Tyonek, Mat-Su look to connect

PALMER — Name the important communities around Cook Inlet — the Mat-Su and Kenai Peninsula boroughs and the Municipality of Anchorage, right?

What about Tyonek?

Tyonek is cut off from the state’s road system. The village, according to the Tyonek Native Corp. website, has only a couple hundred residents. But before you dismiss the question of Tyonek’s importance, think about the next 10 years. The idea of a fourth big economy on the Inlet might not seem so strange.

John McClellan with the Tyonek Native Corp. laid it all out for the Mat-Su Borough Assembly last week. A lot of people, he said, are eyeing the Tyonek area — more generally described as the western Cook Inlet region — as a potential growth area. And, to hear his presentation, it seemed hard to argue.

For instance, there’s hardly a big Southcentral energy project in the works that doesn’t include the Inlet’s western edge:

• The coal gasification/power plant idea the Native corporation CIRI announced in October.

• The Chakachamna Hydroelectric project, one of two big hydroelectric projects state lawmakers continually talk about. The other is the Susitna River hydroelectric project.

• Plans to generate geothermal energy off of Mount Spur.

All told, McClellan said, the Tyonek Native Corp. estimates about 900 megawatts of electrical generation on that side of the inlet. By comparison, the Matanuska Electric Association’s planned natural gas plant to meet most of its customers’ needs is pegged at about 180 megawatts.

“That’s more power than the grid really needs right now,” McClellan said about all the planned Tyonek-area power plants. “But it will be an attraction for future industry to be located in western Cook Inlet.”

Those are all big projects. But throw in things like the Chuitna coal project and possible plants to process North Slope natural gas for export, and there’s a potential $18.7 billion in projects slated for that vast stretch of land on the other side of the Inlet.

“In about four years we expect 10,000 people to be on the western side of Cook Inlet” to build and then run all of those projects, McClellan said.

Where does the Mat-Su Borough fit in?

McClellan told the assembly that first and foremost the Native corporation is very keen to get ferry service running. The borough has for years been awaiting the completion of an ice-breaking ferry that’s being built in Ketchikan right now for delivery later this year. The ship would shorten trips between the Point MacKenzie area and Anchorage.

The borough has also signed an agreement with Tyonek. And, McClellan said, nine corporation board members and managers have asked to be part of the vessel’s launch ceremony. Which, he said, should say something about the corporation’s commitment.

“Think about that for a minute. That was volunteering to go to Ketchikan and stand outside in the middle of the winter,” McClellan said.

In the longer term, though, McClellan said the area is looking at what it needs to do to get hooked into Alaska’s road system.

There’s land designated for a connector between Tyonek-area roads and Mat-Su Borough roads. And there’s only a 22-mile gap between the two systems.

“Twenty-two miles of road isn’t such a big deal, but it requires a bridge across the Susitna River,” McClellan said.

That bridge will be expensive and take a lot of federal permitting.

“Just our from-the-hip estimate is about $200 million,” McClellan said. “We think this road connection is going to happen once the politicians realize all the development that’s about to occur.”

In the broadest terms, McClellan said, the Tyonek Native Corp. takes a lesson from the San Francisco Bay area. San Francisco was a bustling city when Oakland was still a sparsely populated, undeveloped area. Now, Oakland is a major port and an integral part of the Bay Area economy.

“We think the same thing is going to happen in western Cook Inlet,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.