Decision day for coal lease

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough Assembly is set to take a vote today on whether to renew Usibelli Coal Mine’s lease to land on which it intends to build a road to access the Wishbone Hill coal deposit.

The lease renewal has already lost at the planning commission, which decided that since Usibelli already has access for the next five years and is going ahead with building a road to the project site already, the commission didn’t need to act now to give the mine an additional five years.

Numerous vocal residents in the area oppose the mine and also the access-road lease. They plan to stage a rally in downtown Palmer this afternoon.

Adding to the debate is a new study out this week that looks at the socio-economic impacts of the proposed mine. It was produced with $15,000 in borough money by the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

The report looks at jobs and income from the mine as well as impacts to the fiscal position of local governing bodies, to property values in the area and to traffic.

“This isn’t an environmental study, it’s a socio-economic study,” said Dave Hanson, the borough’s director of Economic Development. The environmental study comes later. “They do that when they permit the mine.”

But getting down to brass tacks, the study says a number of things about the mining operation.

First, on the jobs front, it predicts the mine will directly create 93 jobs during the 15 years coal is being mined and will indirectly create 52 more, mostly in the service sector.

“A total of $7.8 million of annual personal income would be generated,” the report states.

Next is the fiscal impact to government bodies: Those 93 jobs mean 93 households, which translates to 270 new borough residents and 78 new students for borough schools.

But the way the numbers shake out, there will be $440,000 or so coming in from property taxes both on the homes of those new residents and on the mining property, but the borough would pay out $318,000 to serve those new residents.

And that doesn’t count wharfage and dockage fees for the port, which the study claims would come out to $818,000.

On property values the reviews are somewhat mixed. The study says researchers talked to two Realtors. Jerry Moses described the effects on surrounding homes as “a wash to an increase in property values.” Hanson said Moses works with the borough and the school district a lot in helping come up with overall property value numbers for various projects. Don Zimmerman of IEC Realty, which ISER said had helped transact a number of purchases in the Sutton area, said he thought the property values would increase.

Why would it increase? The study says that those 93 new employees are going to need homes and would probably like to live close to their workplace. There will also be increased commerce in the area, attracting other would-be homeowners.

On this point the neighbors of the project who oppose mining have, in the past, expressed a much different view. They have pointed out in previous interviews that people are already choosing not to build in the area and many say they will move away if a mine comes.

Bonnie Zirkle, who owns a bed and breakfast in the area, mapped out property a mile out from the mine and estimated there was $15 million in homes and property a mile from the mine.

The ISER study puts that estimate a bit lower, at $11.6 million.

Hanson said that’s because the ISER folks used a different starting point. They drew a line on the map a mile out from the site on which the mining will actually occur, as opposed to the boundary of the mining lease.

“We used her methodology but just used different areas,” Hanson said.

As to effects on local traffic, the study points out that while there will be a dozen trucks making three round trips each per day for 300 to 325 days each year, the mine says it will do that trucking at night.

Hanson said that makes sense both from a safety standpoint and for the mine’s bottom line.

“They do not want to be in heavy traffic. They lose money,” he said.

This has been a particular point of concern for local residents, who point out that the trucks will be entering the Glenn Highway from a dead stop in front of a school.

Since trucks will be moving at night, Hanson pointed out that the study found the actual significant impact on traffic will come from mine employees going to work. Those passenger cars, he said, will increase daytime traffic by about 7 percent.

Hanson said he hopes the study will add some clarity to the debate over the mine and will be authoritative enough to dispel some misconceptions.

“I feel real good about the credibility and the validity of the general result,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.