By Suzanne Downing 
The Anchorage Assembly is giving itself another 12 months to figure out how to keep drinking water flowing to nearly 300,000 residents. The Assembly majority, which wants to remove the dam that ensures drinking water, has painted itself into a corner.
On Tuesday, members will vote on a resolution authorizing a one-year extension of the 1984 agreement governing Anchorage’s access to drinking water from Eklutna Lake, the source of roughly 90% of the city’s supply.
The extension is necessary because the 1984 agreement expires on Dec. 31, and the Assembly and administration have not completed or agreed on a replacement. The measure allows the city to extend the deal for “up to one year,” maintaining current terms and conditions while negotiators try to hammer out a long-term solution.
But the extension also reveals a deeper reality: After years of political maneuvering, the Assembly has painted itself into a corner on Eklutna. At the same time it is demanding more influence over the hydroelectric project’s operations and advocating for dam removal to “restore salmon runs,” it is now acknowledging that it can’t afford to let the 1984 agreement simply expire. Doing so would jeopardize Anchorage’s ability to legally access its drinking water.
Anchorage does not own the water rights to Eklutna Lake. Those rights belong to the utilities that own the Eklutna Hydroelectric Project: Chugach Electric Association, Matanuska Electric Association, and the Anchorage Hydropower Utility (a shell utility left over from the ML&P sale, now managed by Chugach).
Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility pulls water under a “Preferred Use Permit” issued by the state and pays the project owners about $1.2 million a year for the foregone hydropower.
The 1984 agreement spells out those responsibilities and costs. Without a replacement agreement, or an extension, the city’s legal framework for accessing water evaporates.
This is the backdrop to the Assembly’s vote. Despite years of political posturing, subpoena fights, appeals to the governor, and efforts to regain a voting seat on the Eklutna Operating Committee, the Assembly still has no long-term water deal. It must now approve an extension simply to avoid a crisis of its own making.
The Assembly’s Marxist majority has spent the past several years staking out aggressive positions on Eklutna: Demanding full dam removal, pushing for “total restoration” of the Eklutna River, and siding with the Native Village of Eklutna (membership 500) and even issuing subpoenas to utilities and the governor to dissect confidential water-rights term sheets.
But these pro-tribe positions have consequences.
Dam removal, openly supported by Assembly leadership, would force a hard reckoning on three pillars of Anchorage’s infrastructure:
• Electricity: Eklutna provides 40–47 MW of clean, reliable hydropower, around 5% of the Railbelt’s energy. Removing the dam requires replacing that generation before any demolition. No such plan exists and nothing is budgeted.
• Water Supply: The lake’s intake sits 60 feet below the current reservoir surface. Removing the dam drops water levels by 24 feet, potentially below the intake in dry years. The Assembly has never explained how Anchorage would meet its daily demand of up to 41 million gallons.
• Fish vs. People: Advocates say salmon can be restored without compromising drinking water or power, but have never answered the central question: in a shortage, who gets priority: Anchorage residents or fish?
As columnist Alex Gimarc wrote, “Our experience … is that the needs of the fish ALWAYS override those of the humans.” The Assembly’s political allies agree. But Anchorage residents would be the ones to pay the price.
The Assembly also attempted to reclaim voting rights on the Eklutna Operating Committee, which it lost when Anchorage voters approved the ML&P sale in 2019, a deal that was proposed during the Berkowitz administration. The Regulatory Commission of Alaska rejected the request to restore voting rights, not once but twice. It noted that:
• The municipality voluntarily relinquished its voting rights as part of the ML&P sale.
• The city dismantled its hydroelectric expertise and has no technical ability to manage a power facility.
• The newly created “Anchorage Hydropower Utility” exists mostly as a political vehicle to influence fish-restoration policy.
The RCA’s ruling was blunt: the Muni forfeited its seat and cannot simply demand it back now that dam removal is on the table.
The current resolution reflects the reality that Anchorage now needs a temporary patch designed to avoid a water-supply crisis while political leaders try to reconcile the contradictions in their own agenda.
The Assembly wants:
• more control over the hydro project,
• more water left in the river for fish,
• removal of the dam,
• and no reduction in Anchorage drinking water or electric reliability.
They cannot have all of these things. The one-year extension buys them time, but nothing more.
For years, the Assembly majority has embraced the political optics of environmental restoration and tribal sovereignty for Eklutna without addressing the operational consequences. They pushed for river restoration while ignoring the questions that matter to Anchorage residents:
• How will the city guarantee drinking water during drought years?
• How will it replace 5% of Railbelt power?
• Who decides water allocation and who gets priority?
• What happens to the two stocked salmon runs at the Eklutna tailrace if flows drop?
Now, time is running out, and the Assembly is being forced to step back from the brink it created.
The one-year extension is an admission, a quiet one but still unmistakable, that the majority’s Eklutna posturing has outpaced reality. They need more time because the consequences of their preferred policies are finally colliding with the fundamentals of water supply, electrical reliability, and legal authority. And there is an election on the horizon in April.
The Assembly meets on Tuesday at 5 pm in the Assembly Chambers of the Loussac Library, 3600 Denali Street, 5 pm business meeting, 5:15 pm appearance requests. Live streaming available on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/@moameetings . The resolution is 10B on the consent agenda, which is normally reserved for non-controversial items.
Here’s the resolution being considered:
AR 2025-360_1_89231___63639__AR_2025-XXX_PUBLIC_WATER_SUPPLY.DOCX.DOCX
The reality of leftists policies are on display nationwide and the leftists who pushed them are either stepping away from those positions or doubling down. The governor of California Gavin Newsome, and Democrat presidential hopeful, is running away from the positions he has held for decades as power costs soar and water sources are reallocated. On the east coast Democrat governors are abandoning their positions on nautal gas and pipelines and wind and solar as costs soar and the reality that people want reliable, affordable, and responsible power and water.
Now that millennials are in the leadership position they don’t know what they are doing and our industries and government are a real mess
You know that Anchorage Assembly are millennial or GenY age?
The best thing a Millennial can do is take a good look into the mirror at themselves and really stare and see if they are a poor manager/a poor leader and take a demotion
The problem with a leader with a narcissistic disorder is everytime when he looks at his mirror reflection he’ll see a someone who can do no wrong, every problem has an angle that it’s problem didnt start with him, and he is the most beautiful and kindest person ever- a real
super-human.
While everyone’s lives around him are affected by fears, inconsistencies, confusions, grief, anger, and madness.
The worse kind of person to be in any leadership
Poor judgment and poor decisionmaking by the Incompetent assembly, Lafrance, and their voters, the non-voters.who are so wedded to their ideology, they don’t look at or care about the reality, effects and consequences of their actions. Just add it to the new taxes they want to extract from your wallet and Lafrance’s 10,000 new homes with less water and electricity when they tear down the dam. Their plan for a thriving Anchorage because they know everything better. Quit voting for these people.
With this current Assembly and Mayor, “NOW!” is the best time to divest from Anchorage. This current Assembly – Mayor combination is a toxic brew for Taxpayers that will only lead us to udder disaster – failure. It’s a shame but, Taxpayers will bear the brunt of their foolish and errant decisions (past – present – future) for years to come.
For all of Alaska’s sakes, I hope Eagleexit happens.
The jerks on the Assembly have a fiduciary obligation to the citizens of Anchorage. Taking steps to cut off the water supply to the citizens would violate that obligation. The Leftists need to ask themselves: Do I really need to be a defendant in such a lawsuit?