Town, PUD poised to OK water pact

Dick Swart from the Town of Cathlamet was in attendance at Tuesday’s Wahkiakum County PUD Board of Commissioners meeting. He reported that the town “was poised to repeal the sunset ordinance in the water agreement.” The sunset ordinance stated that the town would no longer provide water to the PUD for Puget Island in 2037.

“Thank you for your efforts on the issue about sunsetting. Appreciate that,” Jungers said.

General Manager Dave Tramblie reported that 240 automated electric meters are due to be shipped this week. The 47 automated water meters have already arrived. They are only a portion of the 2500 electric meters and 850 water meters that the PUD intends to replace county wide.

Tramblie will focus on employee safety and efficiency to choose locations for the first 287 meters.

The meters can be read from a distance by a hand held device. Ideally, this would cut down on the amount of time PUD employees spend reading meters and allow them to focus on other projects.

PUD Counsel Tim Hanigan drafted a policy for the new automatic meters which the commissioners will consider.

Currently, the policy states that there would be an $80 fee to discourage customers from opting out, along with an extra fee every month to pay for an employee to come to the customer’s home to manually read the meter.

With increasing calls from customers interested in home generation, Tramblie shared that he was thinking about setting up a rate structure to distribute the PUD’s costs and provide service equitably to all their customers as more customers turn to home generation.

This would be “a base rate that includes operations and maintenance, capital expenses and an energy per kilowatt hour charge that reflects the cost of electricity,” Tramblie said.

Tramblie explained that one solar producing customer had not paid anything in kilowatt hours. The customer paid $14.70 a month to be connected to the grid and have access to PUD services at any time.

“I think our actual cost is probably in the $60-70 range to maintain this account,” Tramblie said. “As more and more of this gets connected to our system, we need to seriously look at changing our rate structure.”

Commissioner Dennis Reid acknowledged that other public utilities were not making enough revenue from electricity sales to cover basic costs.

“I think it’s a wise idea for you to be looking at that,” he told Tramblie.

Jungers agreed but worried that the rate structure Tramblie was considering would be a hard sell.

“Raising the monthly base rate to cover actual costs of operating and maintaining a system and lowering the energy rate to something closer to our wholesale rate would appear to be a great benefit to large consumers,” Jungers said, “and punitive to small consumers.”

Commissioner Gene Healy suggested that they research RCW 54 and they agreed to continue to do more research before they revisit the matter.

In other news, Tramblie reported that the electric crew has been working on Altoona Pillar Rock Road near the Eden Valley intersection to replace underground conductors. The water crew had been replacing service taps on Puget Island.

He shared that he had directed the PUD’s engineering firm to begin the application for pole locations for the intertie project they are planning with Pacific County.

Auditor Erin Wilson gave an update on the Residential Energy Assistance Program. $2,546 was used this winter and currently there is only $64 available.

“It’s good that people are donating and it’s getting used,” Reid said. “It’s encouraging to the people that do give that it is getting used.”

The board also continued the discussion regarding the possibility of having a vehicle charging station in town.

The next PUD Board of Commissioners meeting is scheduled for April 19 at 8:30 a.m. in the PUD meeting room, Cathlamet.