City hearing officer rules against MEA

WASILLA — A city hearing officer has upheld the decision of its planning commission to require the Matanuska Electric Association to bury transmission lines running through Wasilla.

“The commission duly considered all evidence before it, took a ‘hard look’ at the issues, and based its decision entirely on its reasonable interpretation of the (city’s) comprehensive plan and land development code,” hearing officer Joseph N. Levesque wrote. “The commission acted just as it was supposed to act and did not act in an arbitrary or capricious manner.”

For that reason and several others, Levesque wrote that the decision was proper.

The lines in question would bring 115 kilovolt power lines into the city to make MEA’s system more robust and meet the growing power needs of the Wasilla area. The utility opposed burying the lines, saying that would substantially increase the cost of installing and maintaining them, and that those costs would adversely impact its ratepayers.

“We’re obviously disappointed by the ruling and we’re currently reviewing the brief,” MEA spokeswoman Julie Estey said in an interview late Monday afternoon.

She said that MEA is tasked both with providing the lowest cost power to its customers and to meet growing energy demands.

“This decision basically puts those two at odds,” she said.

She said MEA hadn’t yet decided what it would do about the ruling. The ruling itself lays out the process. The next step would be an appeal to the state’s Superior Court.

As for Levesque’s reasoning, the officer spent 26 pages addressing the various arguments against the planning commission’s ruling.

To the contention that the city doesn’t have a very strong or complete comprehensive plan and thus can’t enforce it:

“The (Alaska Supreme) Court has adopted a realistic approach by expressly approving the concept of ‘piecemeal adoption of the comprehensive plan,” Levesque writes, explaining that in fast growing places like Wasilla it can take time for plans to catch up.

To the contention that the city’s comprehensive plan doesn’t regulate utility projects and thus the commission couldn’t act on them:

“The hearing officer finds this argument non-persuasive given the commission’s express authority to regulate land use issues for the city.”

To the contention that the decision was arbitrary and capricious and based on a “standard-less auth-ority”:

“The commission’s actions clearly do not constitute arbitrary and capricious decision-making,” Levesque wrote, after outlining all the work the commission did in reaching its decision.

To the contention that the commission couldn’t rule because the Regulatory Commission of Alaska had already granted MEA a “Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity” approving the project:

“The fact that MEA has been issued a (certificate) from the RCA provides no pre-emption against the (planning) commission regulating land use within its jurisdiction,” Levesque writes, before pointing to Alaska Supreme Court cases showing that the RCA doesn’t step into these kinds of local land use matters.

To the contention that the ruling was arbitrary in that it applied a different standard to MEA than it did to approving cell phone towers in the city:

“The hearing officer finds that cell towers and transmission lines are not the same (i.e., not comparable) and that the permitting of either is to be done on a case-by-case basis.”