PETERSBURG, AK Petersburg Power and Light superintendent Joe Nelson told Petersburg’s City Council Monday that he did not recommend any further court action. “I’m not recommending going forward at all,” Nelson said. “I think we’ve spent all the money that we wanna spend on this. You’ll see that in the capital budget too that the funding will be moved out of there. We put kind of a million dollar war chest in there a year ago in the budget and we spent a couple hundred thousand for attorneys consultants, etc., etc. So we’re basically going to wind that down.”<br />
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The city has spent just over 244,000 dollars seeking the permit. 160,000 dollars of that came from a state grant. On top of that, the actual design and construction of the power plant and transmission lines from Thomas Bay could have cost tens of millions of dollars. Nelson apologized to the councilors for leading the elected officials down the path of pursuing the hydro site. “I really did sincerely believe that that was our road to a secure energy future, that it was our road to our means of phasing out our diesel plant and I felt very strongly that it was an excellent opportunity,” Nelson said. “It was the right location. It was on the other side of use from what Tyee is. Its in our back yard. It was the right size. It’s a little bigger than we need right now but plans for the future if youre gonna plan a project like this you’re gonna want it to go out into the future. It was environmentally sound. It has one of the least impacts of any drainage that you could think of.”<br />
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Nelson also recommend against partnering with Angoon to develop the site now that that city holds the exclusive right to study Ruth Lake. He said Petersburg should look to the Southeast Alaska Power Agency to pursue other new power sources. SEAPA is the organization which owns the power plant at Tyee Lake currently powering Petersburg.
Petersburg likely done with Ruth Lake hydro
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