Anchorage Daily News

PALMER -- Matanuska Electric Association may be in for a battle if it tries to put two new power generation plants on an 850-acre site south of Palmer.

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Ballots tallied by the electric utility's elections board Thursday night showed its members favor a gravel pit at Mile 37 Glenn Highway over four other potential sites between Palmer and Houston.

MEA plans to build two 100-megawatt power plants to serve the Valley by 2015, one fired by coal and the other by natural gas. Of the 5,366 MEA members who voted, 2,381 preferred the so-called Glenn South site.

"I guess they've got a fight on their hands," said Tony Cox on Friday. "I feel that the South Palmer group will probably reassemble."

Cox, a car salesman in Anchorage who lives near Palmer, was part of the South Palmer Community Organization, a group that organized to block plans by the state and Matanuska-Susitna Borough to build the state's largest prison on the same site.

Hundreds of residents in the area mobilized to tell the Mat-Su Assembly to look elsewhere. The site was later scratched, due in part to public sentiment and in part because the site offered little room for expansion. Plans for the prison are now on hold.

Cox speculated that MEA members in Wasilla and Eagle River ranked the Palmer sites high for the two power plants as retribution for his group's efforts to block the prison. He didn't vote, he said.

"I just didn't feel like it's a worthwhile ballot," Cox said. "What am I supposed to do -- vote to get it as far away from my place as possible? I thought Point MacKenzie was a good option, but it wasn't on the list."

Second choice, with 2,187 votes, was a 425-acre gravel pit located north of the Glenn Highway. The Pittman gravel pits at Vine Road and Parks Highway, a 645-acre site, ranked a distant third with 1,493 votes.

Former MEA board member Michael Janecek said he's relieved that the Pittman site, which he can see from his Meadow Lakes home, was not chosen. But he worries about building power plants near the Matanuska River.

"Has their engineering included any discussion at all about the leaching process that happens when you stockpile coal?" Janecek asked. "What do they have in place to protect the river? And could they have picked a windier spot?"

Tuckerman Babcock, MEA's director of human resources and corporate affairs, said a yearlong study of wind patterns must be done before regulatory agencies will issue a permit for a coal-burning plant. He said the MEA board would likely order tests at the Glenn Highway sites and the third-ranked Pittman site.

Water quality, water table and water flow studies will also be performed as part of the site analysis, he said.

The MEA board is expected to accept the advisory vote results and direct staff to begin site analysis at a Monday board meeting. Babcock said he didn't think it likely a citizens' group mobilized now would change the outcome.

"When that many people have weighed in, it'd be hard to just turn it aside," Babcock said about the vote.

Daily News reporter Rindi White can be reached at rwhite@adn.com or in Wasilla at 1-907-352-6709.

IF YOU GO

THE MATANUSKA ELECTRIC ASSOCIATION BOARD will meet at 4 p.m. Monday at the Palmer MEA office, 163 E. Industrial Way, to discuss the advisory vote and other issues.