Wrangell Sentinel - the oldest continuously published paper in Alaska.

Energy Coalition sees support

from across the border

Lisa phu

October 29, 2009.

The recently formed Alaska-Canada Energy Coalition is seeing support from Canada, according to Mayor Don McConachie at Tuesday night’s Borough Assembly meeting.

Mirroring the Highway 37 Coalition, the goal of the Alaska-Canada Energy Coalition is to push an intertie between the existing hydro project at Tyee to Bob Quinn Lake in British Columbia, linking southeast Alaska to the North American power grid. Highway 37 is the effort going on in Canada that’s focused on getting a transmission line along the Highway 37 corridor from Terrace to Bob Quinn Lake, with the hopes of eventually connecting to Dease Lake. The Alaska-Canada Energy Coalition was created by the Borough assembly’s energy committee.

Borough assembly member Warren Edgley and energy committee member Paul Southland attended a meeting concerning Highway 37, while McConachie and city manager Tim Rooney were part the meeting’s teleconference. According to McConachie, “They have enough money to build the Highway 37 electrical corridor. The funding goes toward a 287 kV transmission line being built to Bob Quinn Lake. So far there has been no dialogue between the provincial governments, the federal government, or the Yukon Territory to go the rest of the way to Dease Lake. That is all pending at the moment.”

McConachie also said that the Highway 37 Coalition will be joining the Alaska-Canada Energy Coalition. “That I think will make a very, very strong case for us to talk to the people in Washington D.C. in order to get that line built,” McConachie said. City manager Rooney will be in D.C. November 1 to garner more interest for the AK-BC intertie.

Borough assembly member Ernie Christian, who’s part of the assembly’s energy committee, said the first teleconference of the Alaska-Canada Energy Coalition will take place on November 23 at 10 am. The teleconference will involve all the entities that have pledged funds toward the Coalition.