SEATTLE - A tiny mistake - about half the thickness of a dime - could end up costing about $1 million at the Port of Seattle.
When the port built a new cargo terminal for stevedoring company SSA Marine, a trench was dug to hold the electrical cable for the giant cranes that lift containers from ships.
But the trench, built by contractor BergerABAM, was 0.02 of an inch too narrow, so the cable didn't fit, The Seattle Times reported Wednesday.
"Clearly the contractor should've built the trench at 2.52 inches and it's 2.5," Port Commission President Bill Bryant said.
The cost of a narrower cable was about $200,000. And because the mistake delayed the opening of Terminal 30 near Safeco Field by two months, the port is considering a rent credit for SSA Marine that might exceed $1 million.
The proposed solution is "the best course forward out of a bad situation," port Commissioner John Creighton said.
The port, BergerABAM and SSA Marine are negotiating who is liable for what share of the cost, and Bryant said the commission hopes to get some answers at a meeting next Tuesday.
Ralph Graves, head of the port's capital development division, said that while the port failed to notice the error, that does not relieve the contractor of responsibility.
A spokesman for BergerABAM declined comment.
"I don't think there's much we can say at this point beyond that we've been in discussions with the port on how best to resolve the situation," spokesman Elmer Ozolin told The Times.
The problem was discovered in April when SSA moved three large cranes onto the terminal, which has been renovated into a $50 million, 70-acre site to serve shipping companies Matson and China Shipping.
The mistake left the port with two choices: build a larger trench or get a smaller cable.
Graves said the 2.52-inch high-voltage cable couldn't be safely jammed into a smaller space. A bigger trench would have cost $500,000, he said, and was complicated because it would involve the trench's steel lining.
The port and SSA decided to order a smaller 2-inch cable and install it.
SSA formally occupied the terminal Monday and will handle its first ship Sunday, spokesman Bob Watters said. That amounts to a two-month delay on the project.
SSA will pay $20,000 a day in rent to the port for Terminal 30 and adjacent Terminal 25 once its 30-year lease starts, port spokeswoman Charla Skaggs said.
Bryant said the port plans to give SSA a rent deferral and it could be about $1 million. But he stressed that while SSA might pay less this year because its lease will start two months later, the agreement will still run for 30 years and the company will end up paying the same amount of total rent.
