Borough, MEA still battling over power-line route

MAT-SU -- The Mat-Su Borough and Matanuska Electric Association appear to be headed toward litigation as the two groups wrangle over where MEA should build a transmission line that would bridge two existing primary lines in the borough's core area.

At issue is a 115-kilovolt transmission line that would provide both backup power to the new Valley Hospital facility under construction off Trunk Road and an alternative power route if an outage were to occur in the area between the Parks and Palmer-Wasilla highways.

MEA has said running the line along section-line easements would be the least-costly route because state law grants utilities rights to those easements. The borough has objected to that route because it cuts through two key pieces of borough property -- the Central Landfill and Crevasse-Moraine Trail System.

The borough took public comment on the proposed project and received numerous comments from trail users and nearby residents who said they didn't want the transmission line situated in that area.

At a recent borough assembly meeting, MEA spokesman Tuckerman Babcock invited borough officials to attend a meeting with representatives from the University of Alaska, through whose land the section-line easements also cross, to discuss alternative routes.

Borough officials did attend that meeting, and went to another Nov. 1 meeting with representatives from the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, to discuss running the transmission line along the proposed Trunk Road reconstruction route.

At that meeting, DOT indicated land acquisition would not begin until early 2005. Judy Dougherty, DOT's Trunk Road project manager, said something closer to the middle of the year is more likely.

"It's always been [DOT's] position that we anticipate right-of-way acquisition next summer," Dougherty said. "MEA wants to do the work sooner, but the borough believes they can wait." She said it was likely MEA's schedule would be ahead of DOT's.

Babcock, Friday, said DOT's timeline didn't match MEA's. The co-op plans to have the transmission line built and in place by the time the hospital is set to open -- tentatively by January 2006. While there's some room in MEA's construction schedule, he said, the co-op must leave enough construction time to allow for delays along the way.

"We're trying not to set it up so the margin of error is a week," Babcock said.

He said MEA planned to have a letter to the borough and to UA's land office Monday outlining its reservations to DOT's schedule, as well as concerns about DOT's reticence in deciding on a route for the realignment of Trunk Road.

Babcock said MEA would likely suggest that the borough and UA find an alternative route to the Trunk Road route as soon as possible -- or one month from now -- or MEA would begin clearing the land along the section-line easements as planned.

"We would go ahead until someone tells us we can't do it," Babcock said.

There's some leeway, Babcock said, but MEA plans to put out a request for bids to clear the easements soon.

"It's going to be built one way or another," Babcock said. "If they really want us to [give them more time], obviously we would wait -- we're not wanting to smack a transmission line down the section-line route."

Ron Swanson, the borough's community development director, said the borough has hired an engineer to look at the transmission line project to evaluate whether another route would work.

He said the borough has sent a letter to MEA objecting to the section-line route, and MEA has 15 days to respond. Babcock said the borough's objection falls outside the timeline set out in borough statutes, so the co-op sent the borough a letter stating it considers the borough's objection void.

Borough statutes provide a 20-day window for objections to section-line easement requests. When MEA submitted its request, borough staff went out for public comment on the matter and, Swanson said, notified MEA staff they planned to use the public comments to shape their response to the easement request. The comment process added more than a month to the 20-day timeline for objections.

Swanson said borough staff will, after receiving information from the engineer evaluating the route, consider what their next step will be. If MEA proceeds with work along the section-line route, he said, it's likely the matter will end up in court.

In fact, he said, borough staff considered the likelihood of a legal battle when MEA made its initial proposal. Borough Manager John Duffy said the borough's investment in the landfill and nearby trails is too great not to consider fighting the proposal.

"We'll consider legal action," Duffy said. "We just invested $3.2 million [in the landfill] out there."

Duffy said he questions MEA's need for a stepped-up time line.

"The hospital has electrical power to it today -- it also has on-site backup power," Duffy said. "One of the questions we have is 'Why can't MEA wait? Why does it need to be done immediately?"

Contact Rindi White at rindi.white@frontiersman.com.