{"id":12165,"date":"2016-03-23T08:05:33","date_gmt":"2016-03-23T15:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/officials-to-keep-working-for-federal-loan-for-bridge\/"},"modified":"2016-03-23T08:05:33","modified_gmt":"2016-03-23T15:05:33","slug":"officials-to-keep-working-for-federal-loan-for-bridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/officials-to-keep-working-for-federal-loan-for-bridge\/","title":{"rendered":"Officials to keep working for federal loan for bridge"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014<\/strong> Alaska officials say they will keep working with federal authorities who turned down a state request for a more than $375 million loan for the Knik Arm bridge project.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Transportation said it was suspending its review of the proposal, citing issues with traffic and revenue projections. State officials said Monday that they were confident the funding would eventually be approved, the Alaska Dispatch News reported.<\/p>\n

\u201cGetting this loan isn\u2019t just a simple pass-fail, it\u2019s a negotiation,\u201d said Judy Dougherty, director of the Knik Arm crossing project. \u201cSo we were not surprised by that letter.\u201d<\/p>\n

The federal government has rejected the project several times since state officials first sent a letter of interest in 2007, with the most recent coming last month. The bridge would connect Anchorage to land near Point MacKenzie in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs currently structured, your plan of finance would not have sufficient coverage to withstand stress testing and meet DOT\u2019s requirements,\u201d Shoshana Lew, chief financial officer of the federal transportation department, said in a letter dated Feb. 9. \u201cTherefore, DOT is suspending review of your current (letter of intent) and plan of finance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opponents of the bridge held a news conference in Anchorage on Monday to release Lew\u2019s letter and further challenge the state\u2019s estimates for growth in the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis latest rejection proves once and for all that Alaska doesn\u2019t have a viable financial plan for the bridge,\u201d project critic Jamie Kenworthy said.<\/p>\n

He said the state should cut the funding for the project in the proposed operating budget and reallocate the nearly $160 million already approved for it.<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman for Gov. Bill Walker referred questions to the state Department of Transportation.<\/p>\n

DOT spokesman Jeremy Woodrow said the state would make an announcement if the loan was ultimately rejected but said Lew\u2019s letter didn\u2019t cancel the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are confident the loan will be secured,\u201d Woodrow said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014 Alaska officials say they will keep working with federal authorities who turned down a state request for a more than $375 million loan for the Knik Arm bridge project. The U.S. Department of Transportation said it was suspending its review<\/a> of the proposal, citing issues with traffic and revenue projections. State officials said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-12165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12165"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=12165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}