Neighbor asks Anchorage commission to deny Chugach substation landscape variance

A South Anchorage neighbor pushes back on substation plans

Two industrial transformers would stand about 20 to 25 feet from a South Anchorage home under Chugach Electric Association's substation redesign. A neighbor is asking the Anchorage Planning and Zoning Commission to deny a landscaping variance that would shrink the required buffer around that design. The transformer placement itself falls under the separate conditional use approval the utility is seeking.

The written comment came from an officer of the Southport Master Association homeowners association board who also served on the Community Focus Group. Chugach is seeking conditional use approval for the substation at 10000 Southport Drive. The utility is also seeking variances that would reduce required planting beds and exceed the fence height limit by six inches.

The commenter says the substation's 1975 conditional use permit required a fence and "a 10-foot girth of trees on the exterior side of the fence." The comment asks the commission to require Chugach to evaluate swapping the transformers with a planned storage building, or to plant tall screening trees.

The objection is directed at the design and its mitigation, not at the project as a whole. The commenter wrote that they support the need for reliable electrical infrastructure. The requested conditions, the comment says, would let the substation expansion proceed while better satisfying the conditional use approval criteria. The comment also credits the revised design with replacing a proposed microwave tower with fiber-optic communications, retaining the mature trees along Southport Drive, substituting a blue-banded wood fence for a concrete wall and moving switch cabinets away from the pedestrian path.

Watershed Management Services, Right of Way, the Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility and Traffic Engineering all reported no comments or objections to the conditional use request.

The commission is scheduled to take public testimony on the case Aug. 10.