[BigV]

Senator Maria Cantwell, (D) WA, stuffed Senator Ted Stevens' (R) AK, attempt to "piggyback" a provision to permit drilling in ANWAR recently. (cite. There are numerous others, it was all over the news.) Now the payback for her impertinence has begun.

Alaskans want Seattle ship

By Alicia Mundy
Seattle Times Washington bureau

WASHINGTON — It's difficult to nab a 420-foot ship and its crew and whisk them 2,100 miles away. But U.S. Rep. Don Young and U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens are trying to do just that.

Alaska's lone congressman and its senior senator have been quietly pushing to move the Coast Guard cutter Healy from the Port of Seattle, where it has been based since its launch in 2000, to Anchorage.

...

The Coast Guard opposes the move because it would keep crew members away from their Seattle families an additional two months a year and would cost taxpayers an extra $8 million or more a year, according to an internal Coast Guard analysis. Neither Anchorage nor any other port in Alaska has a facility large enough to handle an icebreaker the size of the Healy.

...

I especially like this part:

But that same month, Young, a Republican, added one line to a 78-page bill on the Coast Guard and maritime transportation that would homeport the Healy in Anchorage, pending funding from the appropriations committees in Congress.

Young did not notify Puget Sound members of Congress or Coast Guard officers in Seattle, according to U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Bremerton. Dicks said the Coast Guard told him that "moving the Healy out of Seattle to Anchorage would be unnecessarily costly, and a terrible burden on the families."

...

For one thing, Anchorage's port would need dredging to handle the big ship, the analysis said.

It continued: "Relocating Healy would cause significant logistical difficulties with routine and emergency maintenance. Todd Pacific Shipyards is only one of two commercial shipyards (other in San Diego) which has the ability to haul out a vessel the size of Healy."

In addition, the Coast Guard recently spent more than $13 million on a pier-renewal project in Seattle, which also upgraded mooring capability and electrical power for the Healy, according to Todd Shipyards.

Payback...yeah.

U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, the Seattle Democrat whose district includes Todd Shipyards, said he knows why Young and Stevens want to move the ship.

"This is payback," McDermott said, referring to recent dust-ups between Alaska's top politicians and Washington lawmakers over issues such as Arctic drilling and oil shipments into Puget Sound. "Did you think it was anything else?"

Added McDermott, "It's not a done deal, but it's going to be hard to stop."