By ANNE SUTTON
The Associated Press
Published: April 29th, 2008 11:14 AM
JUNEAU - First, there was a run on energy-efficient light
bulbs. When those ran out, people began asking for lamp oil. But when they
started demanding clothespins in this land of mist and rain, it was clear
Alaska's capital city was caught in a serious energy crunch.
"We sold all our clothespins the first day," said
Doug White, general manager at Don Abel Building Supplies. "I don't think
kids even knew what they were for, but they're learning now."
Avalanches this month knocked down transmission lines and
cut off Juneau's source of low-cost hydroelectric power. Threatened with a
fivefold increase in utility bills, Juneau quickly powered down.
Stores, though open, went partially dark. Neon signs were
switched off and vending machines unplugged. At home, residents of this former
Gold Rush town began living a little bit like pioneers, dusting the snow off
the grill, stringing clotheslines in the backyard and flicking off their TV
sets. Within a week, electricity usage in the city was down as much as 30
percent.
Energy conservation is a hard sell in much of the U.S., but
Juneau has proved that people will change their ways if the financial
incentives are big enough.
"Turn off, turn down, unplug," said Sarah Lewis,
chairwoman of the Juneau Commission on Sustainability. "That's what
everyone is doing and being vigilant about and commenting when others are
not."
The April 16 snow slides that roared out of the mountains 25
miles southeast of town uprooted transmission towers and plowed through 1.5
miles of high-voltage lines that link this largely isolated community of 30,000
to the Snettisham hydroelectric dam. (The Legislature had already ended its
session, and most lawmakers had gone home.)
As backup diesel generators shouldered the load, the
electric company began warning customers that life in Juneau - already
expensive - was about to get a lot more so.
With oil prices reaching a record $120 a barrel, Alaska
Electric Light and Power said customers might have to pay for an extra $25
million for diesel over the three months it would take to repair the lines. The
utility warned that rates would probably leap from an average of 11 cents per
kilowatt-hour to more than 50 cents, or about five times the 10.3 cents that is
the national average.
Conversations all over town turned from the governor's new
baby and the legislative session to kilowatt hours, tariff rates and saving
energy.
Heidi Graves said her 16-year-old son, Levi - the one who
never would turn off his Nintendo - was the first to get onboard. He was
worried that the family of six would have to cancel its vacation next August.
Levi multiplied the electric bill by five and came up with
$950. "It's more than our house payment," said his mother.
Now members of the Graves family eat dinner by candlelight,
do dishes by hand, plan to dry their clothes on a rack by the wood stove and
limit their time on the computer.
"My husband has bruised himself and tripped over the
dog just to keep the lights off," Graves said.
Graves also ordered a history of past electrical use so the
family could ferret out which appliances were the real power hogs, and they
learned how to read their own electric meter, which they are now doing several
times a day.
Though the Graves heat solely with wood, perhaps one in five
houses in Juneau is wired for electric heat because hydroelectric power is
relatively cheap and natural gas is unavailable.
In part because Juneau is so far removed from the Lower 48
and is inaccessible by road, its cost of living is 34.5 percent higher than
that of the average U.S. city, and its housing costs are 50 percent higher,
according to a survey of 300 American cities. Even an oil change is $60, twice
what it costs in many places down south.
Residents will see the sobering new rates on paper - and the
early results of their conservation efforts - when the first electric bills
begin arriving in mailboxes Friday.
Energy expert Allen Meier of California's Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory is visiting Juneau this week to offer advice on the crisis.
He said the closest comparison may be Brazil in 2001, when severe drought
gripped the hydropower-dependent country. Brazilians were told to reduce their
electricity usage by 20 percent or be disconnected.
"In two months, the whole country cut their demand by
20 percent, and they never really returned to the same level of consumption
after that," Meier said.
Eighth-grader Matthew Staley is hoping the people of Juneau will likewise develop new habits and "realize that - wow - we have to keep this up. Like switching to fluorescent lights, they'll just keep on with them."