Republican state Reps. Jay Ramras and Craig Johnson want the Palin Administration to reconsider the state's $500 million gas line partnership with TransCanada. With the national economy reeling, they note that Lower 48 gas prices have plummeted back to more normal levels. More and more of U.S. demand for gas is being met by tapping a new source, coal shale deposits. The two lawmakers seem to think the natural gas landscape has changed in profound ways that the state didn't consider when it signed on with TransCanada.

They're wrong.

Before the Legislature approved the TransCanada partnership, the Palin administration did an exhaustive amount of homework. Independent experts in the industry studied a vast array of scenarios for different natural gas prices, volumes of gas to be shipped, construction costs, Lower 48 supply and demand, availability of gas for the Alaska line and project financing arrangements.

After millions of dollars of reviews and thousands of pages of reports and analysis, the result?

Under all but the most dire circumstances, the project makes sense for all three parties -- the state, the companies that are sitting on the gas and TransCanada.

"It would take a 'perfect storm' of worst case scenarios for multiple factors," the state concluded, "for the Project to be uneconomic."

"Under the relatively unlikely low price scenarios, the project's economics appear favorable even if the Project experiences significant cost increases."

It would be silly to base a project with such a long lead time and long life on year-to-year fluctuations in natural gas prices. If project viability depended on gas staying at last summer's record-breaking levels, the state could pull the plug right now -- but it doesn't.

Nor does the Alaska line require Lower 48 shale gas to stay locked in the ground. Shale gas is expensive; it requires a lot of wells. The huge volumes of gas that are ready to come pouring out of Prudhoe Bay can compete on price, even after traveling 3,000 miles by pipeline.

While Lower 48 gas prices have fallen from the stratosphere, other factors affecting an Alaska gas line are changing for the better.

The recession has cut the price of steel and labor. That helps hold down the cost of construction.

The nation elected a president who supports a cap and trade system for reducing greenhouse gas pollution. Natural gas burns much more cleanly than coal, so Lower 48 electric utilities and industrial plants have a big incentive to switch from coal to natural gas -- if they can get a secure source of supply.

Although shale gas production is expanding, U.S. gas supplies from Canada are shrinking. The U.S. Department of Energy notes on its Web site that "Canada has continued to produce natural gas faster than it replenishes its reserves." The energy department cites a projection that Canadian natural gas exports to the U.S. may fall almost 50 percent by 2015.

Reps. Ramras and Johnson are right on one count: In the private sector, a prudent business doesn't hesitate to re-evaluate expensive plans in light of changed circumstances. But a prudent business also thinks ahead before making those expensive plans. A prudent business anticipates the possibility that important circumstances can change. That's what the Palin Administration did, and a North Slope gas line still looks promising. And that's why the Palin Administration doesn't need to reconsider the state's partnership with TransCanada.

BOTTOM LINE: Natural gas prices will go up and down. The state should stay the course with TransCanada.

$53 a ton for this?

I'm a pretty dedicated recycler. I'm one of those oddballs who is willing to pay an extra $10 a month to have a big container of recyclables picked up at my curb every other Tuesday.

So it kills me when I have to throw away glass bottles instead of recycling them. The local market for recycled glass is glutted and recycling has stopped.

Glass is heavy, and it doesn't decompose into yucky stuff, so throwing it away is basically like throwing rocks into your trash can. When that glass gets sent to the city landfill, it costs $53 a ton to bury it in the sophisticated, environmentally friendly facility.

Which makes absolutely no sense. Glass is basically sand, and it could be safely ground up, turned back into sand, and used as clean fill. I have half a mind to dig a hole in my backyard, smash up the few bottles I have every month and bury them right there. (I'd love to do without glass altogether, but I'm not going to drink wine or beer from plastic bottles.)

I recently shared my complaint with Mary Fisher, the longtime head of Alaskans for Litter Prevention and Recycling. She hears a similar complaint several times a week. She's as frustrated as I am.

But she points out that glass is too heavy to ship outside for recycling, and those markets are glutted anyway. A local plant recycles glass into blasting sand and tiles for landscaping and construction use, but it is struggling to stay afloat with aging equipment and limited demand for those high-end products.

The one ray of hope in this glum situation comes from Anchorage Sand and Gravel. Speaking at a recycling business forum at UAA on Thursday, company representatives said they may experiment with recycling glass this spring. The same crushers the company uses to recycle asphalt and concrete might work for glass too. The resulting product could be used almost anywhere sand or gravel is called for.

I hope some kind of arrangement like that can be worked out. Because I and many other local residents will happily pull glass out of our trash for separate handling, as long as someone can put it to good use.