After 40 years, Alaska hydroelectric project wins $27M in fed funds
By Robert Woolsey, KCAW – Sitka
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 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. Angoon’s 500 residents have relied on diesel generation ever since, paying somewhere between four and eight times more for electricity than the national average.
About Angoon – Angoon is a city on Admiralty Island in Hoonah-Angoon Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2000 census, the population was 572; by the 2010 census, the population had declined to 459. The name in Tlingit, Aangóon, means roughly “isthmus town.” Wikipedia
Over the years, Kootznoowoo has pulled together other grants to design Thayer Creek until finally, last year, the corporation received a special use permit from the U.S. 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 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.”
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