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Public hearings on the proposal's draft environmental impact statement will be held this week in Hoonah, Juneau, Gustavus and Anchorage.

Gustavus Electric Co. President Dick Levitt said the hydroelectric plant would ease the community's dependence on expensive diesel fuel.

If the plant, estimated to cost $4.5 million, is approved, Levitt hopes to start construction in 2005 and have the plant online in 2007.

The plant would be built about five miles east of Gustavus on National Park Service land presently designated as wilderness. The proposal calls for the Park Service land to be exchanged with state land within the boundaries of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve and Klondike-Gold Rush National Historic Park in Skagway.

"We want to maintain approximately the same amount of wilderness in the Glacier Bay National Park and also in the national wilderness system, so other land in Glacier Bay will be designated as wilderness," said Bruce Greenwood, an environmental protection specialist with the National Park Service.

The amount of state land exchanged for the Park Service land would be determined by appraisal, either by federal government employees or a contractor.

The amount of national park land that would be exchanged has yet to be determined. The draft EIS offers four alternatives: a no-action option, an option that would convey 850 acres of Glacier Bay land to the state, an option that would convey 1,145 acres of land to the state, and an option that would convey 680 acres of land to the state.

The proposed hydroelectric facility would be constructed on 117 acres of that land.

The draft EIS also lays out three parcels of land within the Glacier Bay park that would be designated as wilderness wholly or in part, depending on how much land is conveyed to the state. Those areas are: an unnamed island near Blue Mouse Cove in Glacier Bay, Cenotaph Island in Lituya Bay on the outer coast of the national park, and land near Alsek Lake about 60 miles southeast of Yakutat.

The designation of more wilderness land doesn't help the project's approval rating among some conservationists. Jack Heshin, the Sierra Club's senior regional representative in Alaska, said the areas the Park Service proposes to designate as wilderness aren't as significant to the environment as the Falls Creek watershed.

"The Falls Creek watershed is valuable because it wasn't overrun by glaciers in the last mini-ice age. It's got everything from wetlands down on the beach, a waterfront habitat, and old-growth forest up to some beautiful hiking country, beautiful muskegs and alpine tundra," Heshin said.

He said the Park Service manages the other areas as wilderness already. Heshin also said the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Sierra Club's consultants found that the hydropower plant would lose money.

But Levitt said the hydropower plant will help Gustavus by providing a stable rate for power.

"We won't have to depend on the fluctuations of the price of diesel and the gradual rise of the price of fossil fuels. People in Gustavus would prefer to use green power rather than burn fossil fuels. Chances are the loads would increase if people thought they were using green power rather than fossil fuels, and rates will go down," Levitt said.

Public comments on the draft EIS are due by Jan. 6. The final EIS is expected next summer or fall.

• Masha Herbst can be reached at masha.herbst@juneauempire.com.

Public hearing dates and locations

• Hoonah: City Hall, 7-9 p.m., Dec. 8

• Gustavus: Community Association Building, 7-9 p.m., Dec. 10

• Juneau: Centennial Hall, Hammond Room, 7-9 p.m., Dec. 10

• Anchorage: Clarion suites, Glacier Room. 325 W. Eighth Ave., 7-9 p.m., Dec. 11