By Sue Bergstrom for VCN –
Representatives of the City of Valdez, R&M Consultants, ARCADIS U.S. Inc. and the public, gathered at the base of Hotel Hill on Friday, April 24th to officially begin the long-awaited Valdez Harbor Expansion Project. Mayor Larry Weaver, members of the Valdez City Council, representatives of the Port of Valdez as well as local contractors and representatives of the Construction Manager, R&M Consultants, and ARCADIS U.S. Inc. donned hard hats and sometimes orange vests and picked up gold-painted shovels to symbolically shovel dirt at the site of the new project. Mayor Weaver then climbed into a loader to actually move some earth, accompanied by cheers from the crowd.
Ports and Harbor Director, Diane Kinney acted as Emcee, speaking first and then introducing the other speakers; Mayor Weaver, who talked about the many years City of Valdez had been working on doing the harbor expansion, City Ports and Harbor Commission Chairman Mark Swanson talked about the number of people who had devoted themselves to seeing it happen over the years, including former mayors and council members. Then he and Mayor Weaver took up their shovels to start the succession of groups to pose behind a small pile of dirt and in front of a project map.
Alaskan engineering firm R&M Consultants were contracted to design the new harbor. ARCADIS U.S. Inc. will be managing the project.
The City of Valdez web site states that construction will be ongoing throughout the summer from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm, potentially seven days a week and that it is expected to disrupt normal traffic patterns and access to the harbor for most of the summer. A public hearing will be held at an unspecified date this spring to share details of the traffic plan with local businesses, neighbors and harbor users to try to minimize the impact.
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