PALMER -- They gathered midafternoon Monday in a gravel parking lot a quarter-mile from their target -- the main office of Matanuska Electric Association.
From many walks they came -- a professional photographer, a social worker, a fish biologist, retirees and stay-at-home moms with clinging toddlers.
At 3 p.m. the Renewable Energy Parade, 80-some strong, uncoiled itself and fell in behind a pickup truck pressed into duty as a float, a model of a geothermal-power-producing volcano rising from its bed. The protesters carried homemade signs bearing messages: "MEA: We need more options," "Coal is a four-letter word" and "Coal is not cool."
Many of them members of the 55,000-member cooperative utility, they marched to register discontent with MEA plans to build by 2015 a coal-burning, 100-megawatt-generating plant at one of five proposed sites around the heart of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. A second 100-megawatt plant would burn natural gas.
The hour-long demonstration moved inside the MEA building, where about one-third of the protesters signed up for public comment during the regular 4 p.m. MEA board of directors meeting.
The two new plants would free MEA, currently with no power plants of its own, from reliance on and potential rate hikes from Anchorage-based Chugach Electric Association, with whom MEA contracts until 2014 for delivery of electric power.
"I think it's ridiculous," said protester Lisa Stevenson of Chickaloon, president of the Castle Mountain Coalition. The coalition recently helped drive off a Canadian company interested in exploring coal deposits near Chickaloon for possible extraction. "Burning fossil fuel is not the answer."
Businesses lining the short route along Industrial Way complained to police of the obstructed roadway. A Palmer patrolman arrived, and parade organizer Bill Erickson waved the city permit from the driver-side window of his pickup truck.
"Nobody bothered to tell us," quipped patrolman Peter Steen. Business as usual, he added.
The parade took one turn around the MEA parking lot and the crowd settled into a small park across the street while event organizers Jim Sykes of UtilityWatch.org and Pete Houston, president of the MEA Ratepayers Alliance, rallied them with speeches.
MEA members will pay far more to underwrite construction of the new plants than MEA has told them, said Houston. He claimed MEA underestimated that cost by as little as 80 percent and as much as 110 percent.
Coal is a dirty fuel, despite advances in clean-burning technology, said Houston.
"If they can build a coal plant as clean as a gas turbine, I don't have a problem with that," he said just before the parade kicked off. "I don't think they can do that."
The plant MEA would build would produce a half-cup, three pounds or less, of mercury each year, said MEA spokesman Tuckerman Babcock. The old 20-megawatt plant in Healy produced 10 pounds each year, by contrast, he said.
Houston and other demonstrators said MEA failed to consider alternative sources of power such as wind, solar, tidal and particularly, geothermal.
David Dahms, an MEA board member, sat on the park grass while Houston spoke. He afterward disagreed with Houston that alternatives can meet the Susitna and Matanuska valleys power needs.
"I mean, the facts clearly are behind the decisions we've made as a board, and that's what I have to do, I have to vote on the facts; I can't vote on the emotions. I've got to vote on the science," Dahms said.
He directed attention to the MEA Web site, www.matanuska.com, where studies on alternative energy options for the Mat-Su are posted.
"We've got an excellent plan, half-gas, half-coal, that diversifies it like you would diversify a stock portfolio," he said. "We've done the science."
After the march, scores signed up to address the MEA board. Their comments embraced opposition to the coal-burning plant on a number of points.
"I do construction management," said Jay Cross. "I read engineering data. That's what makes my decision on whether I want to build something or not. And right now the members don't have the data, we don't have the engineering data. We don't have anything other than all of a sudden somebody said this is a good idea."
Cross was referring to the Integrated Resource Plan, a 70-page analysis for the cooperative by engineering firm CH2M Hill, which recommends building the coal- and gas-fired plants. A 10-page summary is available to the public.
Houston said he's asked several times for the full report, or IRP. He wrote, he said, "explaining why I have a right to this information, and why all the owner members have a right to this information."
Babcock said the cooperative would like to release the entire report to its membership, but doing so would tip its hand to Chugach Electric.
Chugach holds MEA captive in order to ensure a steady revenue stream that allows Chugach to pay off debt it incurred years ago, Babcock said. Building its own generation plants frees MEA from that obligation, he said.
"They would love to know what all of our analysis details are for how we would plan to separate ourselves from Chugach, and what the costs are, so that they could then incorporate all those assertions and assessments into their own effort to persuade the (Regulatory Commission of Alaska) to force us to stay a customer," Babcock said.
Others countered that by incurring its own debt to build power plants based on "archaic" "19th-century" technology, MEA is binding future generations not only to high rates but degraded health and a poisoned environment as well.
"Coal is like the liver of the earth, and if you dig into the coal you're going to dirty the water, and when coal was dug before in Chickaloon, they dirtied that water so much that it killed every fish," said Patricia Wade of Chickaloon Village Traditional Council.
Daniel Dryden, 27, of Sutton, fresh from work on a cabin that day, apologized for his workman's clothing but urged the board to think twice about coal power.
"Take this opportunity to create something that we as a community can stand behind, can become enthusiastic about, and support you guys and say: 'Yes! You did it. You helped make our community a beautiful place, and we appreciate you for this.' Rather than have us come here with our faces down, with some frustration, to tell you that what you're doing is archaic, it's antiquated, and it's behind the times," he said.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
InfoBox: Ballots are in the mail asking MEA members to choose from the five sites for two new potential power plants.
Public hearings on the sites are scheduled Saturday and May 24.
For more information, go to www.matanuska.com.
