After 12 years, Wasilla voters will put a man in charge
RALLY: Organizers say MEA will listen if the community pulls together.
Published: June 22, 2007
Last Modified: June 29, 2007 at 01:58 AM
PALMER -- What do you get when you put a doctor, a priest, a mediator, an engineer, an environmental advocate and a soil scientist under hot lights in a high school theater?
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You get an anti-coal movement that meeting organizers hope will spin into a broad grass-roots protest against local utility Matanuska Electric Association.
The member-owned cooperative plans to build a coal plant south of Palmer.
The utility currently relies on Chugach Electric Association for its power supply.
A 25-year wholesale power contract with that company expires in December 2014, and MEA plans to build a 100-megawatt coal plant and a 100-megawatt natural gas plant to generate its own power.
"This is a bad plan, and if the community pulls together -- that's what it's going to take -- MEA's not going to go through with their plans," said Pete Houston, organizer of MEA Ratepayers' Alliance, an anti-coal group that formed to protest the coal plant plans.
No Matanuska Electric Association officials spoke at the meeting, although at least two MEA board members and one administrator were present. Event organizers said the meeting was open to anyone, but MEA officials were not specifically invited to speak.
The utility is basing its decision to use coal on a consultant's report that identified coal and natural gas as the two cheapest energy sources, MEA spokeswoman Lorali Carter said in an interview Thursday.
MEA has moved beyond second-guessing coal as its primary power source, Carter said.
"At this point we are not looking backwards," she said.
Houston, after the meeting dubbed "The True Cost of Coal" wrapped up Wednesday evening at Palmer High School, said he was pleased with the turnout. More than 100 people sat in on the meeting despite the warm, sunny weather outside.
Organizers handed out "No Coal" buttons and sold "No Coal Plant" T-shirts, distributed cookies and water and signed up people who wanted to get involved in the anti-coal movement.
"I'm getting a lot of questions like, 'Can we win this?' " Houston told the audience. "We've really just begun. This is like the opening salvo to this battle. (An MEA director said) that this isn't really representative of their membership. I don't buy that. I think there's at least 20 people for every person here tonight."
People who attended the meeting heard from a range of speakers.
Perhaps the most unexpected was state Rep. Carl Gatto, who said the choice to use coal to generate power "seems to be going backward pretty quick."
"What is relevant is that every state is dealing with (coal) legislation ... They're going to place caps on the emission of carbon and they're going to tax to keep carbon emissions down," Gatto, R-Palmer, said. "I am troubled by the plan."
Gatto and Anchorage engineering consultant Mark Foster instead touted the clean-burning technology of natural gas power generation plants.
"Natural gas options remain attractive within this railbelt," Foster said. "A new fluidized bed coal power plant in the Matanuska Valley is one of the highest-cost alternatives that we have."
Cook Inlet Keeper executive director Bob Shavelson said although coal can be purchased at low cost and companies can get subsidies to offset production costs, the environmental costs of mining, potential pollution and impacts on the surrounding area are high.
"Our market system is failing us in trying to put together a true cost of coal," Shavelson said.
Matanuska Electric officials have said the fluidized bed coal plant being planned routes emissions through a scrubber, a filter and eventually through an emissions-consuming algae bed that will result in little carbon entering the air.
Gatto said he's skeptical some of those features, particularly the algae bed, will work as described.
"I said (to MEA officials) 'you're going to need an algae bed for two miles,' " Gatto said. "And how are you going to grow this algae bed in winter when it's night?"
Find Rindi White online at adn.com/contact/rwhite or call 907-352-6709.
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