Two Chugach Electric Association board members held on to their seats in a recent election despite suggestions of a backlash against the board by critics of a new dam on the Kenai Peninsula.
Former state lawmaker Harry Crawford, originally elected to the seven-member board in 2011, was re-elected for a three-year term, the utility announced Friday.
Stuart Parks, appointed in January after Bruce Dougherty resigned to move out of state, won a four-year term. Parks is a vice president at NANA WorleyParsons, an engineering and design firm owned partly by regional Native corporation NANA.
Ron Stafford, a self-employed consultant who moved to Alaska in 2013, joined Crawford and Parks in running for the two open seats. Stafford did not win.
Chugach Electric announced April 20 that the board had accepted staff's recommendation to forget about the dam the utility had planned to study for construction at the Snow River, which feeds salmon and water into the popular Kenai River.
Vocal opponents of the dam had packed meetings about the concept, with some indicating they would seek to oust board members.
The voting began April 17.
For this election, Chugach Electric shifted to online voting, although people could still request mail-in materials. The Southcentral Alaska utility reported that 7,436 members cast ballots in the election, which ended May 18. That was a "significant increase," by more than 1,000 ballots, over last year's turnout. The number of voters represented 10.8 percent of the utility's 68,826 members, the utility said.
Turnout was much higher in the 1990s, when board elections featured controversies over power generation and union pay for linesmen. After mail-in voting began in 1986, the highest turnout was 30.2 percent in 1992, said Julie Hasquet, a Chugach Electric spokeswoman.