Let the experts make energy policy

July 15, 2007

Spectrum: By Penny Nixon

This is for the Mat-Su Borough about its power plant ordinance, which is a lie masquerading as a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

My degree is in aeronautical engineering from the Air Force Academy, where I designed, built and operated a wind turbine. Based on my research and that of thousands of other researchers and operators (as well as the fact that the Borough has destroyed both the natural gas and timber industry in the last two years), I want a clean coal plant to provide baseload electricity within the next five years like the other 50 percent of Americans with coal power.

Additionally, I want it within a mile of my house to keep the transmission costs down. I've heated my house for 15 years with wood without electricity or running water at one point in the past, so I know exactly how much energy it takes to run a home as I've provided it with my back and arms. The argument that pollution is worse now for any type of power plant using modern technology is demonstrably false. Life expectancy today is roughly double it was when electricity was first introduced. During this time period, coal was the predominant power source for most Americans and provides roughly 50 percent of the power America uses today.

The draft ordinance and its associated IM are the most laughable, childish and incompetent documents ever produced by your administration. For starters, the documents basis in California's energy policy, with the highest cost, least efficient and least reliable system in the United States is ludicrous in the extreme. Further, the Borough demonstrates total - in fact intentional - disregard for the most basic economic principles.

The Borough has demonstrated a childish disregard for skyrocketing property taxes, regulatory appropriation of private property without compensation, the inability to keep the dump from encroaching on Matanuska Electric Association's rights of way, destruction of the oil, gas and timber industry and the attempted destruction of the aviation industry, arguably one of the largest single industries in the region. For the borough to assume the regulatory burden for the energy industry is roughly equivalent to assuming the regulatory burden for the space industry. In other words, patently absurd.

My list of objections to this deceptive ordinance is lengthy, but the top of the list is the deliberately fraudulent schedule imposed on the discussion of the most critical public infrastructure project since the building of the Trans Alaska Pipeline. The idea that the Borough would draft and pass a 72-page regulatory document designed for a Stalinist central planning committee in two weeks speaks volumes about the ineptitude and deliberate anti-Americanism of the entire Borough administration.

It is clear the Borough has no intention of considering any factual data and will railroad this travesty through by deliberately shortcutting input, both from the public at large and industry experts. I publicly predicted the planning commission would pass this unedited, and I publicly predict the assembly will pass this regulation essentially unedited on Tuesday, two weeks after it was introduced.

My objections extend through the stupefyingly idiotic requirement to consider a no-build option, the notion that a smaller radius requirement exists for an airport (which can only be approached from the runway ends at shallow angles) than a heliport (which can be approached from any angle and double the approach angles) and continues through to the moronic requirement to consider the ethnology and prehistory of a gravel pit used for 40 years.

My objections go on to the assumption that all applicants are liars and require establishing accuracy of photo simulations; that a 50 MW plant size has any bearing whatsoever other than decreasing efficiency over the required power output; and the assumption that so-called renewable sources of power are desirable, technically feasible,or efficient.

In particular, the idea of geothermal power or a dam on Lake Chakachamna seems to be free unless you consider the cost of financing, building, insuring and operating the plant or building the $50 million transmission line. The last attempt to build a large hydroelectric powerplant in Alaska ended in a morass of regulation and screeching by enviro-whackos. I've walked the flanks of Pinatubo, Vesuvius, Spur, Katmai and Mt. St. Helens where the ash is hundreds of feet deep and the pyroclastic flows melted steel and sand in their path. Anyone who builds a power plant on the side of an active volcano like Spur is not merely stupid, but insane.

Finally, and incredibly, this ordinance wouldn't apply to a nuclear power plant (arguably the most cost effective and least polluting over a 100 year span) or a wind farm (arguably the least efficient and most disruptive use of land imaginable). Even the socialist country of France realizes that nuclear plants can produce 80 percent of its required power cheaper and more independently from foreign or hostile energy sources than other methods.

In conclusion, I'm quite happy with MEA's operations and staff and the MEA board elected from the public at large. They have a long and successful record of efficient and expert operations in the energy sector. Let's let the experts produce electricity and the Borough can get back to making Central Communist Party five-year plans that turn to dust 15 minutes after the ink is dry.

If you pass this ordinance, you and the 23,500 unemployed Borough resident adults should all go home and start cutting down trees to dry out wood. You're going to need it when the power goes out. I've cut five already and fueled my generator.