketchikan port goes to Ahtna

Revitalizing construction will provide new homeport for NOAA survey ship Fairweather

The NOAA ship Fairweather. (Aug. 17, 2012) Photo courtesy of the National Ocean Service

An $18.7 million sole source contract to revitalize the port at Ketchikan so that the NOAA survey ship Fairweather can be housed there has been awarded to Ahtna Infrastructure & Technologies LLC, a subsidiary of the Alaska Native regional corporation Ahtna Inc.

The Fairweather, which was commissioned by the U.S. Coast Guard and Geodetic Survey in October 1968, is currently homeported at NOAA’s marine operations center in Newport, Oregon, and has occasionally utilized the Coast Guard base at Ketchikan for short port calls.

The contract calls for the Anchorage-based firm to make major improvements at Ketchikan including construction of a new office building large floating pier, steel access trestle and updated power and water utility systems to service visiting ships.

The project is to begin with removal of the existing pier and related structures and be ready for use by December 2022, including the ability to accommodate other visiting NOAA vessels and other government vessels.

Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Ketchikan, hailed the project, which has been in the works for over 20 years. “This will bring jobs and development to our region in Ketchikan, which has been so hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic and loss of tourism and other business revenues,” he said.

Federal law sponsored by the late Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, in 2001 required that the Fairweather be homeported in Ketchikan, where NOAA owns uplands and an old, unusable dock, Stedman’s office noted. In 2012, Stedman sponsored a $7.5-million state general funds appropriation measure to the Ketchikan Borough for a new NOAA homeport facility. In 2018, Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, added language to the U.S. Coast Guard Reauthorization Act allowing NOAA to accept and spend non-federal funds to build a new dock for NOAA at Ketchikan. Then last year the Ketchikan Borough transferred some $7 million to NOAA for the agency to take over the project and build the dock.

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The Fairweather is a hydrographic survey vessel used to map the ocean in support of safe navigation and commerce. The crew of officers, technicians and scientists aboard the Fairweather gather data used by NOAA cartographers to create and update nautical charts.

The Fairweather was constructed at the Jacksonville Shipyards in Florida and christened in March 1967. It is named after 15,325-foot Mt. Fairweather. Most of the mountain lies within Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in the city and borough of Yakutat, though the summit borders Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park in British Columbia.

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