As the City of Sitka works to recruit businesses to town, they want to offer commercial entities a discount for joining the city’s electric grid. (Robert Woolsey/KCAW photo)

The Sitka Assembly approved, on first reading at the Tuesday night meeting (11-28-17), creating an incentive program for commercial entities to use the city’s electricity. The ordinance (Motion and Ord 2017-39S) states that customers projected to spend $75,000 a year on electricity would get a discounted rate for the the first three years.

The city administrator would authorize the rate, so long as it does “not create an unreasonable competitive advantage over existing commercial customers.”

Rather than negotiate a rate on a case-by-case basis, former utility director Chris Brewton told the Assembly the rate should be decided up front. “I just encourage you to take this and put it in our normal rate structure, so if I’m a business investor…I can make this happen,” said Brewton.

This ordinance has been workshopped by an Assembly committee, consisting of Kevin Knox, Richard Wein, and Aaron Bean. All negotiated rates would be published, for viewing by the Assembly and the public. Knox was hopeful that new and existing businesses would take notice. “The City of Sitka is actively looking and trying to recruit business to town,” Knox said.

The Assembly also approved, on first reading, matching a $360,000 grant application for the Sitka Community Playground at Crescent Harbor. The money is contingent on grant awards from the Rasmuson Foundation and the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The ADA-accessible playground is on track to break ground this spring, if the money comes through.

The Assembly did not take action on a request from St. Michael’s Cathedral for $5000 from the Visitor Enhancement Fund. Vice Deputy Mayor Bob Potrzuski postponed the motion, saying, “I think it’s important that we get it right.” He added, ‘I don’t feel comfortable that we have all our Ts crossed and Is dotted.”

When pressed by Assembly member Richard Wein as to why, city attorney Brian Hanson said it had to do with legal issues and the First Amendment’s establishment clause, which provides for a separation of church and state.

In other business, the Assembly appointed Shauna Thornton to the Port and Harbors Commission and learned that the city is researching other ways for Sitkans to recycle their mixed paper. Earlier this month, the city had to cut back the recycling program due to import restrictions from China.

The Assembly will meet again on Tuesday, December 5th to review a draft of a request for proposals, seeking management proposals for Sitka Community Hospital. The meeting will begin at 6 p.m. in Harrigan Centennial Hall.

(Photo courtesy of SFAC)

Downloadable audio.

WT McRae, a teaching artist with the Sitka Fine Arts Camp (SFAC), was joined by administrator Lauren Tronick to talk about the last week of camp and this year’s line-up of final performances.

McRae is teaching partner acrobatics and in his 9th season. McRae and Tronick were joined by camper Kathryn Casello. In the tradition of SFAC, Casello is taking a variety of classes, including yoga/meditation class, scene study, rock band, and literary arts. Casello is one of the 213 campers this summer, who hail from 29 communities in Alaska and 10 states.

Tonight (07-10-15) , there will be free performance at 7 p.m. at the Sitka Performing Arts Center, that includes dance, stage combat, Shakespeare, juggling, musical theater, and partner acrobatics.

Saturday (07-11-15) will feature an Art Show from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the Yaw Art Building, including small ensemble performance from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Camp will conclude with a final performance at 7 p.m. at the Sitka Performing Arts Center, featuring music performances and clown theater.

Utility director Chris Brewton says a faulty gate mechanism at one of the turbines at the Green Lake hydro plant was the source of the problem, which subsequently caused the loss of three transmission feeders.

Brewton says that during this type of partial system outage, it’s normal for the city’s grid to first shut down power to the neighborhoods on either end of the road system, while attempting to preserve power downtown.

The event started at approximately 2:12 PM. Power was restored by 2:42 PM. Brewton says backup diesel generators on Jarvis Street were used to stabilize the system as hydro power was restored.

Workers pouring cement at the Blue Lake dam in June, 2014 (KCAW photo/Rachel Waldholz)

Sitkans will likely see a major — and unexpected — increase in electric rates this year, after an unusually warm winter left the Electric Department with a deficit.

That was the message City Administrator Mark Gorman delivered to the Sitka Assembly Tuesday night (3-10-15).

Gorman said city staff will be coming forward later this month to propose “a fairly steep rate increase” — perhaps as high as 15- to 20-percent.

“And what is driving that is largely mother nature,” Gorman said. “We have had extremely warm weather and haven’t realized our fee potential and expectations to date.”

Gorman said the Electric Department is about $1-million short of projected revenue levels, and the city is rapidly eating through its rate stabilization fund.

Speaking later to KCAW, Utility Director Chris Brewton said the increase is necessary for Sitka to meet its obligations on bonds issued to fund the Blue Lake dam expansion. Sitka chose not to raise rates last fall, when it issued the final round of Blue Lake bonds. City officials hoped that with a cold winter, the Department would see enough revenue to avoid raising rates.

Instead, Alaska has been experiencing one of its warmest winters on record. Electric sales have remained essentially flat, Brewton said.

The rate increase will come before the Assembly at its next meeting, on March 24th.

***

The Assembly also unanimously passed a resolution urging the state legislature to expand Medicaid. The expansion is part of President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, and Governor Bill Walker made it a centerpiece of his campaign last fall. Former Governor Sean Parnell had decided not to participate in the expansion, citing potential costs to the state.

Speaking at the start of the meeting, new Sitka Community Hospital CEO Rob Allen urged the Assembly to pass the resolution. He cited numbers compiled by the Alaska State Nursing Home and Hospital Association, for 2013.

” In that year, Sitka Community Hospital basically gave away $1.6-million in care to people that were not covered by insurance or could not afford it,” Allen said. “That was our charity care and bad debt. If we had the Medicaid expansion, their estimate is that we would have been able to recover over $400,000 of that. So it is very important to the hospital and our finances. It wouldn’t take care of all of our charity care and bad debt, but it would make a very healthy dent in it.”

***

In other business, the Assembly passed, on second and final reading, an ordinance to make it easier for homeowners to add additional units to single family homes.

Utility director Chris Brewton says he would have “bet his paycheck” that there would have been more outages like today’s during the commissioning of the Blue Lake turbines. Instead, he expects to do more fine-tuning over time. (Blue Lake Expansion Project photo)

All of Sitka lost power for a little under an hour Wednesday afternoon (2-4-15) when a protective relay tripped at the Jarvis St. diesel substation.

Utility director Chris Brewton says the community was running on a combination of diesel power and the No. 1 Green Lake turbine when the outage occurred. The new substation at Blue Lake had been taken offline for service.

When technicians re-energized Blue Lake, the relay tripped at Jarvis, cutting off power to Sitka.

Brewton says his department expected many more of this type of outage during the commissioning of the new Blue Lake turbines, but “that process went beautifully.”

He considers every outage unique, and with an all-new system like Sitka’s there will be a lot of tweaking.

This was the first time the department had produced power with this particular combination of equipment. And while he says he’ll be checking into the coordination between protective relay systems, Brewton hasn’t ruled out gremlins for Wednesday’s trouble.

The program would offer $750 rebates for residents who switch from oil, gas or wood systems to the electric heat pumps. Electric Utility Director Chris Brewton said the program is a win-win: the city will increase electricity sales, while residents can lower their home-heating costs.

“In my opinion, it’s the best use of our new hydro capacity, and it also helps folks that are facing high energy costs, giving them the opportunity to reduce the costs of living in town,” he said.

A similar proposal was voted down in April over concerns that the city shouldn’t be encouraging the switch to electric systems. With the expansion of the Blue Lake dam, the city can now generate more electricity. But Assembly members worried that the city should conserve that capacity, perhaps for commercial use.

Brewton said that because heat pumps use electricity so efficiently, they are exactly the right use for the city’s increased hydro capacity.

“It’s a very effective way to maximize our limited hydro,” he said. “Blue Lake is new, and we have capacity, but it is a limited resource, and so we have to be very thoughtful about how we manage that into the future. It’s going to take us 30 plus years to pay it off. We don’t want to use that up overnight for electric resistance heat. We need to save it for economic growth and opportunity.”

The Assembly will have to vote on the rebate program at least one more time before it becomes law.

***

The Assembly also approved the lease of 18 acres of tidelands near the Gary Paxton Industrial Park to Alaska Bulk Water, Inc. The company plans to anchor ships in Silver Bay to load with bulk water for export.

The company’s agreement with the city will expire unless it begins shipping bulk water by next winter. So far, it hasn ’t been at all clear that the company can meet that deadline, but CEO Terry Trapp said they are trying.

“We are excited about this,” he said. “We want to begin the construction phase of this business, to be able to meet the benchmark that we have in front of us, to export 50 million gallons of bulk water by December of 2015.”

***

Finally, the Assembly on Tuesday night approved an amended ordinance that would make it easier for residents to sell produce at home garden stands. The Assembly added language explicitly stating that anyone running a garden stand would need a business license and would have to pay sales tax.

Workers pouring cement at the Blue Lake dam in June, 2014 (KCAW photo/Rachel Waldholz)

Sitka, pour yourself a glass of water –tap water. As of Wednesday (11-5-14), we are officially drinking once again from Blue Lake.

The city announced that as of 9:15 a.m. on Nov. 5, the Public Works Department had shut down the Indian River water treatment plant. Sitka is now being served only Blue Lake water.

But, depending on where you live, you might still be drinking Indian River water for a little bit longer. The city says it will take a few days for the Blue Lake water to cycle through the full distribution system.

 Sitka had been using Indian River as its drinking water source since this summer, while work at the Blue Lake dam interrupted access to the city’s main reservoir.

Also Wednesday, the city finished testing the turbines at the Blue Lake power house. That brought Sitka one step closer to the final completion of the Blue Lake hydro project.

In an email to the Sitka Assembly, Electric Utility Director Chris Brewton wrote, “We still have plenty of work remaining…but the risky parts are in the rear view mirror. Full speed ahead.”

Sitka utility director Chris Brewton, with the hundreds of pages of planning documents for the Blue Lake project. (KCAW photo/Ed Ronco)

Utility director Chris Brewton delivered the news that one of the step-up transformers — which convert the 12,000 volts produced by the hydroelectric turbines to 69,000 volts for transmission into town — is defective.

“We opened up the defective transformer today and did in fact find internal damage… Evidently there was a loose connection and it arced internally to the transformer.”

Brewton said a representative of the manufacturer was in Sitka to assist in diagnosing the trouble. According to information supplied in the assembly packet, the transformers cost just over $603,000.

The snafu occurred during testing of the three new turbines in the Blue Lake powerhouse — testing which has gone very well.

“Other than that, all three turbines are pretty much ready-to-roll and go on line. Units 5 and 3 have been energized and placed on the grid. Unit 4 — the mechanical testing’s done. We’re ready to roll it and energize it electrically.”

Basically, Sitka has a functioning hydroelectric plant, but no way to deliver all the power.
Until this event, the Blue Lake hydroelectric expansion looked like it would be wrapped up early. Brewton told the assembly they would now have to settle for being on time.

“We were ahead of schedule on everything. This is really going to cause us some problems, and we’re kind of slipping back to being on schedule, instead of being ahead.”

New parts for the transformer are expected to arrive in Sitka on Monday. But that’s not all of the solution. Brewton said he needs to find and condition 1,500 gallons of oil to refill the transformer. The Electric Department has only 400 gallons in stock.

The setback is not just for the delivery of power — Sitka’s water supply is also affected. Plans to reconnect the community to Blue Lake as early as this weekend have now been pushed back to November 15.

In other business Tuesday night, the assembly approved sending a surplus ambulance to the community of Hollis, free of charge.

The ambulance was slated to be sold, and might have brought in around $5,000.

Assembly member Matt Hunter, who is also a member of Sitka’s emergency medical services, defended the idea. He said the Alaskan tradition of taking care of each other was definitely alive in the world of emergency services.

“If we can take something that this small community — one of our neighbors — cannot afford, and is a small amount of money, I think it more than outweighs the benefit to the city of keeping that ambulance, or selling it for $5,000.”

The assembly voted 5-0 to take the ambulance off the market and give it to the town of Hollis. Member Ben Miyasato approved on condition that Hollis send a photo of their new equipment in action.

After 53 years of continuous service, the turbines at Sitka’s Blue Lake Hydro plant are quiet.

Walt Dangel, one of the original powerhouse operators at Blue Lake, threw the switches turning off the plant in a small decommissioning ceremony Monday morning (8-18-14). Dangel was assisted by Frank Rogers, Sitka’s senior plant operator.

The two old turbines produce a combined 6 megawatts of power. They’re being replaced by three new turbines that will produce 16 megawatts.

For about the next two months, Sitka will get its electricity from the Green Lake hydro plant and the backup diesel turbines on Jarvis Street. All drinking water in the community is now drawn from a $4-million temporary filtration plant on the Indian River. The shutdown is to allow workers to complete the new penstock at the Blue Lake dam, connecting the expanded dam to its new powerhouse.

For the next 63 days, the city has asked residents to conserve both water and electricity. The traffic signal symbol used by the electric department to indicate the availability of power went from green to red overnight. As the weather cools down, residents are being asked to use alternative heat sources, such as oil or wood, if possible.

The city also warned Sitkans that they may see yellow or discolored water coming out of the tap, especially after a heavy rainfall. The color comes from higher-than-usual amounts of organic material being washed into Indian River, but the water is safe to drink. Trying to flush the lines won’t clear the water. In fact, excess water consumption only strains the capability of the temporary plant at the river.

So what happens in 63 days? Sitka utility director Chris Brewton says there should be enough water in Blue Lake to commission the first of the three new turbines. Then, over the next two weeks to a month, they’ll bring the two others online.

Brewton says it’s going to be bumpy for a while, as engineer work out the bugs in the new powerhouse. But not as bumpy as the commissioning of the 18 megawatt plant at Green Lake in 1982. Power outages were so frequent at the time that the Alaska Pulp Corporation Mill generated its own electricity for several months.
The issue is the size of Sitka’s electric grid. As the new turbines are powered up, small problems can force the shutdown of the whole system.

And a final, small upgrade that’s been overshadowed by all the major work at Blue Lake: the electric department has replaced the 670 kilowatt turbine at the Sawmill Creek campground with a bigger, 1 megawatt unit.
Brewton says the old turbine — just like the Blue Lake units — is still in good shape. He says, “We’ll shrink wrap it and try to sell it on eBay.”

City Engineer Dean Orbison told the Chamber of Commerce that the city will have to rely on Indian River for drinking water in September and October, while the Blue Lake project is completed. (KCAW photo/Rachel Waldholz)

The Blue Lake dam expansion is about seventy-five percent done, city officials told the Sitka Chamber of Commerce this week (Wed 5-14-14)

City engineer Dean Orbison and utility director Chris Brewton outlined progress on the hydroelectric project’s many moving parts. The city is raising the existing dam by 83 feet. Orbison told the Chamber that contractors are about three quarters of the way toward that goal. The city is also completing a new powerhouse, to house three newly-installed turbines.

The city is also building a new intake – the tunnel that brings water from Blue Lake to the city. Orbison reminded his listeners that the primary purpose of Blue Lake isn’t generating electricity – it’s providing drinking water.

“It runs through the mountain, through an unlined tunnel, just right through the rock,” Orbison said. “Blasted through there back in 1961. It was fantastic rock then, and it’s fantastic rock today…It’s unfiltered water. [It] comes straight from Blue Lake, we put a little bit of chlorine in it, and we drink it.”

So far, the city has continued to rely on Blue Lake for drinking water throughout the construction. But this fall, contractors will have to shut down the existing plant and switch over to the new one. For about two months, the city won’t be able to use Blue Lake for either drinking water or generation.

That outage is scheduled for September and October. During that time, the city will generate electricity from Green Lake, and it will rely on Indian River for drinking water.

Sitka used to get all of its drinking water from Indian River, before switching to Blue Lake. But the state has since tightened drinking water standards, and Indian River is no longer an approved source. So the city will rent a water filtration system for those two months, to the tune of $4-million.

After Orbison spoke, Brewton ran through the funding for the project. Sitka has received about $57-million in state grants and the city has borrowed about $82-million in the form of municipal bonds, he said. Sitka still needs to raise about $18.6-million, which city officials hope will come in the form of a low-cost loan from the Alaska Energy Authority.

Those might sound like big numbers, Brewton said, but he reminded his audience why Sitka relies on hydro power in the first place: A diesel turbine burns 24-thousand gallons of fuel a day.

“One day at the Blue Lake plant produced about the same energy,” he said. “And it uses 387-million gallons of water for one day of operation at Blue Lake. That will take about .27 inches of rain to replace that in the lake. We get about 131 inches of rain here a year, according to some NOAA charts, so that’s by far the best choice of fuel. It’s free and we get lots of it.”

Brewton said that even with recent electric rate increases to pay for Blue Lake, Sitka’s electricity rates remain relatively low.

“In 1993, a summer average residential was paying $113. Come July 1 of this year, when we implement our rate increase, they’ll be paying $118,” he said. “That’s remarkable that the rates have been relatively steady for that period time, and what that means is, [the] same thing [will happen] with Blue Lake. Once the project is done and all the costs are finished, we’re going to have essentially stable rates for the next 20 or 30 years, barring any unforeseen disasters.”

“So the folks that were wise enough to build Green Lake in the past really made an excellent decision,” Brewton said. “I don’t anyone that’s opposed to Green Lake these days that would rather us be running diesel for the past thirty years.”

The Blue Lake contractors are offering public tours of the project. The next tour will be this Sunday, May 18. You can sign up, and find more information and videos about the project, at bluelakeexpansion.com.