Crippling the Susitna hydroelectric projects through building the Watana Dam non-expandable is a strategically flawed idea that will not only prevent future job creation and productivity increases, but most important, will cripple Alaska’s future. To understand why the current Susitna proposal is strategically flawed we must first discuss its history, thought processes, industrializing potential, and political economy.
In 1964 Ralph M. Parsons Company presented a hydraulic survey of North America to the United States Senate that became known as the North American Water and Power Alliance (Nawapa). This proposal was to channel water from Alaskan and northwest Canadian rivers into the American west, the Great Lakes and northern Mexico with 369 integrated hydraulic projects.
The engineers of the Parsons Company knew that without a continental water project North America would eventually become a giant uninhabitable desert. Parson’s plan for Alaska was to combine dams on the Susitna River with a tunnel to connect dams on the Copper, Tanana and Yukon Rivers.
Whether this grand project is ever built, or built as individual regional water and hydroelectric integrated projects is yet to be discussed, but what is important to understand are the changes in collective thought processes that have occurred over the time since the original project was proposed.
Important changes have occurred in the methods of project analysis that have introduced strategic flaws into the decision making process on a global scale. These strategic flaws have directly contributed to the decline of infrastructure and general living standards in many nations in the world today.
One of the most destructive changes in the decision making process has been the application of the methods of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) or what some call the Cambridge or Harvard Schools of “systems analysis.” Short-term financial criteria based on statistical decision theory became the dominant method of determining project viability instead of long-term productivity and the physical requirements of human society.
When a project was proposed years ago we used to ask the questions: how will this project increase future productivity and provide for the future physical requirements of human civilization? Today we are obsessed with protecting the price basis for currently installed productive capacity and restrict our analysis to short term financial criteria and extreme environmentalism. The immediate problem is that this “systems analysis” method combined with stringent environmentalism has infected both the Alaska Energy Authority and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission thus leading to the promotion of a crippled version of a non-expandable Watana Dam on the Susitna River.
Is the word infected too strong? What is the evidence? Because of “systems analysis” and other political and financial changes since 1964 every category of infrastructure in the United States is now either beyond its design life, near the end of its design life, suffers from deferred maintenance, or beyond its capacity due to population pressures. Our bridges, dams, highways, railroads, power production and distribution, industries, water management, agricultural structures, hospitals, and schools have all been in decline since the 1970s. This infrastructure decline has led directly to a massive collapse in employment and the tax revenue base.
We must accept the fact that we have destroyed our nation because of these destructive criteria of judgment. We must reject this flawed reasoning and improve our mindset by asking higher quality questions. What can we build today that improves the lives of our future children? How will this project improve future productivity and the physical requirements of human life? How can we use this project to create new employment, new tax revenue and new profitable industries? How can we have creative healthy people and healthy plants and healthy animals?
Now that we have improved our mindset we can move on to the issue of using the Susitna Dams to build Alaska’s future through bulk sales of low-cost excess electrical capacity to new industries.
How will Alaskans sell all the new low-priced excess power? After spending the last three decades building both small and large industrial facilities and as the author of “The American System of Political Economy in Establishing Alaska’s Industrial Science Policy” I know exactly what must be done.
First of all, we begin fast paced construction of bridge-crane industrial parks around the area of Port Mackenzie. We begin by declaring an employment emergency that requires the immediate construction of a super clean all electric rebar plant run by one of our native corporations. (We may have to initially run this plant during low electrical demand hours because of our Legislature’s current and past ignorance of energy economics). Stockpiling coated rebar for use in the Susitna Dams will be our first mission assignment but many industries will come and go over the years.
High profit, high value strategic materials will be our catalyst lead industry but our industrial parks will continue over many years to provide the industrial floor space for various types of manufacturing. What we must keep in mind is that the long-term maintenance of our construction materials industries must be viewed as a method of maximizing our productivity in building future infrastructure.
The key component for the long-term success of Alaskan industries will be a strategic and construction materials plasma physics institute at the University of Alaska Anchorage that is built as an essential feature of constructing the Susitna hydroelectric projects. We must identify the goal of using the cheap power from the Susitna projects to provide energy for our new military, aerospace, construction products, primary reduction, and industrial process industries. Read my facebook link “Alaskan Science and Technology in Financial Reform” for more information about creating new industries in Alaska.
The problem is that the current proposal for the non-expandable version of the Watana Dam restricts the development of new industries by limiting the amount of available future power for industrial use. This strategically flawed non-expandable Low Watana Dam proposal must be replaced with an expandable staged development version that has the ability to create a massive amount of excess electrical capacity.
Why not have the State of Alaska build the full sized Watana Dam and the Devil Canyon Dam now instead of a staged development plan? Would building these Dams all at once be the most cost effective construction method? Yes, but our state government does not have the economic power of our federal government. By using the strategically superior staged development method we create the political conditions for more easily accessing federal funding for completing the dams. Strategically leveraging state and federal funding at our university research institute will also insure access to the most advanced industrial technology required to make the best use of our new electrical power investments
There is currently a nationwide political economic movement in the lower 48 that is advocating Nawapa as an alternative to our nation’s continuing physical economic collapse. Conferences are being held across the United States from coast to coast proposing to resurrect Ralph M. Parson’s 1964 proposal. This political campaign indicates the increased potential for our federal government, or possibly our reformed Federal Reserve, to pay for the completion of the Watana and Devil Canyon Dams. Once we begin financing the first part of Watana Dam then we leverage federal dollars to complete both dams while funding related technological and industrial projects.
Crippling the Watana Dam by building it non-expandable is not an option because crippling Alaska’s future is not an option. The Nawapa Susitna Dams can provide cheap electrical power for several hundred years and, most important, can create the foundation for establishing the industries necessary for building Alaska’s future.
Building the Susitna Dams in a way that allows Alaska to create new industries and new productive employment will be a sign that we have freed our minds from the economic destructiveness of “systems analysis” and we are, once again, working toward the goals necessary to have a brighter future.
