Coal plan is business as usual at MEA

I think it's safe to say that in the realm of credibility, MEA management is bankrupt. Its board of directors is either subservient to management or so outnumbered that their voice is just a whisper in the Valley winds.

Board member David Dahms delivered a Spectrum (“Before signing petition, ask about the plan,” April 15) that pretty much defines management's bankruptcy. He was complaining about his treatment at a meeting of individuals interested in a petition drive to force MEA to stop construction of its proposed coal-fired generation in one of our neighborhoods.

Please understand that only MEA management and a few board members have read the 76-page Integrated Resource Plan that apparently prescribes a coal-fired generation plant to best solve our energy needs. We co-op members paid for this engineering study, so we should have the right to read it for ourselves.

I should put forward at this time that I challenge Director Dahms to get off his soapbox and hand us the engineering study and represent us, the member-owners, as he says he does. He stated in his article that he represents all 55,000 member-owners, and that he wanted to stay in the ad hoc meeting to hear “our plan.”

Well, Mr. Dahms, where were you with this representation when the behind-closed-doors decision was made to move forward with a coal-fired generation plant? Why do you continue to support the foolhardy plan to isolate our utility cooperative from the obviously workable plan involving the other utility generation and distribution cooperatives in Southcentral Alaska?

Clearly, the outreach of MEA management and board on these two decisions has been a joke. By these two decisions, I mean vacating any contractual arrangement with Chugach Electric Association concerning supply of energy and building a power plant utilizing coal for fuel.

The reference to “joke” is that there was absolutely no involvement of member-owners in the decision to discontinue any future contractual arrangements with our energy supplier. None, zip, zero request for comment from member-owners concerning this major decision.

This was huge. Telling our energy supplier that we would not be buying energy from them in the future didn't seem to sink in until the reality of a coal-fired generator became front and center.

Lois Lester, Scott Daugharty and I voted no on this board decision, a 4-3 vote with no public input to change the face of Southcentral energy generation and distribution forever. This is the most outrageous aspect of this whole (coal) dust up.

What in the world is wrong with buying energy from Chugach Electric, or from Anchorage's ML&P for that matter? Do you think your energy costs are too high compared to, say, Bethel or Fairbanks or Seattle or even California?

Mr. Dahms is a nice, intelligent man, but he delivered exactly what MEA always delivers. No listening, just telling. In his defense, he did ask to stay and listen, but the meeting was only for those who would work to oppose MEA's efforts to build a coal-fired power plant.

He showed us his three-ring binders that described MEA's effort to evaluate renewable energy. He told us that none of this renewable stuff would work for base load needs. He did say that he would not support that effort, and for that, he and fellow board member Larry Devilbiss were asked to leave.

I say we take every renewable source even if it only represents .05 percent of our total needs. Someday the percentage of our total base load that is renewable will be sizable.

If MEA had been developing plans for the last decade to do this we would be well along the path of connecting our energy needs to renewable sources. Instead of telling our base load supplier to take a hike, we would be negotiating a contract that would allow us to begin to add renewable sources to our grid.

Chugach Electric has gone down this path, and is poised to develop a wind farm on Fire Island. They are asking the Alaska Legislature to allow them to use $20-something million of the Railbelt Energy Fund to build a marine transmission line to connect this renewable source to their (our) grid.

This is a very respectable use of the long fought-over Railbelt funds.

Guess who is the only opposition to this investment? MEA.

Beginning to get the bankruptcy feeling in your gut?

MEA management opposes this plan because they have some expectation that they should get some of the $70-something million that remains in the Railbelt Energy Fund.

To date it does not seem like MEA is in any way part of any kind of Railbelt Energy “consortium.” They have done everything possible to isolate themselves from all of the other Railbelt cooperative utilities. How can they possibly think that they would have any claim to Railbelt funds?

Because Mr. Dahms suggests that there is no alternate plan, allow me some space here to make a few suggestions. I am not speaking for the group that met last Thursday. However that meeting was a room full of bright, thoughtful individuals who share the common goal of stopping our renegade cooperative from implementing this ill-conceived plan to burn coal for our energy needs.

I am not an expert in any way on this subject, but there were some experts in the room.

We should work toward renegotiating an agreement with Chugach and ML&P that would supply gas-fired energy and allow us to develop renewable sources as aggressively as we can afford. We should develop renewable sources as a consortium of cooperative utilities because we can accomplish more if we all work together.

We should be providing a share of the cost to develop a wind farm on Fire Island. We will all benefit from that effort.

This is not rocket science. This is a practical application of our known resources and the unknown resources we have not yet discovered because we have not done the research or engineering studies that will lead us down the path of developing renewable energy.

This is not some new idea. It's happening all over the world because the existing fuel tank is looking a little low, and the air we breathe can so very easily turn foul. MEA is in the way of both our efforts and other utilities, and its management should get in the game or step aside.

They continue to waste our money and insult their member-owners along the way by not even asking how they should spend our money, or if we have an interest in breathing coal dust the rest of our lives and the lives of our children. Mr. Dahms, we welcome you if your effort is to stop this insane plan to burn coal to stay warm and light our homes.

I suggested during member comments at the MEA annual meeting in March that MEA would find considerable opposition to a coal-fired power generator.

I suggest that you consider the recent meetings and discourse like this to be the tip of the iceberg that just touched MEA's Titanic.

Meadow Lakes resident Michael Janecek is a former member of the MEA board of directors