Kenai weighs intervening in Cook Inlet undersea data center permit case

A Cook Inlet fishing industry advocate told the Kenai City Council on Wednesday, Sept. 16, that the federal application for an undersea data center west of Nikiski contains no thermal modeling. City Manager Terry Eubank said the city may file to intervene before a Nov. 2 federal deadline. The council took no action.

DeepGreen Cook Inlet SPV LLC, a Massachusetts limited liability company, filed Feb. 11 and supplemented the application in June, asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for a preliminary permit to study a tidal array with subsea computing pods at the East Foreland. FERC published notice of the filing Sept. 4 under docket P-15423. Under the Federal Power Act, a preliminary permit grants priority to file a license application. It authorizes no construction.

The notice describes 330 to 350 marine hydrokinetic turbines, 66 subsea computing pods cooled passively by seawater, and a 3.5-mile armored power and fiber-optic cable landing in the Nikiski industrial corridor between the Agrium nitrogen plant and the Kenai LNG plant. Estimated generation is 100 megawatts, primarily to power the data center.

Russell Clark, president of the Alaska Commercial Fisheries Conservation Alliance, gave the council those same figures and added that the array would cover 1,650 acres of seabed and that the pods need about 380,000 gallons per minute. He said the inlet's mixed semi-diurnal tides produce up to four slack-tide periods a day, when current velocity drops to zero.

"The application contains no thermal plume model and no assessment of what happens when that flow stops," Clark said. "And it does stop."

Clark said his group filed a motion to intervene with FERC on Sept. 14, seeking thermal plume modeling, which predicts how warmed water spreads, fluid dynamics analysis for slack tide and a salmon migration impact assessment. He said no benthic habitat survey, of life on the seabed, has been conducted. "Deep Green has not initiated" Endangered Species Act consultation with NOAA Fisheries, he said. NOAA has designated 7,800 square kilometers of Cook Inlet as critical habitat for the endangered beluga population, now estimated at 331 whales.

"The city of Kenai stands 47 days from a deadline that will define whether this community has a voice in what happens to Cook Inlet," Clark said.

Kasilof resident Cassandra Nicholson, testifying by Zoom, asked the council to oppose the permit outright. No one testified in support. No representative of DeepGreen or of the federal agencies reviewing the application addressed the council.

Vice Mayor Victoria Askin asked whether the application addresses the car-sized boulders that travel the inlet bottom. It does not, Clark said.

Eubank said he has spoken with the city attorney and believes commenting is at minimum in the city's interest. Intervening, he said, does not denote support or opposition, only preserves the city's standing as a party. He expects a recommendation at the council's Oct. 7 meeting.

Comments and interventions are due Nov. 2 at 1 p.m. Alaska time. Brief comments can be filed without registering through FERC's eComment page; interventions go through eFiling. The docket number is P-15423.