Kodiak's Terror Lake dam relicensing opens for comment through Oct. 2

Kodiak residents have until Oct. 2 to tell federal regulators which environmental questions should be studied as Kodiak Electric Association seeks a new license for the Terror Lake Hydroelectric Project. The comment period is an early, pre-filing step. It lets residents flag issues and request studies. It does not decide what regulators ultimately require, and it does not guarantee the cooperative a new license.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will hold two scoping sessions at the Kodiak Public Library, 612 Egan Way. The evening session runs from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 1. The daytime session runs from 10 a.m. to noon Wednesday, Sept. 2. A court reporter will take comments and enter them into the public record. Staff will hand out numbers in order of arrival. A session may end as much as a half hour early if everyone who wants to speak has done so. If a significant number of people want to speak, a five-minute limit may be set for each commenter. Commission staff will answer questions about the environmental review process. Kodiak Electric Association representatives will answer project-specific questions.

Written comments on the pre-application document and on the Commission's Scoping Document 1 are due by 5 p.m. Eastern time on Oct. 2. Study requests and requests for cooperating agency status carry the same deadline. The Commission says it gives equal consideration to written and oral comments. Residents who cannot attend in person can file electronically through the Commission's eComment and eFiling systems on its online portal, which the Commission encourages for public submissions. FERC Online Support is available to help with filings.

The cooperative filed its notice of intent and pre-application document on June 4. The dam sits on Terror Lake. The powerhouse sits on the Kizhuyak River, about 20 air miles southwest of the City of Kodiak. The project occupies 2,036.82 acres inside the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge, administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and 136.34 acres of U.S. Coast Guard land. The Commission reviewed the project in a 2019 environmental assessment covering the same land base. This relicensing will determine whether staff again produces an environmental assessment or a full environmental impact statement, depending on what the scoping record contains.

The stakes reach beyond procedure. Kodiak Electric Association has long characterized Terror Lake as central to Kodiak's renewable energy portfolio, crediting it with cutting diesel use and helping stabilize local electricity rates. Darron Scott, then the cooperative's president and CEO, made that case in written testimony to the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee in 2017. For members and ratepayers, relicensing decisions bear on power costs, reliability and future changes to the project. River advocacy groups elsewhere, such as the Connecticut River Conservancy, argue that relicensing is a rare chance to win stronger conditions on hydropower operations. Those groups contend that past licenses did too little on fish passage, habitat and river health. Relicensing cases are multiplying nationally as long-term licenses expire.