The Legislature Tuesday made quick progress on one of the 10 bills still in play during the limited scope of the special session.
Senate Bill 42, funding work on the Susitna Hydroelectric Power Project, passed through several stages of the process, including passage from the Senate Finance Committee, approval on the Senate Floor, and into the House committee process.
The key part of the bill is funding for a big power project on the Susitna River, which could provide decades of dependable and affordable electric power for Alaska’s Railbelt.
“Alaskans are waiting for us to move forward on this project,” said Sen. Joe Thomas, D-Fairbanks, one of the projects supporters
The state would build, own and operate the dam at the river’s Watana site.
Thomas said the state made a mistake two decades ago when it abandoned work to develop a new hydroelectric dam, but at that time it appeared Cook Inlet was awash in natural gas.
SB 42 only authorized work to begin, but that’s key to the project’s eventual success, he said.
“This is a big step forward,” Thomas said, and Sen. Lesil McGuire, R-Anchorage, called its passage “a great day.”
With both supply and prices now uncertain, moving to hydroelectric will guarantee a stable economic future for the region, Thomas said.
Having access to hydro would free the state from concerns about soaring fuel prices for electricity, he said.
“We won’t have to worry about the price of some of the commodities called petroleum, he said.
Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, said he expected costs of about $30 million a year for several years while development work continues, and then a construction cost of several billion dollars.
SB 42 also includes loans for two power projects in the district of House Finance Committee Co-chairman Bill Thomas, R-Haines.
The Cordova Electric Cooperative’s Humpback Creek Hydroelectric Project will get $5 million, while Hydaburg’s Reynolds Creek Hydroelectric Project will get $11 million.
Senate Bill 42 passed out of the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday, and was approved by the full Senate 20-0.
It was later referred to and passed out of the House Finance Committee, and awaits floor action.
Only those bills identified in Gov. Sean Parnell’s special session proclamation can still be dealt with by the Legislature.
• Contact reporter Pat Forgey at 586-4816 or at patrick.forgey@juneauempire.com.
Comments (5)
Add commentIts a great day!
When Lesil says so.
misguided
a lot of the information on this project is flat out wrong information. I follow the Fairbanks paper and constantly here how the project will happen in a mater of a short time ( a couple of years?) and your electrical rate will drop to 3 cents per kWh. Both concepts are rather far from the reality. First the project if fully funded it would be many years before the first power was generated. Second the projected power production cost has almost nothing to do with the end cost to the consumer as the power has to get from the dam to your home via a local utility.
Complain complain complain
At Least it is a step in the right direction, which have been few and far between recently.
islander
No matter what you do (gas pipeline, drill for oil, build a dam) it takes years for a big project to come online - so that's a non-issue really.
Once the initial dam and infrastructure (lines) were paid for, it should be less expensive to run the hydro (barring any AEL&P type 'disasters' or monopolies) as opposed to having to continually purchase gas at whatever the market price is.
Drilling for more oil and gas doesn't decrease our price, because even if we opened up all the possibilities here in the states, we don't have enough to affect the international price structure. (or to rely completely on our own oil/gas).
Not to mention that no matter how much longer it lasts, it's a finite resource.
A couple of issues to consider...
I'm all for renewable energy projects that come with an upfront construction cost and then free fuel for the life of the facility. But there are still nagging questions about Susitna. The biggest is that water flows are often very low in the winter, when the electricity is needed the most, and the reservoir couldn't be nearly big enough to hold the water needed to get through the winter.
And then the cost of a project of this magnitude is so high that we can only afford one of them -- that is to say, we'd be putting all our eggs in this one basket, and if it doesn't work out, we're up the proverbial creek. I think it would be smarter to fund several of the smaller potential hydropower and other renewable energy projects in the railbelt for diversity and stability.
Oh well, we really can't expect anything more thoughtful than this when the politicians are making the decisions. Their motivation is just to latch ahold of the simplest solution so it looks to the voters like they're doing something. And if we're lucky, this will work out well in the end.