Unalaska, AK – Unalaska's plans to build a small boat harbor on Amaknak Island have suffered a major setback.

City officials were informed yesterday that breakwaters for the proposed Carl E. Moses Small Boat Harbor didn't make the list of Army Corps of Engineers projects that would be funded by Congress in fiscal year 2007. The city was expecting $14 million from Congress for the construction of breakwaters for the harbor, a necessary first step in the project and one that the Corps was slated to build.

Funding for the project was at the top of city officials' wish list when they went to Washington to lobby Alaska's congressional delegation in September, and Mayor Shirley Marquardt said they were confident that it would come through.

"Congress has approved the project already, the Corps has approved the project, all the environmental permits are in place, the city's money is in place, and the Corps strongly supports the project," she said.

The Senate's appropriations bill for 2007 included $10 million for the breakwaters. But when the Senate and the House failed to agree on an appropriations bill, the Corps was given a lump sum to fund all its work in the coming year, rather than specific dollar amounts for specific projects. Stephen Boardman, chief of the Corps' Civil Project Management Branch in Alaska, said that with a lot of ideas on the table nationwide, the small boat harbor simply didn't make the final list.

"Unfortunately, there were more projects than there were dollars available," he said.

Boardman said that the fact that the breakwaters construction wasn't already underway, and that the Corps wasn't prepared to ask for funding for the project beyond 2007, were factors in the decision.

Although the city has secured most of the funding it needs for the first phase of construction for the harbor itself, Marquardt said that without the breakwaters in place, the rest of the project is effectively on hold.

"We have to have breakwaters--we simply have to protect whatever we build," she said. "If we go ahead and take the chance and have improvements and vessels there without protection, we're taking a huge risk."

Unalaska's next shot at federal funding for the breakwaters will be Congress's fiscal year 2008 budget. The city hopes the state legislature will extend a $5 million bond it issued to the city five years ago for the project, which expires in June. A bill sponsored by state Sen. Lyman Hoffman would do that; it will be taken up by the Senate Finance Committee this session.