PUD crews deal with storm damage

On Tuesday morning, the Wahkiakum County PUD Board of Commissioners listened to reports and voted to give General Manager Dave Tramblie a 4 percent raise effective January 1, 2017.

“Let’s talk about the storm,” Tramblie said to begin his report.

“The guys got called out around 4 p.m. on Sunday and got everyone back on yesterday about 3 p.m.,” Tramblie said. “So, about 23 hours. A large tree came down on the double circuit from Jacobson Road down to Main Street on the highway, which created quite a flash. The guys were down in Altoona so they couldn’t get to it right away. When they got here they had to shut the circuit off, which dumped the Elochoman for a while. Then they removed the tree and got everyone back on.

"There was a series of small events. I came in at 5 a.m., and we took care of the Skamokawa feeder and we had a conductor down at Risk Road. We had some lines burning out Middle Valley. We had a couple issues on Ingalls Road. We had a couple big limbs out on West Valley. It was just here and there. In the Elochoman we had a limb clear at the end of the line that we had difficulty getting to.”

“Kudos to lineman crew and the county road crew for the miracles they performed over the last 48 hours,” Commissioner Bob Jungers said.

“I think we all agree with you on that one,” Commissioner Dennis Reid said.

Tramblie turned his focus to the intertie project with Pacific County.

“Once we get this intertie connected and online,” he said, “my intention is to shut down the Grays River transformer for about a week and have a contractor come in there, and go through the entire transformer and ascertain it’s condition. Based on that information we can move forward with our bigger plan to upgrade what is necessary.”

Auditor Erin Wilson went over the end of the year financials with the commissioners before they moved to their reports.

While discussing the 5 percent raise that Tramblie had asked for, they discussed how they might deal with raises in the future.

“I’d like to move from emotion to intellect,” Commissioner Gene Healy said of pay scales and increases.

Healy’s suggestion that they have a workshop on the matter got a positive response from the other commissioners.

As for Tramblie, he had not seen a raise since May of 2015. The commissioners eventually settled on a 4 percent increase, to begin retroactively for the first of the year.