PUD commission hears about projects

The Wahkiakum County PUD Board of Commissioners listened to reports during a quick meeting on Tuesday.

Commissioner Dennis Reid expressed appreciation for the recent presentation by representatives of Noanet on the potential broadband project.

“Seeing numbers put to it was really helpful,” Reid said. “As far as I was concerned it was all good stuff.”

General Manager Dave Tramblie reported that 900 feet of water pipe had been replaced on East Birnie Slough Road.

It was an upgrade of some older pipe on the island, he said.

The new transformer has been delivered to the Grays River substation last week and the high side bushings were supposed to be installed on Tuesday.

“The project is moving right along. Hopefully we can get it energized and online by the first of the month, give or take,” Tramblie said.

Tramblie said that the PUD had suspended a water main over a large excavation created by a contractor who was installing a large culvert on State Road on Puget Island.

“It all went very well,” Tramblie said. “We didn’t have to have any outages of any kind. Once they are done with this cut, we are going to finish stringing new conductor and we’ll have three phase all the way down State Road, probably by end of next week.”

Tramblie also said that they found and repaired a leak in the Puget Island water main.

At a recent Public Power Council meeting, someone had suggested that a base charge on electricity would be better if it were 90 percent of the cost of service, Commissioner Gene Healy said.

“That’s definitely on our radar,” Tramblie said.

Finally, there was a conversation about the future of charging stations and broadband.