Alaska Ferry Maintenance Yard Under Construction In Ketchikan

The first phase of construction of a modern maintenance and repair shipyard for the Alaska State Ferries is presently underway in Ketchikan, in southeast Alaska.

The yard will have facilities required to perform annual maintenance and repair work on the fleet of nine Alaska Marine Highway ferries.

Work on the ferries will be performed during the off-season winter months, when the ferries are on their service runs in the straights and narrows of the Alaskan islands and between Seattle and Alaskan vacation spots.

The heart of the shipyard, says Jay Hassani, the state's project consultant, will be a 6,000-ton Synchrolift shiplift operating in conjunction with a unique ship transfer system from Pearlson Engineering on land. The transfer system is capable of translating ships sideways as well as longitudinally on a level bed at ground level. Other facilities will consist of a number of workshops, all housed under one roof, a warehouse, garage, and other support facilities.

A wastewater treatment plant will allow only clear effluent to be discharged to the adjacent waters and a grit removal system will be installed for solids generated during shipyard operations. Grit will be collected in trenches and grit collector pits and will be removed by trucks to landfill sites.

The operating authority will engage an operator, experienced in ship repair, to manage and operate the shipyard. The consulting engineer for the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities of the State of Alaska is Century/Quadra of Anchorage, and the contractor is Dawson Construction of Bellingham, Wash.