PUD commission discards survey idea

The Wahkiakum County PUD Board of Commissioners listened to reports on Tuesday and announced that they had decided to forgo plans to survey public interest in the possibility of the utility taking on a water system that is currently being managed by the Town of Cathlamet.

“As I was primary instigator behind that discussion,” Commissioner Bob Jungers said, “upon further consideration, it seems to me the probability of the poll returning a very ambiguous result has dampened my enthusiasm for pursuing it any further.”

Commissioner Gene Healy agreed.

“I think with a poll of any kind we need to be sure we know what we want to find out and if the poll accomplishes that,” he said. “I’m not comfortable with that at this time.”

“I move we do nothing,” Jungers said.

General Manager Dave Tramblie reported on the status of the intertie project with Pacific County PUD. Directional boring had been completed, and 60 Westend residents had been notified of an outage planned for that day, to replace a pole for safety reasons.

“It is my opinion that we need to move forward on this project,” Tramblie said. “It will be the longest outage required. There will be some minor outage times when we swap over individual tap lines at homes.”

“All in all, the project is coming together well,” he added. “I’m hoping to have it completed and ready to go for our September 26 scheduled outage for the Grays River transformer. I think it’s all good news.”

He said that Wahkiakum and Pacific PUD were in agreement about a contract for purchasing and sales and that Pacific had approached Bonneville Power Administration about handling billing.

“It will alleviate discrepancies between Pacific’s rates and our rates,” Tramblie said, “and in my mind will be more of a mutual aid situation where we pay wholesale costs for the energy transfer.”

A contract has been awarded and painting on the main PUD building and the water warehouse should begin soon. Tramblie has asked the engineers at Gray and Osborne to design a stairwell to go between the two buildings.

Tramblie announced that he had received notice from BPA that their rate increase for the Wahkiakum PUD will be 5.9 percent, effective October 1.

Auditor Erin Wilson revealed that some of this biennium’s remaining conservation dollars at the PUD will go toward a mailing of two LED lightbulbs to residential customers.

“I like them,” Commissioner Dennis Reid said of the LED lights. “I’ve got almost all LED at my house.”

The next PUD meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, August 15, at 8:30 a.m. in the PUD meeting room.