Daily Sitka Sentinel

New Blue Lake Set to Supply Power, Water

By TOM HESSE
Sentinel Staff Writer
    “Use electricity at will.”
    As the two-year project to raise Sitka’s Blue Lake Dam comes to a close, project spokesperson Jessica Stockel says the power supply status will soon switch to green, allowing Sitkans to consume all the electrical power they want.

Blue Lake Dam on Monday. (Sentinel Photo)

    “As soon as we can get this online we want people using electricity freely,” Stockel said.
    The shutdown of power generation from Blue Lake officially ended last Friday when the electrical department put a new turbine online for 12 hours. Stockel said this week crews are making final checks to clear any debris from the tunnel that feeds water from the high lake into the powerhouse turbbines. The stage is now set for putting the generators on line at full capacity.
    The last concrete pour on the 83-foot extension of the dam was made earlier this week. The increased energy from the higher dam and new generators will increase Sitka’s hydroelectric generating capacity by around 27 percent. And as the concrete has risen, so has the water level in Blue Lake. It was up to 402 feet as of Wednesday and Stockel said recent projections suggest the water level could possibly reach the dam spill level of 425 feet before the end of the year.
    “It’s only about a five percent chance,” Stockel said. “But originally they thought it would take a couple of years before the dam spilled.”

    It will still be a few days before Sitkans can start drinking Blue Lake water again. The town has been served by Indian River water, filtered by a temporary state-of-the-art treatment plant, since August, when the powerhouse was shut down. Stockel said the water department is in the process of  bringing the Blue Lake water supply back online so Sitkans can get back to their preferred water source.
    “They’re just testing the old water treatment plant just because it’s been out of commission for three months, and as soon as we have the tunnel filled they can start moving water through that system,” she said.

    A few months of cleanup work remains, Stockel said. She said crews have started stripping concrete forms from the dam extension, and once that’s done they’ll take down the giant crane – a process that will take about a month. Down at the power house there’s a “laundry list” of tasks left, but all told, the construction crews should be clearing out around the end of January.
    “They actually will be done at the end of January, and originally they were going to be done at the end of February,” Stockel said.
    The restart of the Blue Lake power plant was delayed about a week because of a problem with a new transformer earlier this month. Stockel said that delay doesn’t affect the overall timeline for completion of the project, which remains well ahead of schedule.
    “This project has gone not quite as smoothly as it could have, but it still went very well,” she said.
    Public access to Blue Lake, a popular recreation area, should be open again in the spring, Stockel said. Part of the mitigation effort for the environmental impact of the expanded lake includes improvements to the Blue Lake Campground as well as turning what is currently a job site into a scenic overlook. Stockel said that work will probably start next year, but Sitkans can expect Blue Lake access to open up in the spring.
    “The Blue Lake road will reopen in the spring just like it has all the years before,” Stockel said.
    In addition to the scenic overlook and the campground improvements, work that remains to be done includes disposal of vegetation submerged by the rising lake level. That process will involve collecting floating trees and pulling them to the shallow ends of the lake where they can be disposed of when lake levels drop.
    Stockel said the city is hoping to hold a public dedication ceremony of the completed Blue Lake project some time in May.