Three construction projects will start this fall and two of them will be finished this year.
Summer and fall are construction season in Dillingham. This year Suravek Road, Lake Road, and the airport will all see some updates. KDLG’s Allison Mollenkamp has more….
This fall will mark the third phase of the Wood River Bridge Construction. The Department of Transportation has hired Knik Construction to pave Suravek Road starting in early August.
Knik Construction also got the bid for the Lake Road construction project. That will cover the area between mile posts zero and five. Shannon McCarthy is a spokesperson for DOT.
“That will be doing, you know, digging out areas that maybe have some saturation or have sunk. And then repairing some of the bad spots, milling up the old pavement, clearing ditches, repaving obviously, replacing culverts as needed. And that with the Suravek road should be completed by fall of this year.”
Those two projects are federally funded and come with a combined price tag of $5.3 million.
Construction is also starting this fall at the Dillingham airport. QAP is the apparent low bidder in that project, and construction will begin in September.
This year QAP will be replacing an old culvert at the south end of the runway. The project will take five days and will temporarily shorten the runway. This will not start until after Alaska Airlines stops their jet service for the summer.
Next summer the project will continue with the repaving of the runway. That will require the airport to operate with the runway at half width so one half can be worked on at a time. That project is also federally funded and comes in at $7.9 million.
McCarthy says the projects will likely require some local labor.
“A group may bring, you know, some folks from the Anchorage area or Fairbanks area, wherever they’re located at, but then they often times will pick up equipment operators, et cetera et cetera.”
Knik is currently advertising three construction related positions in Dillingham on their website. QAP does not specify any positions available in Dillingham.
Contact the author at allison@kdlg.org or (907) 842-5281.