Of course outrage is natural when the truth finally sinks in.
A dam as stupefyingly massive as one to be built on the Susitna River will certainly cripple salmon runs and caribou stocks and the prime hunting and fishing lands from the Denali Highway south into the heart of the Susitna Valley.
But before and after anger at the sheer stupidity of how fast the Susitna Dam is proceeding lies a quiet discouragement that Our Elected Officials, with no public input, could have decided to build it at all. What'll they think up next? A Teflon-domed city with golf courses in the Alaska Range? (Former U.S. Senator from Alaska Mike Gravel did get significant funding for that one a generation ago. Alaskans stopped it.)
The Susitna Dam is the largest state-funded project in Alaska history with a cost of 5 to 8 billion dollars. When built to its full 800-foot height it will be the 8th tallest dam on earth. While the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington averages 3,400 megawatts a year, the Susitna Dam will average 280 to 300 megawatts. The final insult is that a monstrous dam that will get a ridiculously small amount of electricity for such a huge public expense is simply not necessary: There are many better alternatives for power. Cheaper. Less destructive. More in keeping with what Alaska is all about than, say, China or Pakistan where frantic maniacal development might have some justification.
Truth remains that the Susitna Dam is happening. Fast.
The Susitna River has naturally-high levels of toxic minerals above which salmon die; dynamiting large areas of river rock to build a dam will increase those mineral levels. The Susitna River also has naturally-high water temperatures above which salmon die; water shot through dam turbines will increase those temperatures. But the studies that would indicate whether the 4th largest king run in Alaska might be totally exterminated require time, which the State is refusing to allow. Every local, state, and federal fisheries agency that would do those studies express documented alarm at the speed with which the dam is being pushed.
The hunting lands from the Denali Highway across the Talkeetna Mountains into the Susitna Valley -- Unit 13, perhaps the best and most concentrated caribou-moose-and-bear habitat in Alaska -- would have dam construction roads and camps and gravel-pits and a 40-mile-long reservoir. That'd be the end of world-class game takes. But tour buses would have good parking at America's Tallest Dam gift shops.
The electricity that the dam would produce would only be cheap with enormous state subsidies. That means we pay to pretend we aren't. Since the dam would bring no electricity to the Bush or Southeast, those Alaskans would pay dearly for nothing.
So what are the alternatives?
To start: Alaska has more sources for energy than anywhere else on the planet, enough to last basically forever. And that does not include energy from a single humungous dam.
1) Cook Inlet natural gas now powers most of the area the dam would serve, Fairbanks to Homer. There's enough natural gas in Cook Inlet for at least a hundred years more. The North Slope holds a virtually unlimited supply. Piping it down is imminent and inevitable, though Our Elected Officials are currently arguing over which route and what amount and who would "own" it.
2) Alaska's geothermal potential rivals Iceland's where a third of the country is already powered by geothermal. Large geothermal developments in Alaska have begun, with a projected timeframe of ten years to completion. (The Susitna dam would take 12 to 15.)
3) Tidal power is now at the stage that wind and solar were at before those technologies became common. Alaska holds 90 percent of America's tidal potential. In ten years minimum, twenty years max (according to every industry projection), the electricity from Alaska's 30-foot tides will be moving toward their 100,000-megawatt potential.
4) Alaska's first two big wind farms, with a capability of 75 megawatts, will start generating electricity next year. Yes, that isn't steady power, but it's a fraction of what's possible.
5) As important as any of the above is energy efficiency, meaning saving electricity instead of spending it. According to the recent Railbelt Electrical Efficiency Landscape report, "A 50-percent improvement in the Railbelt's electricity efficiency could generate an increase of up to $947,992,100 in economic output, $290,927,800 in wages, and $53,499,850 in business income. It would also create an astounding estimated 9,350 new jobs." A 50-percent energy efficiency savings would almost equal the dam's electrical output.
But the Susitna Dam is proceeding. It is discouraging to recognize that the only way to stop this latest preposterous misuse of our public lands and monies requires focused effort, time, organized opposition, emails-to-legislators. But our children's children will be grateful. If they, too, have the Alaska we now honor and cherish, the legacy we leave them will be worth everything.
To see those alarming agency documents and more details about what the Susitna dam would destroy, visit www.susitnadamalternatives.org.
Richard Leo is an author and a former columnist for the Anchorage Daily News. He is a member of the Coalition for Susitna Dam Alternatives and lives in Trapper Creek.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch. Alaska Dispatch welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, e-mail commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.