Wasilla commission to MEA: Bury lines

WASILLA — A final decision won’t come until next month, but all signs point to the Wasilla Planning Commission approving the Matanuska Electric Association’s plans to put high-voltage transmission lines through the city — but only if they’re underground.

“The best use of this resource would be to put it underground,” planning commissioner Pat Brown said.

Brown, in a meeting Tuesday discussing, among other things, MEA’s application for a permit to install the transmission lines, advocated for approving MEA’s application only if the power company agreed to place the lines in what’s called a “utilidor” — a tunnel for power lines and other utilities that is popular in many parts of Europe and under Disney’s Magic Kingdom in Florida.

Brown pointed out that approving above ground lines “goes against the historic principles of our comprehensive plan.”

Commissioner Bill Green was in the majority that agreed with Brown, and was in favor of insisting the lines be underground.

“There’s no doubt that (with) Wasilla and all of the Mat-Su Valley, MEA is playing the part of the bully and not addressing our questions,” Green said.

Commissioner Jessica Dean said that in a recent trip that took her to Texas and Oklahoma, she made sure to pay attention to where the large transmissions lines like the ones MEA proposes were. MEA’s plans call for the high-voltage lines to be strung from 80- to 100-foot towers.

“The only places where I saw power lines were literally in the middle of nowhere,” she said.

There was one populated area where there were such large lines, she said, but it was in a heavily industrialized area.

“It was like an army of giants,” she said. “Even there it stood out.”

She tried to see if her colleagues would be in favor of giving MEA a couple of options, saying the lines could go above ground if they followed the railroad’s right of way.

Later, the commission seemed to reach a consensus that MEA hadn’t sought the railroad route and that the route hadn’t been studied enough to know if it is even feasible or if it would run into the same conflicts that MEA’s proposed route along the Parks Highway has — namely, that it would harm the local “viewshed.”

Commissioner Glenda Ledford lamented that MEA hadn’t shown up at a pair of meetings that Wasilla held to gather public input on where the lines should go. Like many, she said she’d heard that buried lines were more expensive, but didn’t feel that she had enough information about just how expensive.

“I don’t think at this point we have enough information from MEA on the cost and everything else to make a decision that’s fair to everyone,” Ledford said.

For its part, MEA’s board of directors in mid-June issued a lengthy resolution blasting the commission for engaging in “stall tactics” and trying to draw out the public process through meetings like the ones Ledford said the utility should have attended.

The city’s attorney, Richard Payne, urged deliberation in deciding what to do with MEA’s application and how it states its reasons for its actions.

“MEA is more than likely going to appeal this to our hearing officer,” Payne said.

And, he said, if the resolution the planning commission passes is muddled and difficult to understand, that appeal would likely drag on as lawyers hash out what the commission said and what it intended.

“We need to slow down and do it a little more carefully, because it’s painful on appeal to try to figure it all out,” he said.

Which seemed to be why the commission decided to bring the issue back during its Aug. 13, meeting where it will decide on the exact wording of it’s approval or denial of MEA’s application.

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