When it’s done, it’ll really just be a big pile of rocks. But for some Kenai residents, the nearly mile-long berm to be installed on the eroding Kenai River bluff means security. Construction will begin before the month’s end.
It’s windy and gray at the mouth of the Kenai River on Thursday afternoon. The sluggish water flows toward Cook Inlet, while planes fly overhead and seals poke their heads above the surface.
In two weeks’ time, barges will ferry in several tons of rock to the base of the Kenai River’s northern bluff. That’s where crews will spend the summer building a 5,000-foot protective rock berm.
Erosion eats away about three feet of the bluff every year. Over the decades, that’s put homes, businesses and the city’s historic Old Town at risk. And city officials have long said the crumbling cliff has stymied economic development in the area.
But at a community meeting in Kenai on Wednesday, project officials said relief is in sight. The meeting was moderated by Leif Hammes, with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“The point of this project is to keep those houses on the bluff, keep the buildings on the bluff, keep the sewer lines underground and not falling down the river, all those things,” he said. “So protect those structures, protect the infrastructure.”
The Corps is the agency behind the project. It awarded a roughly $20 million project contract to Western Marine Construction last year. As recently as 2022, the price tag was about $40 million. Alaska’s Congressional delegation secured $28 million for the project through the bipartisan infrastructure bill. The state chipped in another $6.5 million.
Jerrod Stafford is a project manager with the company. He says the first barge of rocks will arrive in Kenai on May 16 from Sand Point, in the Aleutians. They’ve been crushing rock for the project out there since last summer’s ribbon cutting ceremony. He says crews will work 12-hour days, seven days a week until the project is done while barges yo-yo between the Aleutians and Kenai.
“It may not look like a lot of progress at the beginning, but as we build both directions, it'll – I think somewhere in that 30- to 50-foot a day range,” he said.
The end of the berm is adjacent to local fish processors and the Port of Kenai. Cook Inlet’s commercial salmon fishers will have to navigate around the project to access those facilities. And the city’s popular personal use fishery draws hundreds of Alaska residents to the beach each July.
Norm Darch is the executive director of the Alaska Salmon Alliance. That’s a fisheries trade group representing the Kenai Peninsula’s seafood processors and commercial fishermen. He was one of multiple people at Wednesday’s meeting who’s concerned about how construction and summer fishing will interact.
“The main thing is communication between the construction project and the commercial fleet so they can adapt,” he said. “And, you know, like knowing when the material barge is coming into the river and having a little bit of a time frame where we can accommodate and be able to work around that.”
Both Darch and Kasilof driftnetter Dyer VanDevere are worried about boats running over barge mooring lines while going back and forth between the inlet and the processors at the mouth of the river.
“Access, in and out of the river, when all those big barges are in there? That's one of the big things – that and as the barges and and the tugs come up the inlet, not conflicting with our gear running over the gear out there,” he said.
Project Manager Jerrod Stafford says his team has adjusted its construction plans in response to some of the concerns. For example, he says crews were initially planning to start at the eastern end of the project, near the dock and processors.
“It sounded like, you know, in the beginning of the summer, it was go time for you guys, and being up close to you was problematic,” he said. “So we listen to that, and our plan is to start on the down river side and work our way up. So it'd be the end of the summer, early fall, before we're up close to your operation.”
If all goes according to plan, Hammes says work will wrap up around October. Construction is planned around the tides and winter ice. He says the berm comes with a one-year warranty from the Corps, but that Kenai residents should expect to benefit from the resulting stability for decades to come.
