Wahkiakum PUD considers projects and their financing

Projects and financing projects were the hot topics at the Wahkiakum County PUD Board of Commissioners meeting on Tuesday.

Commissioner Dennis Reid, who had voiced his opposition to the recent rate increase at the PUD suggested using a surcharge to finance capital projects instead of increasing rates.

“Surcharges go away,” Reid said, “rate increases never go away. People aren’t going to like any kind of increase, but a couple dollars a month compared to what a rate increase can do to you especially in the winter months is a lot more than two or three dollars a month, especially if you use a lot of electricity.”

Commissioner Gene Healy was quick to point out that most of the recent rate increase would foot the PUD’s bill to Bonneville Power Administration.

Reid agreed.

“It is,” he said, “but one of the reasons for the last two increases were for the Wahkiakum substation and for the capital expense coming up in Grays River.”

Commissioner Bob Jungers was concerned that adopting a surcharge to rebuild the Grays River substation might elicit negative reactions from ratepayers who live in different parts of the county.

“I live on Puget Island,” Jungers imagined someone saying. “Why should I pay for the Grays River substation?”

“The same reason that Grays River paid for your substation,” Reid replied.

Jungers agreed but worried that some ratepayers might perceive it differently.

Auditor Erin Wilson suggested the possibility of switching to long term debts which would give the onus to the people using the newer infrastructure to pay for it.

“Ironically the systems that are most in need of capital investment are those with the poorest revenues,” Jungers said. “The monthly rates for the western Wahkiakum water system are already burdensome.”

“Is there anything we can do to make it easier on people?” Reid asked. “Probably the answer is no, but…”

In other business, Healy mentioned that someone had approached him about the possibility of installing a charging station for electric vehicles.

“It’s feasible,” General Manager David Tramblie said, “but it’s thousands of dollars and I’m not sure that’s something you want to spend money on.”

They will continue to consider the matter.

Talk returned to the Grays River substation project when Tramblie said that he had received what he described as a “broad” cost estimate.

“The project is pushing $2 million dollars,” he said. He plans to spend some time reviewing all their options. A possible intertie with the Pacific County PUD could save some money.

Tramblie also shared that he had received a proposal from a vendor for an Automatic Meter Reading system. The vendor had offered him 240 electric meters, 47 water meters and the equipment to read the meters remotely for $26,000.

“Right now we spend four days reading the Westend,” Tramblie said. “Once we had all the meters replaced, we could probably have it done in half a day. but that is after the whole system is implemented. We are looking at significantly more dollars for this project.”

Tramblie believes that it would take the PUD four or five years to complete the project.

“This would move us into this century,” he said.

The commissioners authorized him to accept the proposal.

“We’ve been talking about this for at least a decade and when we started talking about it, it was pie in the sky because it was so costly,” Jungers said. “This may well be the right time. You seem to be convinced of it and we all three have a lot of faith in your judgment.”

Finally, the commissioners approved a resolution adopting amendments to the Puget Island water plan and travel for Wilson to attend a course in Portland in April.