Co-op's coal plant plans revive dormant Utility Watch

April 13, 2007

By Russell Stigall/Frontiersman MAT-SU - Local Utility Watch organization is reawakened by local electric co-op's coal plans.

Matanuska Electric Association's coal plant plans prompted Utility Watch founder Jim Sykes to restart his watchdog group, mothballed since 2002.

Utility Watch was formed in 2000 to monitor the activities of Valley utilities, MEA, Enstar and Matanuska Telephone Association. A year earlier, MEA had been found to be noncompliant in the reporting of some expenditures by the Regulatory Commission of Alaska.

“MEA disagreed with it, but I saw RCA as right on,” Sykes said.

So Sykes and his Watchers helped fight for consumer rights over the next two years.

“But we haven't been active recently because things have been going pretty smoothly.”

That is, until MEA unveiled its plans to build a 100 megawatt coal-fired generator somewhere in the Mat-Su Valley.

Sykes said he thinks MEA's proposed coal plant is a step in the wrong direction.

“Just the way the world is changing is going to make the coal plant obsolete. Most people do not want to release more carbon into the atmosphere,” Sykes said.

And having a coal plant in the neighborhood is going to cause health problems, Sykes said.

“There's going to be pollution, and there's going to be coal dust, and it's going to affect a lot of people,” he said.

Sykes said the public meeting process MEA has had so far has been unsuccessful, and the decision to build a coal plant came from poor public turn-out.

“it was one of their usual ‘Thanks for sharing, now we're going to do what we want anyway,'” Sykes said.

Lorali Carter, MEA spokesperson, said MEA's power production project is very complex and that expert consultants at CH2M HILL were paid to research and come up with the co-op's Integrated Resource Plan. The plan calls for MEA to contract a coal plant and a 103 megawatt gas plant to be built by 2015.

By then, MEA plans to no longer buy power from Chugach Electric Association. A 10-page summary of the plan can be viewed on MEA's Web site. The entire 72-page plan is being kept secret, despite requests from ratepayers to make it public.

Sykes restarted Utility Watch's Web site to help self-proclaimed loose cannon Bill Erickson organize a special public meeting with MEA to present renewable energy alternatives to coal.

Erickson has a request form a special meeting circulating the Valley. Co-op members who would like MEA to discuss renewable energies further can sign the form at www.utilitywatch.org.

At a board meeting at 2:30 p.m. Monday, MEA officials presented their 2,400 pages of information from the renewable resource page on MEA's Web site, Carter said.

“We absolutely have looked into renewable energy,” Carter said. “But we can't provide base-load power from renewable energies.”

Sykes, who lives off the energy grid on Lazy Mountain, said he isn't buying it.

“They try to say to the public with a straight face that they've looked at all the alternatives when really they haven't,” he said.

And that is where Utility Watch steps in.

People deserve more information than they are getting from their publicly owned co-op, Sykes said. Utility Watch is open to anyone who wants to do research and gather information to present to the public.

“That way people can learn more and make their own decision,” Sykes said. “It is time to get good information. You certainly are not going to get it from MEA.”

Sykes said his Watch group spends its time researching MEA's coal power plan, which he said will be an issue for a long time to come.

“MEA has done some incredibly stupid stuff, and this looks like one of the ones that is going to raise public eyebrows,” Sykes said.

Contact Russell Stigall at

352-2267 or russell.stigall@

frontiersman.com