The Wahkiakum County Eagle - Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891

At the April 21 meeting of the Wahkiakum PUD Board of Commissioners,the board voted to adopt a renewable energy system cost recovery program and heard reports.

Commissioner Dennis Reid was congratulated for his election to the position of vice-president of the Washington PUD Association after serving a year as secretary. He will also be a chairperson on their education committee.

The renewable energy system cost recovery program “authorizes an incentive payment based on production to offset the costs associated with the purchase of certain renewable energy systems located in Washington state that generate electricity.”

More than one resident in Wahkiakum County has shown interest in the program.

General Manager Dave Tramblie updated the commissioners on one of two outages that occurred last week.

“There was one on a Puget Island feeder,” he said. “An osprey flew over a three phase and dropped an eight foot limb across all three phases, which created a cascade effect. This operated the Puget Island recloser and the Cathlamet recloser. That is a coordination issue. Both of them should not have operated. I’m working with Brown and Kysar to fix that.”

Tramblie also reported that he had purchased 5200 feet of four-inch HDPE pipe for the Shannon Road project in anticipation of a 5 percent increase in the price of HDPE pipe on May 1. The PUD would be opening bids for an excavator on Wednesday morning and because water quality reports are due in June, Tramblie will be working on that.

He apprised the commissioner of another rate increase.

“It appears BPA will have about a 7 percent electrical rate increase on October 1,” he said. “We may want to consider evaluating how we charge for services. We may want to look at increasing our basic charge.”

Auditor Erin Wilson gave a report on March’s financials for each of their systems.

“Overall we are cash positive,” she said. “I think the two year rate increases have been beneficial. We just need to make sure we keep heading in that direction.”

Wilson also shared that there was currently $2345 in the PUD’s Residential Energy Assistance Program and that more people had signed up for both e-billing and automatic payments.