Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Alaska Governor maintains Prince Rupert Terminal renovation will go ahead ... at some time.

While the January bid process for repairs to the infrastructure of the Alaska Marine Highway Terminal in Prince Rupert is now dead, the project itself should come back to life at some point.

That at least according to some news reports out of Juneau, which suggest that Alaska Governor Dave Walker is hopeful that that the different levels of government will eventually come to an agreement on the Buy America controversy that brought the renovation plans to halt last week.

The Juneau Empire featured an item that outlined how the State of Alaska believes that the current state of the terminal would allow for up to five years of operation, though they are looking into the details of the lease agreement to see if there are any obligations or timeline required to have those renovations in place.

The article goes on to explain that the State plans to re-engage with Canadian officials at some point in the next year, allowing for the current break to serve as a cooling off period it would seem.

Ketchikan's Public Radio station KRBD also had some background on the current state of the ferry renovation project, with the Governor highlighting the Prince Rupert Terminal as important to what the state does as part of its Alaska Marine Highway System.

The tone of commentary regarding the Ferry terminal renovation is a little more subdued from that of last week.

Last Thursday we outlined on the blog, how the Juneau Empire in an editorial piece had called for the Ferry service to end its port call in Prince Rupert.

The comments coming out of the Governor's office of last week would seem to suggest that patience and discussion will be the path chosen and not the approach as recommended by the newspaper's editorial page writers.

You can review the full timeline of events regarding the controversy through our archive pages from 2105 and 2014 found here.

Cross posted from the North Coast Review

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