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Meetings scheduled to discuss Dillingham Manokotak road

Bristol Engineering Service Corporation

The possible route and impacts of a road between Dillingham and Manokotak will be discussed at a a series of meetings at the end of the month. 

Isaac Pearson from Bristol Engineering Services Corporation worked on the feasibility study and says the planners and project sponsors took a holistic approach when analyzing the route. 

"We were not only looking at the routing, but at the potential, cultural, and economic impacts that a road between the communities might have."

The draft version was presented to the communities last month. It looked into five different routes for the road with costs ranging from 50 to over 100 million dollars. 

The cost difference did not depend on the length of the route, but on the access to resources and the amount of bridges required. 

"The northern routes were considerably longer and they did have a lower price tag since they were closer to material resources," Pearson says. "They do do have more bridges, most have two bridges on the northern routes and they were significantly smaller which reduced the overall cost of the road."

Manokotak, a community of about 500 people, is separated by 25 miles to Dillingham, a community of about 2,500 people. Currently residents travel mainly by air, but also by boat and snow machine when conditions allow. 

Meetings will be held in Clarks Point and Manokotak on March 29th and in Dillingham on March  30th. 

Contact the author at lawrence@kdlg.org or 907-842-5281