MEA is building a 40-acre substation in Meadow Lakes for Mat-Su's growing grid

Matanuska Electric Association is building a 40-acre electrical substation in Meadow Lakes — a substantial piece of infrastructure designed to add capacity and redundancy to a Mat-Su grid that has been straining under the region's continued growth. The Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority just removed one of the permitting obstacles, granting MEA a 25-year non-exclusive easement over Trust land at Church Road and Shampine Lane in Wasilla.

The substation is part of MEA's Fishhook to Pittman Transmission Line and Substations project, which would run a 115-kilovolt overhead transmission line connecting the Pittman Road and Church Road areas. 115kV is high-voltage transmission scale — the regional backbone of the electric grid, not local distribution — and the project is sized to handle the kind of growth Mat-Su has been adding for years.

The Mat-Su Borough has been Alaska's fastest-growing region for most of the past two decades. MEA, the cooperative that serves the borough plus the Anchorage-area communities of Eagle River and Chugiak, has been adding load steadily as the region's population, residential construction, and commercial demand have all expanded. A 40-acre substation in Meadow Lakes is the kind of infrastructure investment that supports continued growth — and that reflects MEA's broader planning as Southcentral utilities wrestle with Cook Inlet gas supply, renewable diversification, and Railbelt grid reliability.

The Mental Health Trust easement, issued June 10 is non-exclusive — other compatible uses of the Trust land may continue — and the Trust collects revenue from the easement that flows into programs serving Alaskans with mental illness, developmental disabilities, dementia, traumatic brain injury, and substance use disorders. Easement revenue is part of how the Trust monetizes its 1-million-acre land holdings to fund beneficiary services.

The project still faces additional permitting. The Alaska Department of Natural Resources posted a separate notice in May for an application covering state-owned land for the same transmission line, and the Mat-Su Borough filed a parallel notice for borough-level easement actions.