Decision pending on MEA power line appeal

WASILLA — Matanuska Electric Association officials should know by the end of the month the results of an appeal in front of the Wasilla Planning Commission of its decision requiring the electricity cooperative to bury a set of high-voltage power lines.

MEA and the city met with a city appointed appeals hearing officer March 24 to appeal an August 2013 decision by the planning commission. That’s when the body approved MEA’s application to run 115-volt lines connecting the co-op’s new Eklutna Generation Station to a Wasilla substation. The application called for the lines to be strung from 80- to 100-foot towers, but the commission’s approval requires that the lines be buried.

The rub comes with the costs involved in burying power lines and maintaining them, said Julie Estey, director of public relations for MEA. Aside from increased costs, “people underestimate the amount of upheaval that’s involved in … burying lines,” she said.

For more than a year, MEA has maintained its plan to string the high-voltage lines between towers along the Parks Highway from a substation at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center to the Herning Substation is the most cost-effective at about $9.75 million. Other proposals to reroute the lines behind the Parks Highway business corridor increased that estimate to about $13.4 million.

MEA officials have said other routes ranged in cost from $13.9 million to run along Cottle and Fairview Loop to an estimated $40 million to bury the lines. Along with the increased costs to bury the lines as the city wants, MEA is falling behind on its timeline to get the power lines in place, Estey said.

“We’re definitely anxious to get the project moving,” she said, adding that other power line projects are already underway. “The transmission lines you’ve been seeing going up along the Glenn Highway is a component of this, from our substation in Eklutna to the hospital.”

While the preferred route for MEA is the least expensive, that can’t be a consideration in determining what’s best for the city of Wasilla, city officials have said. Mayor Verne Rupright has maintained that the large towers would impact the viewshed along the Parks Highway and in the process hamper the area’s commercial appeal. The planning commission agreed with city staff that the towers were inconsistent with the city’s comprehensive plan.

“The visual blight created by the proposed transmission towers and lines will significantly impact the scenic mountain views along these main corridors into the city and will decrease the attractiveness of the city,” according to documents supporting the commission’s August 2013 decision.

The March 24 appeals hearing was a long way from a November 2012 meeting between MEA and the city about the cooperative’s transmission line plans, a meeting both sides remember quite differently.

In a strongly worded letter to Rupright dated July 15, 2013, MEA General Manager Joe Griffith said he left that 2012 meeting with an understanding the city was behind MEA’s preferred route. The ensuing controversy and pushback is a turnaround from what was discussed.

“I observe that the city of Wasilla’s permitting process has certainly undergone an abrupt about-face since our meeting last November, at which you and your staff offered MEA your assurance that permitting this transmission line, as an overhead facility, would not be a problem,” Griffith says in his letter.

Rupright responded with a letter of his own, outlining a different scenario where the city proposed an alternative route that located towers behind the business corridor and out of sight.

“During our discussions in November of 2012, you arose from your seat and stated, and I may be paraphrasing: ‘I agree with Verne. We can modify this in that area into the city,’” Rupright wrote.

Griffith also promised that if the planning commission denied MEA’s preferred power line alternative, the co-op would appeal to the Regulatory Commission of Alaska “seeking the creation of a special surcharge on all sales of electricity within the city of Wasilla.”

He wrote that if such a surcharge were approved to cover the increased costs of burying or relocating the power lines, MEA customers in Wasilla city limits could potentially share rate increases of $200,000 to $400,000 a year.

Before MEA takes its appeal to the RCA, it has continued through the city’s appeals process, Estey said. She said the company’s legal team relayed that the March 24 hearing went well.

“We presented our side and they said they would give a decision within 30 days,” Estey said, adding she doesn’t have a feeling about how the appeals officer could rule. “We are just as interested as everybody else what that decision would be.”

That 30-day window means a decision should come by April 23, she said. And there are several ways the officer could rule. The decision could uphold the planning commission’s vote, it could refer the issue back to the commission or it could come down on MEA’s side.

Contact Greg Johnson at 352-2269

or greg.johnson@frontiersman.com.