WASILLA -- People in the path of a proposed high-voltage power line near Wasilla say it belongs back along the Parks Highway where it would run past the city's energy-hungry big-box stores.
The city rejected an overhead line down the highway two years ago, saying the scenic "viewshed" along the busy highway needed protection.
Matanuska Electric Association, which serves some 60,000 members from Eagle River to Denali State Park, wants the new 115-kilovolt transmission line to upgrade aging infrastructure and meet fast-growing Wasilla's power demands, according to utility officials. The line will allow the Palmer-based electric cooperative to create a new power loop from its Eklutna power plant to Wasilla.
A 2013 planning commission decision required Matanuska Electric bury the line to protect property values and comply with local planning standards. The commission heard from business owners and some residents spooked by prospects of 80-foot electric towers.
MEA balked at the cost and maintenance problems associated with burying the line. Instead, the utility has proposed four new alternative routes in residential neighborhoods just south of the city. All fall within the Matanuska-Susitna Borough now, which triggers a different permitting process.
About a dozen residents of those neighborhoods testified at a public hearing Thursday that the new routes outside the city put the aesthetic and safety burden of the line on them to the benefit of the commercial stores that use most of the city's power. The hearing was held at the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center in Wasilla.
Nobody wants the lower property value and new access for trespassers in their yard, said Dan Phillips, who said his family lives where two potential routes converge.
"I would like to see everyone push for going down the Parks Highway whether it was viewed once before or not and turned down. It's a different administration in there now," Phillips said, referring to relatively new mayor, Bert Cottle. "I don't want it in mine. I don't want it in someone else's."
But it's not clear that there's room in the process to return to the highway, even if that becomes the public's leading option, MEA officials say.
The meeting Thursday was one of several opportunities for public comment. A comment period runs through June 22, MEA spokesperson Julie Estey said. Numerous other comments siding with one route or the other came in during public sessions last month, according to documents provided by MEA.
The prevailing sentiment about returning the line to the Parks Highway came as a surprise, Estey said during a break Thursday.
"This has not been on our radar," she said. "We've been focused on these other routes."
City officials at the meeting said MEA already applied for that route and got a permit approved, albeit with conditions.
"It was already brought forward," deputy city administrator Lyn Carden said. "We followed the process."
Estey said MEA plans to approach city planning officials again given the public sentiments expressed at the hearing.
But because the proposed routes now fall outside the city, and within the borough, MEA no longer needs Wasilla's approval unless another route surfaces.
Borough regulations require the utility hold a few public meetings, and then submit a decision document describing public involvement, the route chosen, the timeline for construction and the public appeal process, Alex Strawn, the borough's development services manager, said in an email. "There are no standards by which the Borough approves or denies the transmission line as long as the process is followed correctly."