A Southeast power agency seeks to free a line from federal terms

The Southeast Alaska Power Agency wants to pull a 30.5-mile transmission line out of its federal license for the Swan Lake hydro project, a move that would let it keep running the line exactly as it does now while freeing that segment from the license's terms.

Federal regulators have accepted the application for review. The Swan-to-Bailey line, which carries power from the Swan Lake dam near Ketchikan, was written into the project's license decades ago. SEAPA argues it no longer belongs there: since the Swan-Tyee Intertie was energized in 2009, tying the Swan Lake and Tyee Lake systems together so each can back up the other, the Swan-to-Bailey segment is no longer the project's primary transmission line. Nothing physical would change.

The timing matters. The Swan Lake license, issued in 1980, expires in June 2030, and SEAPA is already pursuing a new one that would set the project's operating and resource terms for the next 40 years. Removing the line from the license before that happens means it would not be bound by whatever those new terms turn out to be. SEAPA acknowledged the choice is not free of consequences. "There are risks to attempting removal from the license, and risks to leaving it in," the agency wrote in a 2024 planning document.

The Swan Lake project sits on Falls Creek in the Tongass National Forest, on 321 acres of Forest Service land, and generates 22 megawatts from two turbines. SEAPA sells its power wholesale to Ketchikan, Petersburg and Wrangell. The agency is also relicensing its Tyee Lake project near Wrangell.

Comments, protests and motions to intervene are due Oct. 15. Only those who file to intervene become parties to the case.