Electric Department Grant
Dear Editor: Friday’s Climate Connection omitted a worrisome development about Sitka’s selection for a Clean Energy to Communities (C2C) contract from the National Renewable Energy (NREL). This offer has not been accepted. It comprises $3.5 million worth of technical assistance and $500,000 of reimbursable subcontract monies for city and contracted personnel over 3 years, with no requirement for matching funds.
Administrator Leach notified NREL about postponing preparation of a contract scope for at least 60 days because “we lack the dedicated staff resources to proceed with this project… As soon as we have fully restored our staffing levels and appointed a new director, we can resume our efforts to develop the scope of the C2C program.”
In the Electric Department’s quarterly report this month, the personnel chart has five vacant positions, which was also true last April. Thus, staffing deficits are long-standing, even before the announcement of the Electric Department director’s resignation in September. The staffing situation was present when the Assembly approved the grant application in May 2023. It is unlikely that 60 days-time will change the readiness of the department. Perhaps the intent is to not accept the offer even after 60 days. That would be consistent with apparently not sharing the grant’s contents with the Sustainability Commission, the Assembly, or the public to date. Friday’s Climate Connection was prepared from information obtained with the Freedom of Information Act.
Sitka’s energy planning requires involvement by ratepayers, our Sustainability Commission, and our Assembly. Discussions require information from both our Electric Department and the technical consultation that we have received since 2021 from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The website of the Electric Department is essentially without content, despite three awarded or offered grants for energy planning by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory since 2021 and one final report.
We need to discuss how to keep the lights on, deal with maintenance of our dams, generators, and transmission lines, and plan for the future at the same time. We don’t want our utility rates to go up because we have to burn fuel oil in our backup generators on Jarvis Street. In a dry year, we may have to do just that with the increased loads from SEARHC, the Coast Guard, and our own investment in heat pumps, electric appliances, and EVs.
The public and Assembly need more transparency from the city administration about our grant awards, our opportunities and challenges, including our current and future energy needs, the staffing challenges of the Electric Department, and how to remedy any neglect of deferred maintenance. The public deserves to participate in decisions that affect our energy security and utility rates. Concerned citizen,
Carol Voisin, Sitka
‘Cruise Boom’
Dear Editor: Thank you to the hosts of the invitation-only special showing of Ellen Frankenstein’s excellent ‘‘Cruise Boom’’ documentary Thursday evening at the Mean Queen Dungeon. And thanks also to the many caring community members who participated in the cordial discussions that followed.
I think the film succeeded in conveying our community’s mixed sentiments toward mushrooming numbers of cruise ship passengers. The conversation afterward, too, expertly moderated by Izzy Haywood of Spruce Root, covered the whole gamut of perspectives.
I was a bit surprised, though, that there was so little mention of recent and ongoing efforts to cap cruise visitor numbers. The pizza and beer, I guess, served to stimulate more convivial and less potentially confrontational exchanges.
A point that never seems to come up when we talk about cruise ship visitors here in Sitka, but which I feel needs to be mentioned at least occasionally, is the enormous amount of damage these travelers are inflicting on our planet’s climate. Without getting into facts and figures which some find boring or confusing, I’ll just point out the following: someone who hops on a jet from Savannah to Seattle in order to board a cruise ship for a ten-day trip to Alaska is a veritable atmospheric arsonist compared to someone who drives to a nearby National Forest and goes camping over their holiday.
In short; regardless of how you feel about crowds of visitors or the closure of Lincoln Street, big-ship cruises to Alaska are utterly unsustainable due to the fact that they absolutely require the combustion of enormous amounts of finite fossil fuels. The cruise boom can’t last, and the longer it does the worse off we’ll all be.
Joel H. Hanson, Sitka
Energy Planning
Dear Editor: In the Sept. 26 Assembly meeting, the Assembly rejected the opportunity to explore a tentative (unsolicited) offer of $3 million from the Department of Energy (DOE) with a $1.5 million match from the city. The negative votes were from Eisenbeisz,
Carlson, Ystad, and Mosher. There had not been time for the City to confirm or explore the possible sources of the City match. To shut off exploration of this capital infusion, without deciding whether it would serve the City well, seems premature, even uninformed.
In fact, the tentative DOE offer was for increasing the number of electric boilers (which would generate revenue for our utility), while upgrading our minigrid to more efficiently control interruptible accounts and other sources of renewable power in the future. These are projects that the Clean Energy to Communities (C2C) proposal for technical assistance describes, as documented in Friday’s Climate Connection. We have been selected for that award, which has been put on hold. Tim Pike had pointed out how advantageous and cost-saving the schools’ electric boilers had been, and the other two affirmative votes had indicated that nothing was to be lost while more information was sought about the sources of matching monies before a decision had to be made.
Perhaps the Assembly can revisit this.
We understand that deferred maintenance of our utility assets may be a higher priority than upgrading our microgrid for the future. In September, the Assembly endorsed submitting a DOE grant application to cover 30% of the Phase II and III costs of rehabilitating the Green Lake generation systems. Our previous Electric Department director, Brian Bertacchi, has a YouTube video saying that the cost of the needed rerouting of the 40-year old Thimbleberry bypass transmission lines has already been included in the utility rate structure.
It appears that we are pursuing some of our maintenance needs. At the same time, we need to take advantage of potential capital to implement what we have $3.5 million-worth of technical assistance to plan for, if we accept the C2C award. The C2C grant can reimburse up to $500,000 in subcontract costs over three years, including for city personnel.
Shouldn’t we go ahead with both the C2C award and exploring the unsolicited grant of $3 million for implementation? These both meet goals of our five-year strategic plan. Concerned citizen,
Toby Campbell, Sitka
ALFA Fundraiser
Dear Editor: Despite the rain and wind, Sitkans turned out to enjoy grilled sablefish tips and support the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association at our Oct. 18 fundraiser. We greatly appreciate everyone who braved the weather to support ALFA and our local fleet. Huge thanks to Sitka Sound Seafoods and Seafood Producers Cooperative for donating the sablefish tips, and to Beth Short-Rhoads for donating “the best cookies ever” (Terry quote) for the event.
Also big thanks to ALFA members Terry, Dick, Kent, Courtney and Aaron for their time running the grills, serving tips and rice, setting up, cleaning up, and everything else that went into making the event such a success.
Thank you Sitka!
The ALFA Crew
