Over $9 million in federal money was earmarked to a failing for-profit ferry verging on bankruptcy, which very few people benefited from and a small town in Alaska did not want. To make matters worse, this project is threatening the economic health of once vibrant local tour and ferry operator businesses.
Operating about one hundred miles south of Anchorage, the federally funded ferry duplicates and threatens services offered by existing private businesses and the state’s own ferry service. The ferry, Kachemak Voyager - which is managed by the Seldovia VillageTribe - runs between Seldovia and Homer, towns 16 miles apart from one another across the bay.
Since 2010, the $3.3 million Kachemak Voyager has frustrated Seldovia’s two other private tour and ferry operators who had run successful businesses for years. The companies are unable to compete with the ferry’s millions in taxpayer support, which lowers Voyager’s ticket prices. “The tribe was supposed to build a ferry for moving people, cars and freight. Instead they took that money and bought a tour boat,” said Tim Cashman, owner of Alaska Coastal Marine Services, one of Seldovia’s two private tour operators. “It has taken a 30-40 percent bite out of my business - our losses are in the hundreds of thousands. The federal government has actually borrowed money from my children to put me out of business.”
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