Under the terms of the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) the Angoon Lingít gave up rights to their ancestral lands on Admiralty Island to create the Admiralty Island National Monument, in exchange for rights to develop a hydroelectric project on Thayer Creek. Federal funding for the project has finally arrived. (KCAW/Emily Russell)
A hydroelectric project on Admiralty Island over 40 years in the making has won federal funding for construction.
Alaska Senators Murkowski and Sullivan announced on Tuesday (2-27-24) that almost $27 million from the bipartisan infrastructure bill is headed toward the community of Angoon, for the construction of a run-of-river hydro plant on Thayer Creek.
The plans for a hydroelectric project in Angoon go all the way back to the passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980, and the creation of the Admiralty Island National Monument on the ancestral lands of the Angoon Lingít. Angoon’s village corporation, Kootznoowoo Inc., was subsequently granted the right to develop Thayer Creek, but no funding came with it, and Angoon’s 500 residents have relied on diesel generation ever since, paying somewhere between 4- and 8-times more for electricity than the national average.
Over the years, Kootznoowoo has pulled together other grants to design Thayer Creek, and finally, last year, the corporation received a special use permit from the US Forest Service to build it. But the millions of dollars needed to construct the project were still not there. The passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021 included $1 billion for Energy Improvements in Rural and Remote Areas – called ERA – and this looked like Kootnoowoo’s chance.
Kootznoowoo’s director of natural resources, Jon Wunrow, spoke to KCAW last August.
“This is really the first, and potentially the only funding of this size, specifically for rural areas to do renewable energy,” Wunrow said. “So it’s kind of got Thayer written all over it. We’re hopeful.”
ERA funding brings Thayer Creek project close to final amount needed for construction
In an email to KCAW, Kootznoowoo’s Jon Wunrow explains that the ERA brings Thayer Creek very close to full funding:
“The overall project cost for Thayer Hydro is currently estimated to be $33,650,000. We have secured other funding from the Alaska Energy Authority and Denali Commission, that brings the funding gap to $500,000 – $1.5 million depending on a pending proposal we have in the works. We anticipate that this final funding gap will be filled by an Alternative Energy Investment Tax Credit program that we are coordinating with.”
Thayer Lake is a run-of-river project – that is, there won’t be a huge dam built and reservoir created. It will produce 850 kilowatts of power, roughly three-times Angoon’s current needs, allowing Angoon – as Wunrow put it – “to usher in an era of electric motors: electric cars, electric boats, and heat pumps.” The project will be operated by the Inside Passage Electric Cooperative.
The funding announced for Angoon is part of $125 million package of ERA infrastructure money for clean energy projects in four other areas in Alaska: Chignik Bay, the Northwest Arctic Borough, the Yukon River, and Old Harbor.
Alaska received the largest share of ERA funding in the infrastructure bill. In a news release, Sen. Lisa Murkowski thanked Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm for QUOTE “choosing more projects and awarding more funding to Alaska than any other state. These investments will create jobs, reduce emissions, and increase the use of renewable resources while decreasing electricity bills.”
Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Kootznoowoo had received a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) permit last year for the Thayer Creek Hydro Project. Actually, it was a special use permit from the National Forest Service. Since the project was approved under ANILCA, no FERC permit was necessary.
