Members can show MEA a better way

Frontiersman editorial

May 13, 2007

It has been said that knowledge is power. When it comes to the ballot box, empowered voters arm themselves with information about the candidate or issue on the ballot.

Valley residents who cut a check to Matanuska Electric Association each month will not be so fortunate when it comes to ballots they find in their mailboxes this week. The local member-owned cooperative has decided, with virtually no input from its ratepayers, to end its contract with energy-supplier Chugach Electric and build two power plants in the Valley, one of which will be coal-fired.

Now that the big decisions have been made, MEA is asking its members to choose from among five sites for the location of the plants, whose construction cost could near a half-billion dollars.

Of course, the balloting result is only advisory. And the public that will both pay for and have to live with the new power plants has been repeatedly denied access to all the substantive information about the details of the proposed project, including operating costs and potential environmental fallout.

Attempts by this newspaper to talk by telephone to MEA officials and board president Lee Jordan, who is up for re-election in less than a year, have been met with hang-ups and ignored voice mails.

This is what passes for a democratic process at our cooperative.

Those who are unwilling to proceed down this path charted by MEA administration and the board of directors it controls have an option. Local opposition to the MEA plan and the process employed to push it has been growing in recent weeks.

One organized public advocacy group - Utility Watch - is urging MEA ratepayers who would like options other than those offered by the co-op to mark their ballots accordingly and mail them to Utility Watch. A story on the front page of this edition provides details of the group's worthy plan, as well as the address for sending ballots.

Utility Watch and a second group - MEA Ratepayers Alliance - are also helping to organize a rally outside MEA headquarters for Monday afternoon, just before the monthly meeting of the board of directors. The rally begins at 3 p.m. at 163 Industrial Way in Palmer.

The time is hardly convenient, but we encourage anyone who is concerned about their energy future and lack of transparency at MEA to attend and let MEA know it cannot ignore the voices of its member-owners.