The Makah Dock project in Neah Bay, WA has been recognized by the American Society of Civil Engineers as the 2015 COPRI Small Project Excellence Award Winner. The CORPI Excellence Awards recognize significant achievement through design concepts, use of new and existing analytical techniques, adaptive reuse of existing features and methods that minimize environmental impacts.
The Makah Indian Tribe used a combination of Tribal funds, an EDA grant and a NMTC allocation to reconstruct a badly damaged commercial fishing dock on tribal land in the Port of Neah Bay at the northwest tip of Washington state. Originally constructed in 1952 for use by commercial fishing vessels to offload their catch, the concrete and creosote dock had been in a state of significant disrepair and a recent failure had essentially shut it down for all activity. The dock is a major source of income for the Makah tribe, a community numbering fewer than 3,000 located on the remote coast of northwest Washington. It supports a diverse array of tribal and non-tribal businesses and a regional fish processing industry that includes some 90 different Small Businesses, mostly Minority Business Enterprises. The $13.7M project involved demolishing and removing approximately 504 creosote-treated timber piles along with the 120 foot long dock and warehouse buildings and replacing them with new concrete and steel pilings, new causeway, several loading cranes and a new dock building with remote controlled ice loading capability. Construction involved a significant amount of in-water work on this remote coastal site which endures extreme winter weather from the Pacific. Permitting required the coordination of no fewer than six different federal, state and local agencies to ensure the protection of the fragile marine ecosystem during the process.
The Makah Tribe, led by the Economic Development office, was responsible for developing the financing package for the project, which involved Tribal cash, an EDA grant and NMTC allocation from National Development Council partnering with Wells Fargo as the investor.
Congratulations to the Makah Tribe!