Koyukuk, Alaska

Yesterday I was watching "Flying Wild Alaska".  Have you ever seen it?  It's a show about Bush pilots in Alaska and their exploits flying in and out of remote locations.

I like watching it sometimes.  I think it's because I like to imagine myself in these situations.  Flying dangerous missions in and out of the bush to help people and communities.  I awakens in me some kind of excitement and adrenaline.

However, yesterday I saw one segment that really caught my attention.

The COO of one of the flying outfits, was taking a mechanic up to a remote village in the center of Alaska, called Koyukuk.  The village got heat and power from a power plant that the community built five years ago.

The community built the power plant, and they still own and operate it.  Well... 'operate' is a loose term.  You see, they don't have the money to send someone to get trained to run the power plant.  So they hire mechanics at odd intervals whenever something goes wrong.

There are three generators, and in this situation one of the generators stopped working, and since there wasn't enough power generated from the other generators, the system automatically turned itself off.  Well actually, there was only one remaining generator because the first one broke down three years ago and no one bothered to fix it.

Since they were still getting power and heat, they thought the broken one didn't matter and they have been cannibalizing parts off it for three years.  Did I mention that this power plant is only five years old?

The village went two days without heat or power while they waited for a mechanic to come in and fix the broken generator.  Once he was there, the mechanic was describing to the camera the complete disarray and decay that was overtaking the plant.

No one was sweeping the floors, no one was ordering new parts, no one knew what was wrong.  In other words, there was not one person who was qualified to work in a power plant.

This really struck a cord with me.  I thought to myself, "This community invested in, and built this plant because they thought that they could save money and run it themselves.  They didn't want a corporation to come in and run it and make a profit off of what little they had.  They thought the power lay in the plant.  But what they didn't realize was that the power lies in the people who know how run the plant."

Power lies in plants, equipment, access to resources, capital; this is an idea held by many of my contemporaries, even at places designed to give people knowledge.  It is not a new idea, in fact it is an old idea.  An idea from the time of the industrial revolution, when individuals saw few people getting rich off of the work of many.

They thought that if they could control things themselves, then they could get all the profits and their efforts would be worth so much more.

But they were wrong.

True power lies in people.  People make factories run, make power plants work, run restaurants, businesses.  It is people who do these things, not factories.  A factory is just a huge, expensive chunk of metal if there is not someone who knows how to run it.

If they had somebody who knew how to run it, how to fix it and how to order parts, they could run this power plant themselves all year long.  But since the community owns it, there is no one person responsible for its operation.

The only reason for individuals to band together is to enhance the power individual.  In this case, neither the community nor the individuals were benefiting in any way.

What do you think?  These are real people, who really need electricity and power to survive.  What do you think the community should do?