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

The Wahkiakum PUD Board of Commissioners held their bi-monthly meeting early Tuesday morning. Commissioners Robert Jungers, Dennis Reid and Eugene Healy met with Erin Wilson, auditor and David Tramblie, manager of the PUD as well as attorney Tim Hanigan.

They continued their effort to refine the language in the PUD policy manual, completing the section on Water Terms and Conditions.

Hanigan will attend the PUD Attorney Conference on June 20 at Alderbrook. Tramblie will be attending a meeting this week in Tacoma where he will learn more about “BPA’s potential rates and how it will impact us,” he said. “They have done a little work for each utility so they can kind of be specific about what they think our impacts will be.”

He informed the board of new technology brought to his attention by a vendor for radio-read meters.

“You can buy antennas for the handheld devices, which allows the meter to send information,” he said.

There is also equipment that can be placed in a truck, which would make it possible to simply drive by a meter to collect the data. The electric meters would cost approximately $60 each. Tramblie believes the water meters would be a similar cost. Water would be similar.

“We can read our entire system with this equipment in probably less than a day,” he said. “It’s interesting and a fairly inexpensive way to read our meters.”

According to Wilson, it currently takes 12 man hour days to read meters.

“It’s probably a good investment,” said Jungers.

“I’m thinking so, too,” said Tramblie, “but let’s do a little more research, if you think it’s worth pursuing. It’s going to free us up to do more infrastructure replacement. It’s not going to reduce our labor costs.”

“You are using labor elsewhere to a better purpose,” said Reid.

“We still need to go kind of slow,” said Tramblie, “because once we decide to do this we’re on the path to go down the whole road.”

“Once we make a commitment to that it precludes us from going to another more sophisticated system,” said Healy. “How tech-y do we want to get?”

Oil samples were taken from all the large transformers after the new substation went on line.

“All came back perfect, said Tramblie. “We’re in good shape.”

“Just a comment in regards to the contract we have with the city where we purchase water,” said Tramblie. “Well obviously the town council voted to go to mediation, the three of you voted to go to mediation. I tried one last 11th hour attempt to come up with a solution and was rejected flat. So mediation it is.”

“Have you submitted the four suggestions that we have for possible mediators?” was Jungers’ reply. “That’s the next step.”

“The electric guys have moved off 2nd Street,” said Tramblie. “They’ve installed all the conduit required on that project. They have moved to Altoona, and we’re trying to get another 2500 feet of four inch PVC installed, which is all part of our continuing replacement down there.”

Talk turned to collections. The PUD reported an average of 400 delinquencies each month with an estimated cost of $800 and more in sending out delinquency notices and phone calls to customers.

“Are you interested in recouping the costs?” asked Tramblie.

“We should look at it,” said Jungers. “It isn’t fair to let our responsible rate payers absorb these costs incurred by the delinquent rate payers so we should have some kind of structure or policy that allows us to recoup these costs.”

“I would be okay with it so long as we are just recouping our costs, not making a profit on it,” said Reid.

After attending a recent Northwest Public Power Association internal controls class, Wilson returned with some fresh ideas for documentation.

“It was a good class and I appreciated being able to go,” she said. “I think it will be good for the utility.”

Healy reported on a couple sessions he attended at the Public Power Council. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, more commonly known as FERC “is aware of their lack of power in the Pacific Northwest,” said Healy. According to the speakers at his first session, “They covet more power.”

The next day, at the regular PPC meeting he learned that Congress is looking at updating the Endangered Species Act.

“None of these things have a direct affect on Wahkiakum PUD but they have a lot of impact on how much we pay for power,” he said. “Cathy McMorris Rogers, who is a congresswoman from the east side, has a bill in process to require Bonneville to specify fish and wildlife costs both direct and indirect on their bills so one day we would have something to say to our rate payers specifically about how much of their bill is spent on fish and wildlife.”

Healy then went on to discuss the Columbia River Treaty. “The way things have progressed over the years, public power is not in favorable position with respect to the Columbia River Treaty.”

“The treaty has to do with the quantity of water that is released in the river," interjected Tramblie, “and the amount of energy that is sold back and forth.”

“We use some Canadian land for storage,” said Healy, “and for that we sell them cheap electricity to pay that off. The cheap electricity is subsidized by you and me, so that’s how we get involved.”

“BPA came out with a draft record of decision. They want 25 million dollars moved to expense. Most of the PUDs said no. We need to continue to educate ourselves and our ratepayers that (the PUD) is faced with a significant rate increase this fall. This does not mean that Wahkiakum PUD customer rates will go up 9.5 percent. The commissioners have not discussed customer rate increases at this time.”