PUD hears town proposal for water contract

Cathlamet Mayor George Wehrfritz and Public Works Superintendent Duncan Cruickshank offered the Wahkiakum County PUD Board of Commissioners a chance to renegotiate the current water contract with the town at the bi-monthly PUD meeting Tuesday morning.

“What we want to do is get to the point where we can get a new contract and move on and stop talking about this,” Cruickshank said. “What we are looking for is the PUD to take a share of the cost of our financing for when we buy large items.

"You are paying now your share of the depreciation of an asset over its life and not paying any of the financing to acquire the asset. We would like you to do that and we would like to come up with some way of sharing the water loss that is inevitable as a cost of doing business.”

There was a moment of silence before PUD officials responded. ”We have to digest what you’ve said and work it into our plans,” Commissioner Dennis Reid replied when asked what he believed the next step would be.

“I would think,” Commissioner Robert Junger said, “the next step would be to negotiate directly between your management team and our management team, and definitely not attempt to engage negotiation in a public forum.”

After Wehrfritz and Cruickshank left, talk turned to other PUD matters.

What Reid described as “the expected onslaught from third party sales of solar power” has led to discussions of net metering at PUDs around the state trying to figure out how to address the growing concern. To illustrate net metering, consider a homeowner who installs solar panels on his home to supplement or even supply the energy he needs. When the panels create more energy than the homeowner can use, the surplus can be sent back to the grid, with retail credit going towards the homeowner’s future energy needs.

“I don’t think the PUD is mandated to buy at all,” said Jungers, “and if so, I’ve got to believe it would only be bought at wholesale, not retail.”

“The real emphasis is to keep control with the local boards rather than the UTC (Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission) or legislature setting up some committee to decide what we’re going to do,” said Reid.

“If you follow the history of the telecommunications industry it didn’t take long before we own it all to we don’t own anything,” said Healy.

“Exactly. That’s why they are trying to be ahead of it,” said Reid.

General Manager Dave Tramblie said he had received a proposal for a Puget Island Water Supply Alternatives Evaluation from Gray & Osborne that would cost $7,500 and could be performed before the end of the year. The commissioners discussed how to pay for it with dwindling funds in this year’s budget. “I would like to get this sources analysis done as quickly as possible,” said Jungers.

Rate increases continue to be a topic of discussion. Providing a water source for Puget Island, adding depreciation to rates, and raising Puget Island rates to reflect the price that the PUD is paying to the town for water now and with a possible increase looming, are all concerns that are being batted around.

“Obviously,” Jungers said, “we have to address the rate deficit with the Puget island water system.”

“We are going to have a lot of unhappy folks,” Reid replied, “but there is not a way around it.”

“I think,” Jungers finished, “they understand what difficulty we’re in.”

Travel to a Washington Public Utilities District Association (WPUDA) commissioner’s roundtable in Olympia and an Energy Northwest (ENW) annual member meeting in Kennewick for Healy was approved. Auditor Erin Wilson’s travel to two meetings in Seattle for Public Utilities Risk Management Services (PURMS) operations and a PURMS executive and board meeting was also approved.

The next PUD Board of Commissioners meeting is October 15 at 8:30 a.m. in the PUD meeting room.