Wahkiakum PUD report

The Wahkiakum PUD Commissioners held their regularly scheduled meeting on Feb. 4 where they discussed the recently submitted PUD/Town of Cathlamet consolidation study submitted by Grant and Osborne. Commissioner Gene Healy suggested scheduling a workshop where the three commissioners could reassess both the positive and negative implications, address any misinformation that has been circling, and answer the public’s questions. “Put notes on the whiteboard, everybody participates, and we have a workshop that allows the public and anybody else to talk…” The next scheduled PUD meeting is Feb. 18 at 8:30 a.m. in the PUD meeting room and the next Town of Cathlamet/PUD consolidation workshop is scheduled for Feb. 26 at 10 a.m. at the River St. Meeting Room.

It was announced that Auditor Erin Wilson will be retiring in April. “She has been an extremely strong asset to the PUD for the last 21 years. She will be highly missed, and it will be very challenging to fill her position," said Dan Kay. Kay went on to inform the commissioners there were no power outages for PUD customers since the previous meeting, despite the inclement weather. Kay gave a shoutout to the PUD crews’ mechanical skills. “Last week we were able to make some pretty significant repairs to the excavator and boring machine... we were able to [bring the] equipment into the shop and in-house make those repairs which normally would have been outsourced or shipped out.” PUD crews were also able to perform leak detections and identify frozen pipes for customers. Auditor Wilson briefed the commissioners on the list of grants that the PUD has been awarded. The first is $261,000 for the Watermain Looping Project on Puget Island which was funded by the EPA and the PUD was able to claim the full amount. Another is the Western Wahkiakum Grant, being used to replace around 4,000 feet of water main and the Skamokawa Water System which will start in the spring. The Cyber Security Grant allowed the PUD to institute a lot of suggested changes and strengthen their cyber security. There was $309,000 awarded through Capital Appropriations with a three percent grant fee, leaving $299,730 to cover the remaining well drilling costs. $78,000 was awarded through the Climate Commitment Act Clean Energy Credits for Working Families in $200 credit increments to PUD customers. $50,000 from the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund was awarded for connect fee assistance for the line extension in Skamokawa.