Assembly overrides mayor on two Eklutna vetoes, sets city up for a lawsuit

By
Suzanne Downing
-
26

A confidential agreement over Eklutna River water and power signed originally by former Mayor Ethan Berkowitz is a contract the leftist majority of the Anchorage Assembly wants to make public. On Tuesday night, the Assembly majority overrode two vetoes by Mayor Dave Bronson and gave Assembly Chairman Chris Constant subpoena powers to make the document public.

The document contains the terms between the Eklutna hydroelectric project owners — Chugach Electric Association and Matanuska Electric Association — and the city’s water utility. The Assembly has already reviewed the document but is bound by confidentiality.

Bronson says that the document going public would draw a lawsuit, because it was a binding confidential agreement when signed by the former mayor, but the Assembly majority seems unconcerned about the city’s liability.

Environmentalists have been fighting to take down the dam on the Eklutna River, which provides drinking water to Anchorage and power to tens of thousands of homes. The Assembly has voted in favor of removing the dam and later voted to put the Eklutna decision on “pause.” The majority appears determined to put the water and power for Anchorage at risk. The owners of the project don’t want the documents released, and would have to consent to it. If the city releases the document without their permission, they could sue.

Assembly to consider overriding mayor in order to release confidential document relating to Eklutna

26 COMMENTS

  1. The lawyers win again.
    Let’s just stop power and water from the dam and see how the voters react.
    75% of anchorage doesn’t even know about this.

  2. Toddlers throwing tantrums.

    Sad thing is, even if there was a legitimate need to make this public, the Politburo’s ongoing vendetta against Bronson makes the need suspect.

  3. I’m genuinely curious. Are Constant and Dunbar in a relationship? Defending a lover is about the only thing which makes Constant’s activities make sense.

    • The leftist nutjobs are all in love with each other. Have you ever heard one call the other out when destroying anything good that was built or designed by hard work of the past leaders?
      3/4s of the ASSembly are in love with each others actions.

  4. Show me a liberal and/or Democrat who thinks about cost savings and legal liability to a government entity. Taxpayers be damned. In the eyes of the wackos on the Assembly, the taxpayer’s never pay enough. And then they can blame their own irrationality on Bronson.

    • Ted, that’s exactly the way these loon skalliwags on the Assembly think and act. You nailed it.

  5. The Anchorage Politburo, is socialism in real time. The people in Anchorage need to wake up.

  6. The agreement states that the water utility will pay the power producers fo the amount of power the AWWU water would generate if the power producers had the ability to produce power from that water. It is basically an IBEW funding measure created to allow for the incredible union wages they get because the regulatory authority wouldn’t allow for a rate increase at ML&P. since AWWU is the only public utility that actually made money, they siphoned some off for ML&P. I wondered if those checks were still going to Chugach. This is the arrangement I heard about back when there was a big jump in Water and Sewer rates in Anchorage. And the assembly are just a bunch of obstructionist crooks that are the definition of a RICO violation.

  7. Considering the growth rate of the homeless we may as well let them blow up the dam and let the homes freeze up when cook inlet gas supply expires and go back to Anchorage’s roots as a tent city.
    Blaming the mayor for lack of snow removal will be the least of anyones worries as long as the survivors have snow shoes.
    Luckily there is a large supply of moose in the bowl and plenty of trees to burn to melt snow for water. Bathing in ship creek with the Ship Creek Group’s ASSembly isnt such a bad idea in the midst of the hot summer days.
    (Just have to avoid the brown trout species takeover of the salmon)
    The trading of furs may become popular again.

  9. With any luck, there will be a silver lining to this black Anchorage ass-embly cloud, and that would be the insane destruction of the Eklutna dam being put on indefinite hold.

    • that may very well be true, but if both parties requested it remain confidential, it should remain confidential.
      Before any action concerning public water takes place, full disclosure of the impacts will be shared.

  11. Constant and Zalatel want to protect the taxpayers of Anchorage and all you people can do is b!tch about it.

  12. Ok I have had it with these law suits. This dam provides power and drinking water to us. As it has been for years. Now it is a problem. So give me a good example how this will benefit us., Our utility bills are nuts and SWS keeps raising their price also. So now our Native Alaskans have been taken over by the climate change warriors, they are all in for changes. Ok let’s spell it out. You get no more fuel exemptions, there will be no more royalties as the oil industry is shut down. So you lose your 4 wheelers as they use gas, your snow mobiles, fuel for your boats, no heating assistance. Think about it. You are being played.

  13. Why give them the dignity of calling them “environmentalists”? They are Communists and special interest eco hit men.

    • Why give them the dignity and respect of capitalizing the word communist. Even that level of respect is more than they deserve.

  15. I can’t CAN’T wait for the dam to be blown up so Anchorage has to find another source of water. I hope your utility bills increase tenfold so that maybe, just maybe you folks that are too lazy to vote will finally come to your senses. But by then, it’ll be too late.

Comments are closed.