Invest public resources wisely

Far be it from us to question the wisdom of renewable power.

In fact, hydroelectric dams have proven to be a boon to Alaska. As they age, the power gets cheaper and cheaper to produce. The decades-old dams we currently have are generally the cheapest power in the system.

There’s no reason not to think that the proposed Susitna-Watana Hydroelectric Project would not be the same kind of project for us here in the Railbelt — that because of these efforts our children will enjoy cheap, plentiful power when they take over this state.

But we do have some concerns.

One is an issue that Matanuska Electric Association General Manager Joe Griffith brought up at a recent meeting with the Big Lake Chamber of Commerce. He pointed out that the dam’s $4.5 billion price tag does not include the cost to build transmission lines to hook the massive dam — which would generate half the power the bulk of the state requires — into the grid.

The last time we can recall a large transmission project going through was in the mid-1980s when the state spent $124 million to tie Anchorage to Fairbanks via the Alaska Intertie.

Of course, this line won’t be as long, and it wouldn’t take stringing 170 miles of lines this time. But it also will not be built in the ’80s, and the amount of power we’re talking about here will likely require a more complex project.

In our minds, it seems very similar to the concerns we raised about the Knik Arm bridge project and whether Mat-Su roads will be able to absorb the traffic.

It’s never wise to plan to build billion-dollar pieces of infrastructure — engineering marvels, in this case — without worrying about whether they will tie into our existing infrastructure.

Another similarity between the dam project and the bridge is in the seemingly astronomical cost of studies related to the plans.

The state appropriated $95 million to the Susitna project this year. That’s the biggest single-project earmark in this year’s long budget document. And what is that money for? It’s all for studies — 58 studies to be exact. That pencils out to more than $1.6 million each. And that’s if all of the studies are wrapped up with that money, which we don’t think is actually the plan.

It occurs to us that even if the dam is never realized, it will have put a lot of people to work just studying what the world will look like if it is, in fact, built.

It’s the same with the bridge. We’ve spent $75 million so far to provide good jobs for a handful of people working for the Knik Arm Bridge and Tool Authority, and a few more jobs creating traffic and other studies for the project.

All projects built with public funds — especially such super-sized projects — should proceed carefully, should make sense with existing infrastructure and should be wise investments of public resources that will benefit not just us, but future generations.