SITKA, ALASKA
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Last Tuesday (10-12-10), high winds blew a tree across the city’s main transmission line from the Blue Lake hydro electric plant. The power was out for hours that day, and then rolling blackouts continued for three days while city crews worked to repair the line, using diesel generators to power as much of the city as possible.
The Electric Department burned nearly 47,000 gallons of diesel fuel during the three-day outage that began Tuesday afternoon.
47,000 gallons is about a quarter of the pool at Blatchley Middle School.
Utility director Christopher Brewton says ordinarily, if the city burns more than $50,000 of diesel, a fuel surcharge is passed on to customers.
“However, in our normal budgeting process we budget funds for diesel fuel that we expect to expend during the year,” Brewton said, “like in the early spring when we know we’re going to have low water conditions. So we have budgeted $150,000 for diesel fuel expenditures for the year. Right now it looks like the diesel fuel costs are going to come in below that. If that’s the case, then we would not implement a surcharge.”
Final costs from the outage are still being calculated. Brewton says his department will have a full report ready in time for next week’s Assembly meeting.
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