Anchorage Daily News

An effort to find new sources of renewable "small hydro" power for the Railbelt is running into opposition from advocates of another, equally noble environmental cause: protection of the mountain headwaters of the fish-rich Kenai River.

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Homer Electric Association, working with a private consortium, is studying "low impact" small-hydro projects for four mountain lakes and streams around Moose Pass and Cooper Landing.

But the state-funded studies ran into loud opposition in the last two weeks from local residents, who foresee plenty of possible impacts from the proposed diversion pipelines and access roads, including threats to the scenic area's salmon spawning and its tourist-based economy.

"None of these are acceptable in the Kenai River watershed because they're going to modify the natural flows," said Bob Baldwin, president of the Friends of Cooper Landing, a group active in land-use issues for a decade.

He dismissed the term "low impact" as "total PR spin."

Several score residents of Moose Pass showed up at a standing-room-only meeting Wednesday night to pepper utility officials with questions. HEA officials said attendees seemed skeptical but less hostile than at a meeting a week earlier in Cooper Landing, where 50 people urged the utility to drop the whole idea right now. They argued the small projects, each producing only three to six megawatts of power, aren't worth the disruption.

"The environmental issues, to us, seem huge compared to the amount of power they're going to get out of it," said Bill Stockwell, a Cooper Landing angler. He said plans for nearby Crescent Lake had "totally unhinged everyone."

"I don't think we heard anything we didn't expect to hear," said Brad Zubeck, the project engineer for HEA. He said the studies are aimed at finding answers to the tough questions raised by local residents.

Homer Electric and its private partner are looking at four projects:

• Crescent Lake. The lake, a popular hiking and biking destination, would get a new drainage east into Carter Lake, where a 13,000-foot pipe would plunge to a powerhouse near the Seward Highway. The flows of Crescent Creek west toward Cooper Landing would be reduced.

• Grant Lake. A small dam east of the Seward Highway would raise Grant Lake's level as much as nine feet. The level would drop in winter as much as 25 feet below current levels. An above-ground pipe would carry water down to a powerhouse on Grant Creek, where planners say it would be returned to the stream in time to replenish the most productive fish spawning habitat.

• Falls Creek. Falls Creek would be diverted through a pipe, either to a powerhouse on the valley floor or north to the Grant Lake dam, where it would increase power output.

• Ptarmigan Lake. In the next valley to the south, water from Ptarmigan Lake would flow through a mile-and-a-half tunnel to a powerhouse, then return to Ptarmigan Creek.

COAL, WIND, HYDRO

A consortium called Kenai Hydro is exploring the projects. Homer Electric's partner in the deal, Wind Energy Alaska, is jointly owned by Cook Inlet Region Inc. of Anchorage and enXco Development, the North American subsidiary of a French renewable-energy firm.

HEA said it needs to develop new sources of energy because its contract to buy power from Chugach Electric Association expires in 2014. The Kenai Peninsula utility says it will need 120 megawatts of generating and reserve capacity, and expects to get most of that from natural gas.

The utility has approved terms of a deal to buy some power from a mothballed 50-megawatt coal-powered plant in Healy, a plan that has raised the ire of rate-payers pushing instead for renewable sources. Homer Electric also has meteorological towers in the Caribou Hills, testing the area's potential for wind power.

Funding for the hydroelectric studies around Moose Pass has come mostly from the state Legislature, with a small match provided by Kenai Hydro. A $200,000 appropriation -- recommended by the Alaska Energy Authority last month as part of a $100 million package of renewable energy projects -- would bring the total state money for the four projects to $380,000.

In addition, the AEA recommendations call for another $816,000 in state funds to take the Grant Lake and Falls Creek projects on to a phase-two feasibility study. Kenai Hydro's application for that grant estimates the total cost of the Grant Lake/Falls Creek small hydro at $27 million.

WORRIES ABOUT FISH

Zubeck said the locations were attractive in part because they are close to existing transmission lines. He said the studies will examine how projects would affect water flow, fish and scenic values, among other things.

"There are low impact, but they're not no impact," he said.

The streams under consideration all have waterfalls that block spawning runs of salmon from reaching the higher lakes. Zubeck said the proposed projects would reduce water flows downstream, but not leave the streams dry.

The utility wants to avoid the problem created by the nearby Cooper Lake dam, which wiped out a prime king salmon and rainbow trout tributary of the Kenai River after it was opened in 1961. To renew its federal license, Chugach Electric has agreed to spend $14 million to divert other streams into the lake and increase the water flow below the dam, in hopes of restoring the Cooper Creek fish populations.

Because small hydro projects provide renewable energy with no emissions, they have risen in the esteem of environmentalists the past few years. That gives some residents mixed feelings, said Rick Smeriglio, a Moose Pass resident and longtime environmental campaigner. He said he'd heard some halfway positive talk in the community about the chance of getting a water system built for local homes as part of any big water-diversion project.

But the most outspoken local residents have no ambivalence.

Adding insult to injury, they say, the power projects would do nothing for local electric rate payers. Cooper Landing and Moose Pass are outside HEA's service area and are served by Chugach Electric. If the projects produce cheap power, HEA's rate payers would benefit, not them.

"What gets me is, Moose Pass gets nothing," said Jerry Dixon, appalled that a hiking trail built by a local group to Ptarmigan Lake would be rebuilt as an access road.

Find Tom Kizzia online at adn.com/contact/tkizzia or call him in Homer at 907-235-4244.

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