DOT commissioner provides insight to ore haul | Local News

In an interview with the Daily News-Miner, Alaska Department of Transportation Ryan Anderson said he understands the topic has been a controversial topic, but from DOT’s point of view, the trucks are allowed to use the roads just like any other commercial traffic.

“We’re working through this because as a state agency these things come at us and we’re kind of bound by laws and regulations,” Anderson said. “We have attorneys and are interpreting and we’re moving forward in a certain way, recognizing that, you know, there’s other thoughts out there on this.”

A new organization called Alaska Committee For Safe Communities (CSC) filed a lawsuit against DOT last month, asking for an Alaska Superior Court judge to grant an injunction forcing the state agency to halt the ore haul.

CSC claims the ore haul should not have proceeded until the completion of a corridor action analysis and corresponding safety improvements. Anderson said the issue remains a matter of pending litigation, but doesn’t believe DOT can halt the planned ore haul.

“That will get determined in court,” Anderson said.

However, he noted DOT’s stance to date is that Kinross meets all the requirements for a legal load and doesn’t require a permit.

Anderson noted that DOT’s commercial vehicle enforcement inspectors have inspected the large trucks, which are already operating on trial runs.

“[The vehicle enforcement officers] are the ones that have to go out there and say ‘OK, this meets the statutes, this meets the regulations,’” Anderson said. “And they’re also the ones that are giving the tickets when they don’t, and stopping them.”

Anderson said he’s been told the Kinross trucks have passed DOT’s level one inspection.

“Level one’s actually the most stringent,” Anderson said.

Inspections, he added, depend on a number of factors, including “what the company is looking for.”

“A lot of times we’ll do it, like in this instance, when someone brings a new vehicle to Alaska and they’ll request it and that’s the smart thing to do,” Anderson said.

Another level of compliance comes from one of three weigh stations on the corridor: One near Tok, one on the Richardson Highway just north of Badger Road, and the Steese Highway station near Fox.

All three, he said, are deliberately never open at the same time.

“The truckers are never quite sure when they’re gonna get stopped,” Anderson said.

Anderson disputed that the ore hauls are unprecedented and noted that longer trucks are used on Alaska highways that can reach as much as 125 feet, mostly which operate on the Parks Highway.

Anderson added that the planned Willow oil development project on the North Slope will bring additional traffic through Fairbanks in the coming years as ConocoPhillips will need to build infrastructure, including winter roads.

“They’re gonna be permitted loads, but I’m hearing, you know, 30 to 40 a day additional over what’s already going up on the slope,” Anderson said.

Infrastructure challenges

DOT has plans to replace five bridges over the next five to six years, including the Steese Mile Point 5 bridge at Chena Hot Springs Road and the Richardson Highway Flood Control Bridge. The Richardson Bridge cannot currently handle fully loaded ore trucks, requiring the commercial traffic to use a bypass.

Kinross will reduce its weight load on the trucks in order to use the bridges, the DOT commissioner said.

“There is also a bypass at the flood project bridge, and that’s something a lot of truckers use,” Anderson said. “Whenever these big, permitted loads would come up, they would use the bypass and they actually drive down onto the flood project plane there, and then they drive back up.”

Use of the bypasses have been a constant discussion point for an independent technical advisory committee looking at the corridor action analysis. A handful of committee members noted using the bypass would slow down traffic on the highway until the truck accessed the bypass and left the highway.

The Steese Bridge faces similar limits, and the Manh Choh trucks will be required to use a bypass through the Chena Hot Springs Road roundabouts.

“We don’t differentiate between the type of commercial activities on the highway,” Anderson said. “If Kinross is proposing an activity and another industry is proposing an activity, we couldn’t say ‘Kinross, you can’t use the bridge.’ We can get in big trouble with the feds because it’s an interstate road.”

DOT has also planned to install passing lanes along the corridor to accommodate slower traffic. Work on Alaska Highway passing lanes already started, but the Richardson Highways won’t start until 2024.

“When we use federal funding to construct, we do have to go through a pretty rigorous process that can take anywhere between two and nine years,” Anderson said. He added that items such as the passing lanes have been on the books for more than a decade, but funding has only recently become available due to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act.

“When we look at those bridge projects, it’s going to be more than five years to get through all that sequencing and there’s no doubt we’ve got some challenges,” Anderson said. “This stuff is gonna take us a little bit of time.”