7,500 pickup truck loads a day move for loop

PORT MACKENZIE—Construction work advances at Port MacKenzie on a 1.5 mile bimodal loop, one of the longest rail and road loops in Alaska for 100-car trains and semis carrying bulk materials.

View the 3 minute video below.

Beginning in April, 24 new construction jobs were created at Port MacKenzie. Recently nine scrapers, two dozers, a grader, water truck, front-end loader, excavator, among other heavy equipment were working at the site.  Workers have been cutting down a 55-foot ridge, while raising and expanding a pad with the removed soil. Some 15,000 yards of soil are moved each day. That’s 7,500 pickup truck loads a day. Combined, the pad work this summer and last October will have moved nearly 1.6 million cubic yards of soil. The 55-foot ridge still needs to be cut back some 200 feet. About 650,000 more cubic yards of soil will be moved. This job will possibly be bid out in the fall.

Last summer 1.9 million cubic yards of soil was moved for the haul road and part of the loop.

The final Environmental Impact Study for the Port MacKenzie Rail Extension was issued in March. The project awaits the Record of Decision. Located in the Port uplands, the project is called the bimodal bulk facility. A haul road and loop anticipate the coming rail.

Photos by Patty Sullivan/MSB top left: Scrapers work the site. The line of scrapers at top of photo is where the toe of the slope of a 55-foot ridge used to be.

Photo right: The 55-foot ridge behind the scraper will be pushed back 200 feet in another bid possibly in October.

View the short video on the bimodal project at Port MacKenzie here.

Video by Stefan Hinman,
Media Design Specialist.
Photos and radio update by
Patty Sullivan,
Public Affairs MAT-SU Borough.

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