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Kenai hydroelectric project progresses Alaska renewable power proposal involves two small dams, stirs worries of harm to salmon habitat; public meeting set for Nov. 12 Wesley Loy For Petroleum News
An alternative energy company is laying the groundwork for a controversial hydroelectric project on the Kenai Peninsula north of Seward.
The developer, Kenai Hydro LLC, in August gave notice to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that the company intends to apply for a license for its Grant Lake and Falls Creek hydro project.
Kenai Hydro is jointly owned by Homer Electric Association and Wind Energy Alaska LLC. Cook Inlet Region Inc. and enXco Inc., a California renewable energy firm, are co-owners of Wind Energy.
Recently, CIRI signaled it was withdrawing from the hydro project. “We’ve looked at it and said it doesn’t necessarily work for our needs,” CIRI spokesman Jim Jager told Petroleum News on Nov. 2.
But Homer Electric intends to continue investigating the project as a way to bring an increment of alternative power to the utility, which currently buys all its power wholesale from Anchorage-based Chugach Electric Association. That contract expires at the end of 2013, and Homer Electric aims to be a generator of power from natural gas or alternatives by then, utility spokesman Joe Gallagher said.
“Homer Electric is really looking at every option on the table right now for renewable energy,” he told Petroleum News. “We’re serious about renewable energy.”
A meeting to discuss the hydro project with the public, agencies and tribes is scheduled for 6-9 p.m. Nov. 12 in Seward.
The project The Grant Lake and Falls Creek project would be a relatively small power producer at 4.5 megawatts. By comparison, peak power supply on the Homer Electric system is 90 megawatts, Gallagher said.
On Aug. 6, Kenai Hydro filed a “pre-application document” with FERC that describes its hydro project.
It’s centered on Grant Lake, a 1,664-acre, L-shaped mountain lake just east of the Seward Highway near the Moose Pass community. The lake has a maximum depth of nearly 300 feet, and it sits at an elevation of about 696 feet.
Kenai Hydro proposes to withdraw water from the lake and send it down a 2,800-foot horseshoe tunnel to a powerhouse along Grant Creek, the lake’s only outlet. The tunnel would be 10 feet in diameter.
To raise the lake level to provide more water for power generation, Kenai Hydro would build a concrete dam about 10 feet high and 120 feet wide. The dam would be situated at the Grant Creek outlet.
Additional water would be diverted from nearby Falls Creek into the lake via a 13,000-foot pipe. A second dam would be built at Falls Creek.
In the powerhouse, located at an elevation of 518 feet, would be two Francis turbine generating units with a combined rated capacity of 4.5 megawatts.
Kenai Hydro in April submitted water rights applications to the Alaska Department of Natural Resources to use a maximum of 297 million gallons per day from Grant Lake and 70 million gallons per day from Falls Creek.
Construction would take 30 to 36 months after issuance of the FERC license, Kenai Hydro says.
The description filed with FERC does not indicate a project cost.
Early studies, fish fears According to Kenai Hydro’s filing, the hydroelectric potential at Grant Lake has been evaluated several times.
“In 1954, R.W. Beck and Associates prepared a preliminary investigation and concluded that a project was feasible,” the filing says. Government agencies and private firms did subsequent studies, the most extensive of which was conducted in 1984 for what is now known as the Alaska Energy Authority.
Kenai Hydro and its contractor, HDR Alaska Inc., are conducting environmental and other field studies in support of the project.
The project has sparked controversy, particularly with respect to salmon and other fish. Grant Lake and the two creeks are in the headwaters of the Kenai River, one of the world’s most productive and popular salmon streams and also home to rainbow trout and other species.
Because of the impassable falls below Grant Lake’s outlet, no salmon live in the lake and its tributaries, Kenai Hydro’s FERC filing says. But salmon can be found in the lower reaches of Grant Creek and Falls Creek.
For many commercial and sport fishermen, dams are despised based on the example of the Pacific Northwest, where dams on a much grander scale than those Kenai Hydro proposes have contributed to weak or even endangered salmon runs.
One nonprofit organization, Friends of Cooper Landing, has spoken out against the Grant Lake and Falls Creek proposal.
The group’s president, Robert Baldwin, wrote in a July 22 letter to Kenai Hydro that he was disappointed to see the project progress.
“Industrializing the natural state of the Kenai River and its surroundings is contrary to two decades of protective public policy we have helped to establish and enforce,” Baldwin wrote. “The irreversible impacts of new dams are tipping points that will degrade this river like so many American rivers.”
But Kenai Hydro says its licensing studies will assess ways to avoid or mitigate any negative impacts to stream flows, water temperature or fish.
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