PUD board covers water, electrical issues

The Wahkiakum County PUD Board of Commissioners met quickly on July 3 to listen to reports and approve a capital asset policy.

Commissioner Dennis Reid said he had been approached by a business owner who had asked if there was anything the PUD could do to fix the costs for water and sewer, which are set by the Town of Cathlamet.

“Such a high percentage of this business’s income is going to pay water and sewer that it’s a tough deal. It was interesting that he reached out to me. I told him I couldn’t help him,” Reid said. “The legislature thinks that the PUDs are job killers. We’re not, but the town might be.”

PUD counsel Tim Hanigan reported that he was working on the merger acquisition of Westside Water, the water system in Skamokawa.

“Hopefully we’ll be moving forward on that soon,” Hanigan said.

General Manager Dave Tramblie said that the PUD had been taking samples at Westside Water and doing a weekly check of the well site to monitor reservoir levels. He was also planning to schedule a day to have all of the water employees make a meter reading trip.

Tramblie spoke about three momentary outages that have happened recently.

“I have gotten a few phone calls,” he said. “People are a little tired of it. I assume it’s because we haven’t had any in so long, but we had three in succession, they were wondering what’s going on.”

Two of the outages were due to work by Bonneville, but the third happened during a local operation. According to Tramblie, the crew was unable as yet to ascertain what had gone wrong.

Finally, Tramblie said that he was working a schedule for the Puget Island water repair, which is tentatively scheduled for August 3.

The next PUD meeting is scheduled for July 17 at 8:30 a.m. in the PUD meeting room.