Posted on January 9, 2026
The best option for Wrangell would be if the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredged the downtown harbor basin before the borough spends a $25 million federal grant to install new floats and pilings, but that timeline does not look likely.
The Army Corps, which is responsible for the majority of dredging projects nationwide, has at least a two-year backlog of work, Borough Manager Mason Villarma reported after meeting with agency officials last month in Washington, D.C.
And even that timeline depends on congressional appropriations, he said.
Wrangell in 2024 received a $25 million federal grant to pay for replacing most of the downtown harbor floats, installing new pilings and improving parking. Rather than delay the project, borough officials are working through options to get started on the long-needed harbor rebuild.
Options include paying for the minimum amount of dredging needed to proceed with the harbor work, then seeking reimbursement from the Army Corps; or maybe installing the new floats so that they could easily be removed temporarily when the federal agency has funding for a full basin dredging.
“The reality is they (the Army Corps) is going to be doing the work and it’s going to take some time,” Villarma said.
Harbormaster Steve Miller reported to the port commission last month that one option would be for the borough to front the money for at least some dredging, then asking the Corps for reimbursement.
“We will be doing some dredging with or without the Corps,” Amber Al-Haddad, the borough’s capital projects director, said in a late-December interview.
“We’ve been in a bit of a holding pattern,” waiting on the Corps, she said. “We have to move forward.”
The federal money for the harbor project must be obligated before the end of this year, which means environmental reviews must be completed so that the borough and U.S. Department of Transportation, which approved the $25 million, can sign a grant agreement.
The grant will fund an estimated 90% of the project cost, with the work to include an overhaul of the Inner Harbor, Reliance and Standard Oil floats, new fire suppression systems, pilings and new parking.
The borough will seek funding from the state’s harbor matching program to cover the amount beyond the federal grant, Villarma reported last summer.
Dredging is needed because a lot of silt flows into the harbor from the creek at the back of the basin, Miller explained.
“The Inner Harbor is actually the worst where that creek comes out,” he said. “The entire area needs to be dredged. … All of it is bad.”
The last full dredging of the harbor basin was in the 1970s, Miller said, though the borough did some “spot dredging” under the Inner Harbor floats in 2005.
Reliance also is a problem, he said, noting “anytime there is a negative tide” it goes dry and the dock can sit down in the mud.
The borough this winter will solicit for a design firm for the harbor rebuild, with the contract to include preparing environmental review material for the U.S. DOT Maritime Administration, Al-Haddad said.
The Army Corps will need to do its own environmental review for dredging, including sampling the sediment that would be picked up and moved somewhere else, she said.
“The dredge material will be sampled and identified for its full characteristics,” to determine if it can be used as fill for the proposed new harbor parking lot on Shakes Street (next to the Marine Bar), Al-Haddad said. “This is our preferred option.”
Other options include dumping the dredged material in deep water, or using it for creating a new monofil to hold organic debris such as root wads, tree limbs, clean wood, dirt, rocks and other debris from construction sites.
The assembly in March approved starting the permitting process for a new debris site, just across the driveway from the current dump site on Ishiyama Drive next to the shooting range. The 24-year-old monofil is full, and the borough stopped accepting new material last year.
The harbor grant is part of a $1.5 billion U.S. Department of Transportation program under the Biden administration’s 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
