The Kenai Spur Highway will have to be relocated if the Alaska LNG liquefaction facility in Nikiski becomes a reality.
The Department of Transportation, Borough Mayor Mike Navarre, Nikiski law enforcement, as well as others met in Anchorage on Wednesday to discuss the process of doing that.
Persily: “The other thing you have to think about is not only how much traffic is on that road today for that stretch but how much will be there in 10 years, 20 years, you want to build for the future, not just for today’s traffic.”
Borough Oil and Gas Special Assistant Larry Persily said no draft or preferred routes have been identified yet but the agencies collaborating together will likely have community meetings with drafts sometime later in 2015.
The cost, schedule, community impacts, and environmental issues make the reroute a very complex decision, said Persily.
Persily: “Maybe the cheapest reroute would be a straight line but there’s a lot of reasons a straight line would not work, so begin to look at well I don’t want to plow through a subdivision if I don’t have to, I don’t want to destroy a lake if I don’t have to so we started trying to get a good map of everything that’s there now so we can figure out the best way around the map.”
