Alaska Dispatch News
By: Devin Kelly
A key contractor in the botched Port of Anchorage expansion project has settled with the city of Anchorage for $3.75 million, clearing what one city attorney described as a roadblock to other settlements in the case.
Integrated Concepts and Research Corp., a subsidiary of the Virginia-based engineering and technical services corporation VSE Corp., filed a settlement notice Thursday in U.S. district court
ICRC was the construction project manager in the expansion project, which cost more than $300 million and left Anchorage with a dock that couldn't be used.
This is the fourth settlement reached in the port litigation, but ICRC is at the center of the web of contractors. The U.S. Department of Transportation Maritime Administration contracted with ICRC as the project manager, which then procured the contracts with all the construction and design companies that worked on the project, said Robert Owens, assistant Anchorage city attorney.
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https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/anchorage/2017/01/26/anchorage-reaches-settlement-with-key-contractor-in-port-lawsuit/
Associated Press
Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz plans to ask state lawmakers to fund nearly $300 million in improvements for the Port of Anchorage and to make several law changes designed to give local governments more financial flexibility.
Berkowitz submitted his legislative request Friday to the city’s assembly. The document includes a list of funding items and bills that Anchorage is seeking from the state Legislature, The Alaska Public Radio Network reported.
The one major capital budget project included on the list is the $298 in funding for the Port of Anchorage, which city officials say is beneficial to the entire state and in need of repair. The request comes after Berkowitz tried to get lawmakers to add $290 million for the port improvement project to the statewide bond package last year.
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/dec/14/anchorage-seeks-money-for-port-financial-flexibili/
Alaska Public Media
By: Zachariah Hughes
In a departure from big wish lists of the past, Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz’s legislative request has only one capital budget project. The administration is also pushing for a number of law changes designed to give local governments more financial flexibility.
Berkowitz submitted his legislative program to the city’s Assembly on Friday. It’s a menu of funding items and bills the municipality hopes to see from the Legislature in the upcoming session.
This year’s legislative program is just seven pages – six if you don’t count the title page. The small size and focused scope are intentional steps toward a new funding relationship between Anchorage and the state, according to Ona Brause, the mayor’s deputy chief of staff.
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http://www.alaskapublic.org/2016/12/12/anchorage-pushing-for-port-more-flexible-finances-from-legislature/
Alaska Journal of Commerce
By: Elwood Brehmer
The defendants in the Municipality of Anchorage’s lawsuit over its failed port expansion project have banded together to demand the city’s claim for monetary damages be tossed because they contend it has yet to specify what exactly it seeks to recoup.
Attorneys for Anchorage-based PND Engineers filed a joint summary judgment motion in U.S. District Court of Alaska Nov. 21 on behalf of co-defendants Integrated Concepts and Research Corp. and GeoEngineers, a Seattle-based firm that consulted on the long-dead project.
The group alleges the municipality’s damages claim contains numerous “fatal flaws” that will keep it from being successful at trial, which is currently scheduled to begin next April.
Chief among their arguments is that Anchorage has yet to detail who owes it money, and how much, in its lawsuit filed more than three years ago.
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http://www.alaskajournal.com/2016-12-01/port-defendants-argue-anchorage-has-no-claim-state-federal-project-funds#.WEeDmPkrLtV
Alaska Journal of Commerce
By: Elwood Brehmer
Anchorage has settled out of court for $12.6 million with three subcontractors in the city’s failed port expansion project while a lawsuit against other players in the complex drama continues.
Most recently on Oct. 19, Terracon Consultants Inc. and the Municipality of Anchorage filed a motion in U.S. District Court of Alaska notifying the court that Terracon had agreed to pay the municipality $1.95 million.
Terracon reviewed a 2008 evaluation report of the Open Cell Sheet Pile dock design that the municipality claims was faulty. The settlement document notes that CH2M, which filed a third-party complaint against Terracon in November 2014, has not filed a claim of fault or breach of contract by Terracon.
On Aug. 30, Quality Asphalt Paving, or QAP, agreed to pay the municipality $5.15 million to resolve its role in the lawsuit.
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http://www.alaskajournal.com/2016-10-27/anchorage-settles-126m-port-contractors#.WBqK7vkrLtV
Alaska Journal of Commerce
By: Elwood Brehmer
The global engineering firm CH2M is almost out of Anchorage’s lawsuit to settle liability for the municipality’s failed port expansion project after a Monday federal court ruling.
U.S. District Court of Alaska Judge Sharon Gleason found the Municipality of Anchorage has little financial recourse against the company that, at least initially, seemed to play a very small role in updating the aging docks at the Port of Anchorage.
Gleason wrote in a 31-page order that the municipality cannot link CH2M — which through a company it purchased was a consulting subcontractor in the layered and complex project — to the damages it has since incurred.
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http://www.alaskajournal.com/2016-11-01/all-one-claim-against-ch2m-dismissed-port-lawsuit#.WBqJ-PkrLtV
KTUU News
By: Beth Verge
For the Port of Anchorage, and the team fixing it, the biggest challenge may be Father Time: The POA's docks are supported by 1423 steel piles - posts that hold the whole thing up - which are deteriorating so badly that many have lost up to three quarters of their original thickness.
"They're racing to get these things on and bolted up, so they're secure before the tide gets so high that we can't work and level," said Bernie Rosenberger, Diving Operations Manager for Global Diving and Salvage Alaska.
A team that includes professional divers was charged with the task of repairing some of the Port of Anchorage piles with jackets this year, like many years before. They've been bolting two different types of curved steel sheets on the piles in order to help alleviate some of the damage to them. One is a friction coupler, which encapsulates the pile, and the other goes around the pile but leaves a space which is later filled with concrete.
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http://www.ktuu.com/content/news/Crews-race-to-make-repairs--399520291.html
Dredging News Online
The US Army Corps of Engineers-Alaska District has received a Section 408 permission request from the Port of Anchorage to modify an existing federal dredging project as part of the Anchorage Port Modernization Programme.
The port’s programme consists of five phases to replace and modernize existing docks. The request for Section 408 permission is for the North Extension Stabilization, Step 1, which will be completed as part of Phase 1.
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http://www.sandandgravel.com/news/article.asp?v1=23445
Alaska Dispatch News
By: Alex DeMarban
A second contractor has settled with the city in a lawsuit over the bungled Port of Anchorage expansion, with general contractor Quality Asphalt Paving agreeing to pay just over $5.1 million to end its financial liability in the case.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason ordered the company released from liability in the city's sprawling lawsuit against multiple contractors involved in a failed project that ultimately cost more than $300 million.
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http://www.adn.com/business-economy/2016/10/18/city-settles-with-second-contractor-in-lawsuit-over-port-expansion/
Alaska Dispatch News
By: Jeannette Lee Falsey
With Alaska's economy sluggish, the volume of goods brought into the state by its two major shipping lines is on the decline.
The moderate shrinkage of imports has competitors Matson and Totem Ocean Trailer Express, known as TOTE, working harder to defend market share while continuing investment in a small regional economy where growth over the next few years is not in the forecast.
The companies deposit their cargoes side-by-side at the port of Anchorage every Tuesday and Saturday. Crossing the North Pacific from the port of Tacoma, they deliver the goods that make Alaska livable for hundreds of thousands of residents: fleece vests, skis, dog collars, paint, toothpaste, guns and butter.
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https://www.adn.com/business-economy/2016/10/14/as-economy-loses-steam-alaskas-major-shippers-report-import-declines/
