INDIAN ISLAND — A $26 million project to upgrade missile magazines at Naval Magazine Indian Island that was originally planned this year is being delayed until 2013, the weapons storage base’s commanding officer said.
Cmdr. Mark Loose said that the Navy hopes instead to build a weapons truck holding lot this summer.
The parking lot project would cost about $15 million, and give the naval magazine a place to park trucks carrying weapons at the base, temporarily freeing up space on the munitions loading pier.
“A lot of this is going to depend on funding,” Loose said of the missile magazine and another project — an experimental tidal turbine planned off the southern end of Marrowstone Island that would feel power to the naval magazine’s administrative offices for a year.
“I don’t know if they have the money yet,” he said.
The turbine project, which is now pushed from this year to 2012, received $1.3 million in federal funding and needs $4 million, he said.
As proposed, the parking lot project would require grading, laying an aggregate base and pavement, along with a covered area for personnel.
The lot would measure about 100 feet by 200 feet, Loose said.
Loose credited Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Belfair, with helping to fund the ordnance truck holding lot project. The 6th District congressman, whose district includes the North Olympic Peninsula, is a member of three key appropriations subcommittees: Defense, Interior and Environment, and Military Construction/Veterans Administration.
Trucks deliver most of the ordnance to the Indian Island depot, which is kept for only a short time before being loaded onto ships.
The 4.5-mile-long island is west of Marrowstone Island, between the waters of Port Townsend Bay and Kilisut Harbor.
The ammunition depot is said to be the largest of its kind on the West Coast. It employs about 12 active duty members and 124 civil service and contract staffers.
Naval Magazine Indian Island was established in 1941 and provides operational ordnance to support Navy, joint, and allied forces,
The missile magazine would be upgraded from World War II-era standards to accommodate more 12- to 14-foot-long Tomahawk that are capable of traveling up to 1,500 miles, Loose said.
Other missiles and torpedoes would be stored in the magazines as well, he said.
The missiles today are typically used for more “surgical” attacks on enemy locations, using unmanned Predator aircraft to locate and attack using global positioning system navigation.
Given today’s style of warfare, the base carries fewer explosives. The difference is the missiles are larger, he said.
Tidal turbines
The sea-turbine alternative power-generating project would involve the sinking of mounted turbine blades of 16 feet in diameter and weighing more than four tons.
Three undersea turbines mounted on a 40-ton frame are proposed to be sunk off the southern end of Marrowstone Island as part of a Navy tidal energy kinetic hydropower system test in Admiralty Inlet.
The turbines will be anchored with the aid of gravity about 70 feet down in the strong currents off Nodule Point near the island’s south end.
A similar array was successfully tested in the East River of New York, N.Y., installed and operated by Verdant Power, a Navy contractor based in the same city. It powered a parking garage and grocery store there.
A contractor in late September installed a floating fence around the munitions loading pier on Port Townsend Bay.
The fence include about 6,000 linear feet of barriers and moorings with two large ship gates and two smaller service craft gates.
The floating fence was installed after Navy officials decided that a physical barrier was needed at installations around the world to provide additional protection after the attack on the USS Cole in 2001, Navy representatives said.
The attack in the Yemeni port of Aden killed 17 American sailors and two suicide bombers on a high speed boat that rammed the Cole.
The bombing injured 39 others.
Razor wire also was installed atop the chain-link fence bounding the base last summer, part of intensified security measures nationwide to secure military installations from terrorist attacks sine 2001.
The Navy announced in late 2005 that at least two of four converted guided missile-special operations submarines would use Naval Magazine Indian Island to load and unload non-nuclear weapons and to receive minor maintenance.
Since then, subs escorted by Coast Guard vessels have been quietly cruising in and out of Port Townsend Bay, tying up at the Naval Magazine pier for short periods of time.
The 2,716-acre Indian Island installation, fenced and guarded by civilian and military security forces on Indian Island, handles non-nuclear bombs, including Tomahawk missiles, bullets, torpedoes, shells and other ordnance.
Another major upgrade of the Naval Magazine’s facilities — a $20 million project to replace three Tomahawk cruise missile magazines — is also on schedule to begin construction in 2010, Murray said, and would be built as funding allows.
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.