More study needed before Army can decide whether to replace or upgrade aging facility, officials say
Army officials have again postponed a decision on whether they’ll replace or upgrade Fort Wainwright’s 66-year-old coal-fired heat and power power plant.
The Army hasn't yet completed work on a document that’s required before they can move ahead on either replacing or upgrading the facility which, post officials say, is becoming increasingly inefficient and unreliable.
“It’s just had a lot of miles,” says Steve Stringham, the now-retired chief of Fort Wainwright’s Utilities Privatization and Maintenance Division.
“It served very well for 65 years,” he said, “but with that old equipment, just like our vehicles, it gets harder and harder to maintain.”
Stringham, who talked about the issue in a 2019 interview, soon after the Army had released a draft Environmental Impact Statement that among other things proposed four alternative solutions to the problem.
The draft EIS says the old 20-megawatt plant makes Fort Wainwright one of the nation’s most-expensive military installations to operate.
Jennifer Meyer, the head of the post’s Directorate of Public Works operations and maintenance division, said in a 2019 interview that she was told the power plant "is now the oldest coal-fired power plant in the United States, still in operation.”
But Tim Jones, vice president for administration for Doyon Utilities, the private firm that operates the power plant, says that's not true. In a Dec. 2 email, he cites data from the U.S. Energy Information Agency, which indicate there were at least 25 older coal-fired power plants in operation in 2019.
The draft outlines four alternative solutions that ranged in cost from about $117 million, for construction of a system that would be powered by natural gas or liquid fuel, to $687 million, for a new coal-fired power plant.
Army officials had intended to complete analysis of the draft EIS by fall of this year and then issue a Final Environmental Impact Statement. But post spokesperson Eve Baker said in an email Monday that some additional questions have been raised over the proposed project. She couldn’t talk about those concerns, but said in a followup email today that they “are not new concerns, they are simply a continuation of Army discussions on comments received on the draft EIS during the public comment period.”
Baker says it’ll take at least a few more week to resolve those questions. That in turn will delay completion of the final EIS, which Army officials had expected to be issued this fall. She says they now anticipate that phase of the process won’t begin until early next year.
That’s the second time the Army has extended the EIS process. Last year it extended the public-comment period for the document by two months.
The draft EIS says Army officials hoped to complete work on either the upgrade or new plant in time to go online in 2026. But it’s not clear now whether that goal is still do-able.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to clarify that Steve Stringham has retired as chief of Fort Wainwright's Utilities Privatization and Maintenance Division since his 2019 interview. The story also has been revised to clarify that the power plant isn't the oldest still-operating coal-fired facility in the country. There were at least 25 others that were older and still in operation in 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency.
