Update:   On March 31, 2008, Trustees for Alaska – on behalf of Cook Inletkeeper, the Alaska Center for the Environment and the Alaska Public Interest Research Group – sent a 44 page letter to the Army Corps of Engineers, documenting faulty information and data used to justify the massive expansion of the Port of Anchorage.  Inletkeeper supports responsible Port expansion. However, this project is far from reasonable.  For one thing, the price tag has doubled in the past several years, and now expansion proponents are calling it a $700 million project (though as construction costs rise, it’s plausible final costs will reach $1 billion).  Funding for the project, however, remains murky, and it’s likely that large federal earmarks, combined with additional taxpayer-backed bonds, will be needed to build the expansion.  Additionally, the project received a cursory review, and the preferred alternative was selected without a fair and open discussion on the relative costs and benefits of other alternatives.  In fact, the relevant federal conservation agencies – the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Marine Fisheries Service – all opposed the preferred alternative.

Click here to see the March 31 letter to Mayor Begich and the Army Corps

Click here to see supporting documents for the March 31 letter   

Click here to read Anchorage Daily News article from March 23, 2008 about the Port expansion

Official Port of Anchorage Intermodal Expansion Project Webpage