The National Park Service announced today that USS Arizona Memorial tours will remain suspended until at least the end of the year as the Navy continues repairs to the shoreside dock.

“Navy Facilities (NAVFAC) is reassessing and making necessary shoreside loading dock repairs. Until this work is completed, USS Arizona Memorial tours cannot be safely conducted. We are looking forward to repairs and program resumption in the new year,” the NPS said in a news release.

The dock was previously closed for 17 days in September when officials learned the steel collar that connects the dock to the ramp bridge leading visitors up to the memorial had been severed as a result of wake and tidal movement. The Park Service suspended visits again Dec. 12 when officials learned of another connection problem, though at the time they estimated repairs would take less than 17 days.

NPS officials are now tempering expectations.

“We don’t have a current timeline for repairs at the moment, other than it will most likely be in the new year,” said Emily Pruett, a spokeswoman for NPS at Pearl Harbor.

Closures of both the shoreside and memorial-side floating docks have led to periodic disruptions of visits and tours. The memorial-side floating docks closed for 15 months from May 2018 to August 2019 when its anchoring system failed.

Though it’s unclear when they’ll be fixed, the Department of the Interior has plans for a longer-term solution and recently signed a contract with Hawk Contracting Group out of Colorado for $5.8 million to replace the concrete floating dock system that was installed in 1999.