Shifting power as drought continues in Southeast

(KTUU)
Published: Oct. 5, 2018 at 11:14 AM AKDT
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Low rainfall totals over the past year have left some communities in Southeast Alaska having to switch from hydropower to diesel, which is much more expensive.

“We’re using more and more diesel,” says Karl Cook, Mayor and City Manager for Metlakatla. “We don't have a real big customer base so the price for the diesel is fairly high too. So what happens is our price for power spikes. It doubles actually."

Southeast Alaska is a temperate rain forest that gets between 90 and 150 inches of rain each year. Most communities operate on hydropower because water is an abundant resource.

For the past year or longer, parts of the Panhandle have been in drought. Recently the National Integrated Drought Information System put the southern panhandle in the category of “severe drought”.

Ketchikan has received 68.35 inches of rain since January. In most parts of the world, that’s a lot of rain. For Ketchikan, it’s more than 24 inches below what they normally receive. September and October are typically the wettest months of the year for Southeast Alaska but Ketchikan finished the month down 8.9 inches of rain from typical amounts and October is starting off on the dry side as well.

“This is a long duration issue that we’ve been dealing with,” says Aaron Jacobs, Sr. Service Hydrologist for the National Weather Service in Juneau. “And it’s not going to take just a couple weather events or storms in the area to fix the situation. We’re going to be needing a month to a couple of months of above normal precipitation to get back to where we should be.”

Significant rainfall isn’t expected in the next three to four weeks at least.