Operators were using equipment to demolish the wooden pier stretching across the Dakota Creek Industries ship basin while U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen took a tour of the upland development and environmental cleanup project Wednesday, Aug. 6.

Larsen was accompanied by DCI Vice President Mike Nelson, Port of Anacortes Executive Director Bob Hyde, staff members and port commissioners Bill Short, Steve Hopley and Pat Mooney, and environmental project manager Marc Estvold. The port is working on the Pier 1 project in conjunction with DCI.

John Herzog, port consultant with Geo Engineers of Seattle, told Larsen the basin will eventually be dredged to minus 35 feet.

The embayment where the dredging will go on is divided into about six units. Workers have just gotten into the first unit, where the work is currently being done from the shore. Crews using cranes are removing the top layer of sediment and dumping it into trucks that take the material to a blocked off area on Pier 2.

There the material is dewatered and separated. Large rocks are sorted out, washed and will be reused as fill on the uplands.

The port is paying Waste Management to dispose of the finer material contaminated from years of industrial activity in the area.

Depending on the amount of daily productivity, about 11 Waste Management trucks leave Anacortes each day to dispose of the material at a site near Wenatchee, Herzog said.

Crews expect to get up to 20 trucks carrying out a total of 640 tons a day at the height of the project. The process will go on for six to seven weeks.

In the 15 years he’s worked on dredging projects, Herzog said he has never been involved on a job that used machines to separate the material. The project is going well, he said. Approximately three-fifths of the sediment will be disposed of while about two-fifths can be used as fill material.

“We’re almost cutting our disposal in half by sorting it out,” Herzog said.

Once the top layer is dredged, the port will begin testing the rest of the material to see if it is safe to be used as fill on the project as well. Otherwise it will have to be disposed of also.

As the material from the basin was dredged, cranes also working from the shoreline were lifting the old wooden pier up in chunks, while booms were set up to the north to catch any loose debris.

The dock and pilings were then being broken into smaller pieces so it doesn’t get reused, Herzog said. The pieces will eventually be disposed of by the Rabanco waste company.

The rest of the major redevelopment project includes removing another L-shaped dock to the west of the ship basin and its creosote-treated piles, building a new 40-foot wide, 350-foot long concrete pier with galvanized steel piles and installing a lateral rail transfer system on the uplands.

Much of the funding for the project is coming from DCI, while the port has put in about $3 million for permitting and other preliminary work and will put in $2 million more for environmental cleanup, matching a grant from Washington State Department of Ecology.

Washington’s Job Development Fund is contributing $5.6 million and Skagit County is putting in $500,000.

The project has not received federal funding. Larsen and U.S. Sen. Patty Murray helped secure $1.15 million for the project in a fiscal year 2007 funding bill, but those funds were “stripped,” Larsen said Wednesday.

Congress ended up passing a continuing resolution instead of separate appropriations bills, so none of the earmarks became law.

Larsen said he was glad to see the DCI project is going ahead anyway.

“It’s all about jobs,” Larsen said.

After the shipyard tour, Larsen, who is running for re-election this year, was headed to Island Hospital to see the renovations recently completed there, to Bow to attend the launch of the Puget Sound Food Network and then to the Skagit County Fair later in the afternoon.

Larsen said the number one issue he is hearing from constituents as he makes his rounds throughout the area is the slow economy. And it’s the number one job for Congress, he said.

To address it, Larsen said he hopes to help Congress pass a second economic stimulus package and deal with the rising cost of gas. In the short term that means releasing 70 million barrels of emergency crude oil out of the strategic petroleum reserve.

In the long term it means investing in renewable and alternative sources of energy, he said.