Bertha, “the world’s largest tunnel boring machine,” according to KOMOnews.com, is again digging its way under downtown Seattle. The site reports that a longshoremen union opposed the work with a picket line. The $80 million machine began digging July 30 on a nearly 2-mile, 58-foot diameter tunnel. The tunneling will take 14 month and “is part of the state’s overall $3.1 billion plan to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, the double deck highway along the downtown Seattle waterfront.”
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In Virginia, the Gloucester County board of supervisors asked for help for Chesapeake Bay fishermen and got it. The DailyPress.com reports that “an aging pier jutting into the Perrin River at a public landing has been rehabilitated and given an upgrade.” The county board asked the Middle Peninsula Chesapeake Bay Public Access Authority to “take a more active role in supporting the commercial seafood industry,” the news site reports, and the agency responded.
The need for the work followed the closure of Cook’s Seafood three years ago. The project relied on cooperation from the state Department of Transportation transferring ownership of land and the state coastal management program providing funds, along with private sector contributions.
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Old ferries don’t sink, they just go hippie. That’s the word from SouthCoastNews.com. The New York Post noticed the ferry Schamonchi at a dock in Brooklyn, columnist Steve Urbon wrote. It had served as “the slow 130-foot ferry that once ran between New Bedford and Martha’s Vineyard, 17 bucks for a round trip,” Urbon wrote.
For years, “hipsters, mostly artists, have been using it as a crash pad, a commune, with electrical cables running from the dock and makeshift plumbing below decks,” Urbon reported. “They’re living on it, in makeshift cabins, with plenty of the 6,000 square feet of space on four decks available for studios, parties and even a Jacuzzi on the aft top deck.”
The New York City Fire Department has ordered it vacated. See it while it’s there, on Google Earth at 190 Morgan Ave., Brooklyn.
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A man who wants to build a replica of a colonial era schooner on the Brunswick, Ga., waterfront believes the project will help the local economy. The Florida Times-Union reports that Joe Lawson, retired from sales and marketing, is seeking the city’s cooperation “and a few million dollars.”
Lawson does not lack confidence, though.
“This is not pie in the sky. This is doable,” he told the city commission, whose permission he needs to use a city waterfront parcel. The 56-foot vessel he plans to build “would draw middle school students and teachers from 31 counties in southeast Georgia along with their friends and family members. While those visitors are in town, they’re bound to spend some money, he said.”
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The city of Adak, Alaska, is helping the return of fish processing, according to the Bristol Bay Times. The newspaper reports that the city is selling processing equipment it purchased at auction which had been owned by bankrupt Adak Seafood, LLC. The equipment will be owned by a newly-formed company, Adak Cod Cooperative, LLC. The new owners are former Bristol Bay salmon processors.
“The city purchased the assets at an Anchorage auction with the sole intent of keeping the assets in place as a turnkey operation in order to facilitate the reopening of the plant for the January 2014 Pacific Cod season,” according to the paper.