At their Monday city council meeting, the Westport City Council voted to approve a long-term lease agreement with SEALink Networks, Inc. (SNI), for use of 3.5 acres at the Westport Water Plant.

The city council voted 4-1 to approve the lease agreement during the first reading on March 10, and 4-1 again Monday, with Councilor Louis Summers voting “no” each time. Westport municipal code required a second reading.

SEALink, which is owned by Alaska Power & Telephone Company, plans to develop Westport as a submarine fiber optic cable landing site with a landing station in the ​​Cohasset Beach South area.

“It gives us an opportunity to enter into a public-private partnership that’s going to benefit the city for a couple of reasons. It’s going to be able to create some revenue streams out of some land that was otherwise unused and undesignated for any future use,” said Westport Mayor Ed Welter. “In addition, it’s going to provide an opportunity for there to be some more tech jobs in the city of Westport. Estimates from SEALink is that when they’re fully up and running there will be 12-24 tech and support jobs for that facility. It gives us an opportunity to support rural and coastal towns in Alaska by helping provide them with a redundant fiber optic network.”

A memo from Mayor Welter to the city council heading into the March 10 meeting read, in part, “The initial lease is for a 30-year term. The city will receive $.50/square foot/year as rent. The rent will increase by 10% every five years. After 30 years, the city will have received approximately $2.9 million in revenue from the lease agreement.”

The lease agreement indicates authorized use of the land includes, “Construction, installation, operation, maintenance, repair, modification, upgrade, and/or replacement of cable landing stations and related facilities and operations to be developed in conjunction with certain subsea telecommunications and cabling equipment projects.”

“I commend Councilman Summers for his dedication to his position, he is very concerned about the impacts of undersea cables on the fishing fleet,” Mayor Welter said. “I don’t know if there is enough data to support that transoceanic cables have a negative impact on the fishing fleet.”

According to the Kingfisher Information Service — Offshore Renewable & Cable Awareness project (KIS-ORCA), “The most serious risk affecting fishermen when fishing in areas where submarine cables exist, is to snag their gear on a cable. Submarine cables are initially buried on installation, although may become exposed due to current and seabed erosion. It is therefore best to avoid fishing in such areas, if at all possible. Operators of subsea cables are aware that fishing does take place in the vicinity of cables, however, it must be stressed how important it is to take extreme caution when doing so. A vessel and its crew could become in danger if a vessel attempts to lift a cable from the seabed.”

The first undersea telegraph cable was laid in the early 1850s and connected England and France. The first transatlantic telegraph cable connected North America and Europe in 1866.

“They have been laying transatlantic cables for probably over a hundred years,” Mayor Welter said. “Other than the initial construction which is going to require some directional boring and some road work, some noise to the surrounding neighborhood, it’s a relatively low-impact project. It’s not going to cause a lot of additional traffic.”

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “The laying and placement of submarine cables require coordination, and the installation, maintenance, repair, and removal of cables in certain areas may have an adverse impact on cables already in place, as well as on fishing, navigation, the marine environment, and other valuable resources such as historic shipwrecks or areas of geologic significance.”

Alaska Power & Telephone Company (AP&T) acquired SEALink in late January and said via press release, “(SEALink) is currently developing a cable landing station for subsea cables in Westport, Washington. These cables, also known as submarine cables, are fiber optic cables laid on the ocean floor and used to transmit data between continents or across large bodies of water, including providing connectivity for Alaska to the lower 48 states. … SNI selected Westport due to its desirability as a cable landing point and expects the planned design will have the ability to serve multiple customers with significant capacity needs.”

SEALink’s proposal also allows for, “Future community buildout of fiber-to-the-premise to provide more options for residential and business internet.” Fiber backhaul routes from Westport to Olympia and Westport to Chehalis are planned.

Mayor Welter indicated that housing for temporary workers during the construction phase is going to pose a challenge for the city of Westport, and that those workers may have to live elsewhere while deployed to the project.

“The CEO, Mr. Bill Marks, he’s already expressed his concerns to me, he understands he may have to house them in Aberdeen,” Mayor Welter said. “Long term and short term housing and lodging in Westport is a real issue, it’s one we’re grappling with constantly at city council.”

According to Mayor Welter, SEALink’s construction crews will inject some cash into the local economy.

“I am sure they will (patronize) most of the local establishments, especially if they end up in some kind of a short term rental agreement at the condos or somewhere around town,” Mayor Welter said.

Now that the lease agreement has been approved, construction for the Cable Landing Station project should begin later this year and is expected to be completed in late 2027 or early 2028.