Hydroelectric project, opposition efforts move forward

SUSITNA VALLEY - Becky Long cut her teeth as an environmental activist on the first version of a Susitna River dam - the one mothballed in the 1980s with the discovery of Cook Inlet gas.

The Alaska Energy Authority recently got the ball rolling on a new version of a massive hydroelectric project for the Susitna Valley. The state agency last week filed a 500-page pre-application document for the Susitna-Watana Hydroelectric Project with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the first step in the licensing and design process.

The energy authority wants to build a 700-foot-tall dam and power plant on the Susitna River 34 miles upstream from Devils Canyon, about 50 miles northeast of Talkeetna in the Mat-Su Borough. The dam would create a reservoir two miles wide and 39 miles long. An access road could follow the Susitna or cut 40 miles to the Denali Highway.

Long is back, too, as one of numerous Susitna Valley residents who are fighting the project. Talkeetna Community Council passed a resolution opposing it. and Trapper Creek Community Councila passed a resolution to file a Motion Of Intervention with the Federal Energy Regulation Commission regarding the Susitna Dam.

Critics like Long say the project's potentially devastating effect on Su Valley's world-class salmon runs and moose populations don't justify the anticipated power production.

The dam would be the eighth tallest on the planet and the largest built in the United States since the Colorado River's Glen Canyon Dam in 1966, according to the Coalition for Susitna Dam Alternatives, a 65-member nonprofit Long helped start.

The dam will release water in the winter to meet demand when the river normally slows down and ice forms and would block the runoff-fueled torrents the Susitna experiences.

"It's just changing everything," Long said. "When you hold back the water in the summer, then some of the side sloughs where salmon are spawning, they're going to be drying up. If you eliminate the spring flooding, you're not going to get new vegetation, so you're eliminating moose browse."

Dam backers say it will provide half the Railbelt's power needs and satisfy a state mandate to increase renewable energy production. It won't, however, heat homes the way natural gas does.

State lawmakers have authorized spending nearly $66 million to advance the project, which is expected to take more than 10 years to permit and build.

The AEA estimates the project will cost $4 billion or $5 billion and generate an average of 250 megawatts a day during peak demand in winter, though it would be built to a capacity of 600 megawatts - a standard practice.

The preferred construction method for the dam is roller-compacted concrete, according to the recently filed document. But a rock-filled structure also is an option.

The project would provide nearly 50 percent of the electrical power needs in the Railbelt, making it part of a "diverse portfolio" of energy sources, said Emily Ford, the authority's public outreach liaison.

"We want to fit demand and environmental concerns," she said. "We don't want to build something that's too big."

Environmental concerns are one of the largest challenges facing the project.

The state's recently filed document outlines all the studies and research needed, from work on how sediment might fill up the reservoir to the way the dam will affect fish and wildlife and recreational or subsistence opportunities.

Federal and state biologists tasked with protecting the Susitna's salmon and other critters have also expressed concerns that the licensing process selected by the state was created not for new dams but for existing dams that need to be relicensed. The process requires rigid timelines that would rush the process, limiting important fish and wildlife studies to just two years, scientists have said.

Ford said the state added studies this summer, so there will be three years of research. The state also has 3,200 different reports from the 1980s it is trying to update, along with conducting research on what data is needed.

"This is a well-studied area and we certainly want to build on that and get as much current information as we can," Ford said.