Special Projects Manager Jenny Carroll and Port Director Bryan Hawkins at the July 22 Homer City Council meeting updated council members on the Homer Harbor Expansion study. The study, a joint project of the city and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is intended to determine if it is technically feasible and financially viable to expand the harbor.

Additional funding for the harbor study has recently become available from state and federal sources. Planned and approved geophysical work that has been stalled is now scheduled to begin again in August, Carroll told council members.

Carroll shared a funding chart that showed the council that the city and harbor have gotten through the first part of the study related to scoping and coming up with alternatives and have completed the baseline conditions report. The chart also showed an estimated time frame of moving through the rest of the study until the expected study completion date of 2026.

Carroll noted that public information on the project’s progress is available on the website www.homerharborexpansion.com. The website also has a link available to provide public comment. “There’s been a lot of really rich and helpful community input on the project as we’ve gone along and that will continue as we go through the study,” she said.

Hawkins began his portion of the presentation by sharing the four basic expansion plan alternatives and the major plan components, including general navigation features and possible local service facilities.

Partway through Hawkins’ presentation, Mayor Ken Castner asked when the benthic component of the research was scheduled to occur. “That’s something that got inserted in a big way as an important contribution,” Castner said. The benthic component relates to the material at the bottom of the harbor basin.

Hawkins and Carroll explained that component of the study is a two-part process related to taking core samples of the harbor bottom; the benthic work will take place after the sub-bottom profiling.

Another upcoming component of the study is referred to as the fleet identification and economic survey. That is scheduled to begin in the fall of 2024.

Carroll provided a few more tentative timelines the community can expect for the harbor expansion. The tentatively selected plan is set to be delivered by June 2025 with a final agency decision in May 2026. “I’m sure we’ll get into a lot more detail about those stages as they come along; there will be more to be determined there, and explained on the process. But we’ll get there,” Carroll said.

Later in the meeting, council member Rachel Lord reported that she and council member Storm Hansen accompanied on a harbor tour Hawkins and Carroll with two visiting U.S. Army Corps of Engineers representatives from the Pacific Ocean Division and two people from the Washington, D.C., headquarters.

In related news, the city passed resolution 24-081, an amendment to Task Order 24-03. This resolution awards HDR $48,000 to include bathymetric mapping services for the harbor expansion general investigation.