Juneau Hydropower asks FERC for two more years to start Sweetheart Lake dam

The Sweetheart Lake dam has been licensed since 2016 and nobody has broken ground. Juneau Hydropower Inc. is asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for two more years before it has to start, moving the deadline to begin construction from Sept. 8 of this year to Sept. 8, 2028, and the completion deadline from 2029 to 2031.

What the license covers is a 111-foot-high, 280-foot-wide roller-compacted concrete dam on Sweetheart Creek in the Tongass National Forest, about 33 miles south of Juneau, holding back a reservoir of roughly 1,701 acres. The project would occupy about 2,058 acres of Tongass land plus 131 acres of state tideland and submerged land, and generate 19.8 megawatts, or roughly 116,000 megawatt-hours a year.

The company says that would add more than 20 percent to Juneau's generating capacity. Ameresco, which is involved in the project, puts the annual carbon offset at 82,012 metric tons. One planned customer is Coeur Alaska's Kensington Mine, which runs today on onsite diesel generators and would move to hydro once the plant is operating.

The Tongass Forest Plan analysis identifies hydropower generally as a source of wetland loss, vegetation removal, soil disturbance and altered stream flows. The site sits inside roadless country, and the design calls for building it without a road.

The commission issued the license in September 2016, after an environmental impact statement prepared with the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Tongass National Forest signed its special use permit decision in October 2017. The license itself does not expire until 2066.

This would be the first extension granted under a law enacted in May, which lets the commission add up to six years to a project's construction start in as many as three two-year stretches, on top of the eight years already allowed.

The commission has not acted. Juneau Hydropower filed the request May 18 and supplemented it three times over the summer. Comments, protests and motions to intervene, which make a filer a party with standing to appeal, are due by 5 pm Eastern on Oct. 1.