New power route may provide solution in core area

MAT-SU -- With a new proposal on the table, staff from the Mat-Su Borough, University of Alaska and Matanuska Electric Association have agreed to work together to find a route in the Valley's core area to connect two MEA electricity transmission lines.

MEA plans to build a new 150-kilovolt transmission line on 90-foot towers that would connect a line running along a portion of the Palmer-Wasilla Highway to a line near the intersection of Trunk Road and the Parks Highway.

The new route would extend along the eastern edge of the borough-owned property on which Central Landfill sits, skim across the top of university land and, where that land meets with a proposed realignment of Trunk Road, the route would follow the road, veering slightly eastward after Mat-Su College to follow the existing Trunk Road to the new Valley Hospital facility.

"The borough has generously proposed granting a 100-foot easement, and the university has, verbally, also generously offered to provide 100-foot easements along their property," Tuckerman Babcock told a group of about 20 Gateway Community Council members at a council meeting Friday evening.

Babcock said MEA's staff is examining the route and is in the process of talking with each of the 11 property owners along whose property the new route -- and the Trunk Road realignment -- would run. Seven of those property owners, Babcock said, will ultimately lose their property to the proposed realignment. At this point, Babcock said, the plan looks as though it might work.

"If the borough and the university are able to grant these easements … it'll actually be less expensive," Babcock said. "I don't have an answer to where we're going to end up building it, but I'm very hopeful …"

The Gateway Community Council residents who attended the meeting had several questions for Babcock, mostly pertaining to their public-notice process and to other routes they believed may be more appropriate for the transmission line.

Some at the meeting suggested MEA reconsider putting the transmission line along the Glenn Highway. One attendee suggested letting MEA members decide which route was the best.

Babcock said that although the details of the route were not packaged into a report available to MEA members, there were several difficulties with the Glenn Highway route -- primarily difficulties in getting easements along the road and dealing with potential future complications that could arise if the state expands portions of the Glenn Highway.

MEA, Babcock said, doesn't have to adhere to the same planning regulations that state agencies, for example, must follow -- the Department of Transportation must start its planning process by identifying several different alternatives, then evaluate and take comments on each alternative before deciding on a final solution. Babcock said MEA may, in the future, consider following a similar process.

Although the meeting Friday wasn't the first time residents had a chance to ask questions about the proposed route, some pointed out there hadn't been many opportunities for comment.

The primary opportunity to comment was made available when borough staff sent out about 700 public notices to people in the area. About 80 public comments were received by the borough, and Babcock said MEA staff received an additional dozen comments.

Although public comments were taken on MEA's proposal to follow section-line easements across borough and university property, a few Gateway Community Council members present at the meeting expressed frustration that they learned for the first time Friday of the new proposed route.

"I'm just one person; anybody whose home or property this would go by would feel probably the same way," said Annie Bill, who found out Friday her property may be bordered on two sides by the high-voltage transmission line. "Personally, I feel throughout this whole process that the public has not been informed, including about the health risks."

Studies performed by various scientists and doctors have discussed links between electric and magnetic fields generated by power lines and childhood leukemia and chronic lymphocytic leukemia in occupationally exposed adults, but any proposed link has not yet been definitively identified.

Babcock said utility companies across the nation face challenges when attempting to expand or update their services.

"What we have found building transmission lines is, there is no way to put in a transmission line where everyone says 'yes,'" Babcock said. He did say that the project -- and the public response it has received -- has not gone unnoticed.

"I think MEA will be more attuned in the future," Babcock said, "rather than just notifying property owners and putting a notice in Powerlines (the monthly publication sent to MEA members with their electric bills)."

Contact Rindi White at rindi.white@frontiersman.com.