A third contractor, Terracon Consultants, has reached a settlement with the city over the botched Port of Anchorage expansion that left an unusable dock, agreeing to pay the municipality $1.95 million.
The failed expansion project cost more than $300 million and has led to a legal scrum between numerous contractors after the municipality brought a lawsuit in federal court.
A settlement notice involving Terracon, headquartered in Olathe, Kansas, was filed Wednesday in the case before U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason.
Contractor CH2M Hill Alaska brought Terracon into the case, said Robert Owens, assistant municipal attorney. Terracon did engineering work for the project and was contracted by Integrated Concepts and Research Corp., the construction manager and another defendant.
CH2M Hill is a defendant in the case in association with work completed by Veco Alaska Inc., a company it acquired in 2007.
CH2M Hill alleged that Terracon should be a party subject to possible allocation of fault by a jury, said Owens. But CH2M Hill presented "no specific allegations of negligence or wrongdoing (against Terracon) in any complaint," Owens said.
"No one actually accused them of wrongdoing," Owens said of Terracon.
The municipality and Terracon on Thursday will file a joint dismissal motion for Terracon. A trial in the case is set for April.
In recent months two other contractors on the project, MKB and Quality Asphalt Paving, have also reached settlement agreements with the city that the companies said were not admissions of fault. Together, those agreements totaled $10.6 million.