HEA general manager, board on right track with coal plant
I'd like to express a special thank you to Brad Janorscke, HEA general manager, and to the HEA board for their recent newspaper articles attempting to encourage us and caution us in our electrical generation wishes.
My electrical bill all but doubled along with everyone else's and it hurts, but I want to thank Brad and the HEA board for actually being proactive and ahead of us. As Brad and the HEA board pointed out, they have been working hard to generate their own electrical power for us for several years. In that sense, Chugach has done us a favor by motivating us. Unfortunately, the natural gas spike occurred before generation was in place.
But Brad and the board are also telling us not to get hasty with alternate energy. There isn't space to elaborate, but, as an engineer, there will be a great deal of teething before we see any substantial alternative energy in place and, by that time, it is a pretty safe bet it isn't going to be any cheaper.
Coal, we have. The facility is physically in place. Some political and contractual work remains. As Brad and the HEA board plead, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water!" I've been through the Healy facility. It is excellent. I wish we had a couple more. Healy will only yield us a portion of the electrical power we need. It's clean; if it's not clean enough then let's put some more effort into further cleaning. If desired, I'd be happy to help. I think we'll find that, in the long run, it will be as cost effective as any alternative. What's best of all, we have lots of coal and its price is largely independent of oil and gas.
Stan Welles