SITKA, ALASKA
Electricty in Hoonah is diesel-generated, and currently goes for $.56 per kilowatt hour, about six times more than it costs Sitka, Juneau, or anyplace else in Southeast served by a hydro power. Although Hoonah’s residential electric customers see a discount due to the state’s power-cost equalization formula, businesses don’t.

Lifetime Hoonah resident and mayor Windy Skaflestad is unhappy about the changes he’s seen in Southeast villages.

“We’re fighting to keep the people here. Take a look at Angoon, Kake – people have left the town and gone to Juneau or elsewhere.”

Skaflestad has long advocated building a road across northern Chichagof Island to connect Hoonah with Pelican, whose small hydro plant has enough surplus energy to help Hoonah. Thirty-five land miles separate the two towns, about half the distance of the water route. Winter gales in Cross Sound also can sometimes isolate Pelican, and it may be three weeks between ferries. Hoonah’s ferry service is far more reliable, on inside waters all the way to the capital.

Skaflestad has shown his road plans in Juneau, and believes the governor has his back.

“He said, Mr. Mayor I’m going to tell you something: You have the best plan of any plan in the state of Alaska today. He said, Get that road built, and get that power coming from Pelican, is what he said to me.”

About one-third of the way between Pelican and Hoonah along this proposed road sits Pegmatite Mountain, at the head of Tenakee Inlet. This year’s capital budget has a $599,000 line item for the Inside Passage Electrical Cooperative – or IPEC – to study the geothermal prospects at Pegmatite, with the idea of eventually replacing costly diesel power on the island with generators similar to those already in place at Chena Hot Springs, outside of Fairbanks. The Chena project uses hot water to vaporize a coolant liquid. The pressurized gas drives three turbines that produce a combined 680 kilowatts of electricity, at a cost of about $.07 per kilowatt hour.

That’s three times as much electricity currently used by the 85 year-round residents of Tenakee Springs, but council member Joan McBeen is concerned about major development at the head of the inlet.

“It has a river that has three salmon species in it and bears and deer and so forth. Steelhead fish. And it’s unroaded. It’s in a roadless area, and would have to have roads put in. We object to that.”

And there’s more that Tenakee objects to: In February, the city council passed a resolution asking Sen. Lisa Murkowski to withdraw Pegmatite Mountain from the Sealaska lands selection bill. That’s right: Sealaska has selected the 40 acres that IPEC would like to explore as one of their so-called “futures sites.” IPEC and Sealaska plan to move forward on Pegmatite as partners.

Sealaska vice-president Rick Harris says the corporation already owns the land under several small renewable energy projects on Prince of Wales Island. He says private ownership on POW streamlined development.

“What we’re trying to do is simplify the permitting process, make it easier to get done, and I think that’s the same thing that we bring here. As a power project it makes the most sense for a local utility – in this case IPEC – to actually develop that, but we would certainly be standing beside IPEC as a means of doing that – to provide that renewable energy opportunity.”

The partnership between IPEC and Sealaska is not a marriage of convenience for Pegmatite. IPEC CEO Jodi Mitchell also sits on Sealaska’s board of directors. She declined to be interviewed for this story, after an acrimonious string of letters and responses to the Pegmatite proposal appeared on the Juneau Empire’s website.

Harris, however, is fully aware that Pegmatite represents a commercial opportunity beyond lower-cost power. Chena Hot Springs, after all, is a self-sufficient resort. Harris says nothing is off the table.

“We don’t necessarily envision it becoming a Chena Hot Springs. Our goal with the futures sites is to work with the local communities, the local tribes, to create new kinds of sustainable economies. Part of that is reliable and hopefully lower-cost energy. But if other opportunities come about, of course we’re very interested.”

This is where an innovative, renewable energy source runs afoul of Alaska’s rural sensibilities. If Pegmatite evolves into a resort site, it’s unlikely that guests will be driven in over miles of gravel road from Hoonah.

Joan McBeen believes everything – from construction equipment to tourists – will funnel down Tenakee Inlet by water, right in her front yard. She says people choose to live in Tenakee for a reason.

 “We like the quiet. We like the fact that we’re unroaded. We like the fact that we can keep our community small and intimate, with a lack of pollution and noise. It’s just a different kind of a lifestyle.”

McBeen says Tenakee residents would like to get off diesel power: They’re in the process of licensing a small hydro project on the Indian River, which flows just outside of town. The state capital budget has $203,000 listed for it.

And in Pelican? Like Tenakee, Pelican is also unroaded, but they’ve also got hydro power at their seafood plant that powers the whole city. The question for Pelican really is more about the proposed road to Hoonah, and the end of their isolation. Mayor Clint Bean says his citizens are probably divided on the issue, but also open-minded. He says they’re still a long way from a decision, but he’ll back whatever they do decide.

Read IPEC's Pegmatite Mountain proposal to the Alaska Renewable Energy Fund.
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