What do transmission lines have to do with me?

It is important for you to know that your electric system isn’t what it should be. I don’t say that to scare you - it’s not a crisis situation – but it is important to inform you so we can make smart decisions as a community. The electrical system you rely on has a lack of redundancy, aging infrastructure and a limited ability to handle the community’s growing demand for electricity. All of this affects reliability of electrical power.

What that means to you is your power supply is vulnerable. This translates to an increased chance of extended outages, a lack of resiliency during major emergency events and the inability to support the significant economic growth this area exhibits and depends on. In short, it’s about energy security for the valley.

MEA has identified these issues in our long range plan and is actively pursuing solutions to provide the community with this essential service to support our quality of life - just like roads and schools.

The EGS power plant now provides most of your power and this transmission system delivers that power to our homes and businesses.

Over the past few years, we’ve worked closely with our members to move forward our number one capital priority - a redundant transmission line into the core of Wasilla to support growth and decrease the vulnerability of this large and critical load.

After a collaborative effort with our members, including residents, elected officials, business owners, and the City of Wasilla, MEA is near the end of a long road to find the best route to address a variety of community priorities.

Our preferred Parks Highway route in an existing utility corridor was approved in 2013 only if we would place it underground. As you can guess, underground transmission is not a financial or operational consideration for MEA and the disruption to business along with the increased rates required to make it happen will put Wasilla in a bad position. We simply won’t do that.

Instead, we have spent the past year actively involving the community to help us find a realistic solution. Through work sessions, open houses, home visits, meetings, public hearings and online comments, your voices rallied around one goal: If the line has to go somewhere, let’s find the best route for the community.

With your input, we scored every single parcel along 440 route options around values that were important to our members, like your views, buffers, future development, environmental impacts, cost and other considerations. Based on those objective scores and further member input, we narrowed the options down to three final routes.

This hasn’t been an easy or quick process, and it came at a substantial cost, but it was an important one. We wanted an open and thorough process that prioritized the voices of our members. As many as possible. Not just a vocal minority.

At the Planning Commission meeting on Tuesday November 10th we will present our final three options and ask the Planning Commission to make a decision so we can move forward. We have worked closely with the Commission throughout the process and are confident they are ready to find a solution. It is the City’s priority to support the health of their businesses and continued vitality of the community into the future and they can’t afford to be limited by inadequate infrastructure.

We appreciate every member who has weighed in so far. While we know many people don’t like to see power lines, they are simply a tradeoff of the energy we use and an inevitable, essential investment to secure your quality of life now and for future generations.

Electricity is important to each of our lives. It supports our businesses, allows us to provide for our families and meet our basic life and safety needs. This is about each of you and I encourage you to join us in lending support to the solutions created by your friends and neighbors.

As many of you know, I will retire in January. It is has been my goal over the past 6 years to leave the system better than I found it and the MEA team will continue that mission long after I’m gone. This is an important step in that process and if you would like to help, join us at the Planning Commission meeting or submit comments and find more information through our online resource center, www.mea.coop/wasillatline.

I am proud of the team effort that has brought us to this final stage of the process and we look forward to working together to make the entire Railbelt more reliable and most importantly, provide energy security in the valley.

Joe Griffith is the general manager of Matanuska Electric Association.