[Skamania] 🔌 The Utility We Create: A Field Guide to Skamania PUD

Public Utility District No. 1 of Skamania County runs three separate systems, and this year they went in opposite directions. Underwood closed to new commercial water while Carson sits six hundred hookups under its ceiling. We walk through what your PUD actually decides, what gets decided for it somewhere else, and what both mean for your bill and your property.

In This Episode

• Why your base charge is a bigger share of your bill than you think, and why that is happening at every utility, not just this one
• The man with three electric meters on one property, and why the board could not help him
• Underwood's moratorium: it is a pumping problem, not a water rights problem
• Carson has room. Underwood does not. What that means if you are planning to build
• A federal judge in Portland, a spill order, and the wholesale rate increase headed your way
• Where to actually get help with a heating bill, and why you should call in the fall
• Data centers, the one percent levy cap, and how "data center money" really works
• Trees are the number one cause of your outages, and what the district spends to stop it
• Remembering late Commissioner Liz Green, and the nomination of Dev Bell to the empty seat

Resources & Links

• Read the full written Dispatch at skamaniadispatch.com
• Our coverage of the August 4 moratorium decision: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/a-spider-called-sparkle-muffin-skamania-bocc-pud-weed-board-7-28-8-4/
• The Levy Scissors, our explainer on the one percent cap: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/levy-scissors/
• Klickitat County's parallel data center debate: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/the-county-that-didnt-pause-data-centers-klickitat-bocc-7-28-to-8-18/
• Energy assistance, Washington Gorge Action Programs: https://www.wagap.org/newsfeed/energy-assistance Skamania County appointments, (509) 493-2662 extension 315
• State Auditor's CETA compliance report for Skamania PUD, Report No. 1038885: https://portal.sao.wa.gov/ReportSearch/Home/ViewReportFile?arn=1038885&isFinding=false&sp=false
• PUD agendas, packets and minutes: skamaniapud.com

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Transcript

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Good morning everybody and welcome back to Open Gorge. So you might be wondering how this newsletter and the Associated Podcast gets put together every week, and we started it because, like you, I actually don't have time to attend public meetings in our counties when they happen. I have a job that keeps me busy during most of the time that these meetings occur, and that means that I'm dependent on the availability of recordings and associated public records to catch up on what's going on. It means on days like today, we also get to do something different and a little bit fun. Instead of a month of meetings, we read every meeting your public utility district held this year, and all of them, mostly because of a handful of recordings that were tangled up in a technical issue, became recently available. So we get the joy, and it is a lot of fun for me, of backloading them into our database and the chance to reintroduce ourselves to one of the most underappreciated agencies that helps us live our daily lives, the PUD, or public utility district. And here in Scamania County's PUD meetings, what we found was not one big decision. It was this. Most of what shapes your bill gets decided somewhere else. And most of what your PUD does control, you're never really going to notice until it breaks. So let's start with reviewing what a PUD even is. It's not a company and it's not a city department in the way most others are. It is local government. It's created by the voters, nobody owns shares, and nobody takes a profit. It has three commissioners elected by district, and they meet at nine in the morning on the first and third Tuesdays in Carson. So here's the part I think most people miss. Scamania's PUD runs three separate systems, electric, Carson Water, and Underwood Water. These are all different customers, different money, and often different problems. So when somebody says, quote unquote, the PUD, it's always helpful to ask which one they mean. Now let's talk about the part that you're probably most familiar with, which is your bill. There is a number in the monthly financials that almost never get said out loud, and out of what you pay for electricity, roughly a third is something called the base charge. That's the fixed amount that shows up whether you use a kilowatt hour or nothing at all. On water, it's actually much bigger. It's around 83% of a typical bill in Carson and around 89% on underwood. So let's let that land. That means that on underwood water, nearly nine-tenths of your bill arrives before you even turn on the tap. It's not an accident, and it's not just here. It comes out of the cost of service studies, and staff says that plainly every utility is doing it. So conserving moves a little bit less of our bills than we might expect, especially on water. And if you have more than one meter, it can get really rough. In March, a man came to a meeting to explain his situation. He has three electric meters on one property, his house, a 40 by 60 shop, and his wife's two-horse barn. Each one gets its own meter because when it was built, the district told him the ground was too rocky to trench. So his words, quote, the meter rates were 10 bucks back then. Now I'm paying almost 200 bucks a month before I pay any payment towards my light bill, end quote. His shop and barn have never used $60 a power in a month. Trenching it to fix it would run about $50,000. He asked for an exception and didn't get one. In the district's eyes, those are three different customers who happen to share one owner, and a discount would be a gift of public funds. About 10 customers are stuck in that spot. So what can you do? Level pay smooths winter against summer, and the board says that people underuse it. And then it's important also for us to look at the part that the PUD actually does not control. In this past February, a federal judge named Michael Simon ordered more water spilled over eight dams on the Lower Columbia and Lower Snake Rivers to help young salmon downstream. Water over a spillway is water not turning a turbine. So Bonneville buys replacement power on the open market, which is actually at about twice the cost that we generate it locally. Bonneville projects more than $100 million in 2026 alone. Across the region, public utilities are looking at roughly $300 million over two and a half years. Scamania's commissioners were told $143 million in lost revenue. That rule of thumb is that every $20 million adds about a point to wholesale rates. So call it about 7% landing on your bill. One commissioner put it this way we fight over a quarter of a percent, and 7% is a lot. If you need help paying your bill, please listen to this next part. Energy assistance in Scamania County does not come from the PUD. It actually runs through Washington Gorge Action Programs, who you might know as WAGAP. They cover every kind of heat, not just electric, propane, gas, oil, coal, and wood. And the timing here matters, so the season opens in the fall to get energy assistance. In recent years, they've taken appointment calls that start at 8 in the morning on the first Monday in November. Definitely has a waiting list worked in the order that calls come in, and seniors 60 and over will get priority. So if you need help this winter, watch out for this year's date and call early. We're going to help you out with that and make sure that we put it in this podcast as well. We'll make sure that you get the correct contact information and definitely recommend that you keep up to date on Washington Gorge Action Program's website as it gets closer to November. Now the question I suspect a lot of you have, can you build here? Underwood is now closed to new commercial water hookups. We covered that decision a few days ago, but we did not have room for in that episode is why. Water rights are actually not the problem. The problem is pumping. Underwood's water gets pulled from the bottom of a bluff and pushed more than 900 vertical feet uphill by a station that was built in 1978. So there are two ways to run out of water. Storage, which the new Huber Reservoir fixes, and how fast you can pump on the busiest day of the year. And for us, we might want to imagine then a hot July day with everybody irrigating. I know that was also a huge issue when we had to evacuate from the Tunnel 5 fire, being worried about how much the old reservoir was running out of water very quickly for fire service. So houses are fine in this case. Underwood adds only one or two homes a year, and it's pretty hard up here to subdivide. But here's the fact worth writing down, in my opinion. Carson actually has room. That system is approved for about 2,570 equivalent homes, and it's running about 616 under the ceiling. So one utility, two water systems pointing in opposite directions on the capacity that we have to add new connections. So if you're citing something that needs water, it's worth a phone call. Definitely confirm it with the district first. And that number is definitely a snapshot. It's not going to be a reservation for your place in line or anything like that. So a quick word on data centers, as we got into in our last episode, because certainly people ask, and it does affect water usage. Nobody has applied to build a data center here. What is on the record is an argument between the commissioners. One pointed at Quincy in Grant County, Washington, with its new schools and roads and called it data center money. And there is real machinery under that that we cover in our Levy Scissors series. A county or school district can raise its regular property tax levy in Washington state only 1% a year, while inflation runs about 2.5% or sometimes between 4 and 6%, depending on the county. New construction, though, gets added outside that cap. So that makes a very large new building of any kind, could be a large energy project, could be a data center, could be another production facility for other goods. It can be one of the few ways that a rural district can grow its tax base in real terms. But that's a county decision and it's not something that happens at the PUD level. So it's going to be really important for us to continue to follow this discussion and understand how a lot of the meetings that we talk about on the county side actually end up having decision making that affects commercial hookups on the PUD side. So last thing, why your lights go out? And I was kind of surprised to find this out that the biggest reason that we sometimes have some power outages around here is trees. Through June, tree failures caused 27 outages. Equipment was 21, and animals nine. So there's a reason beyond just having a lot of trees. After a storm that dropped more than eight inches of rain in two days, the general manager explained it, our trees grow into the east wind. They adapt to it, and then a strong west wind will come through saturated ground. So that's what the trimming budget buys. Overtime fell from about 2,500 hours to about 1,400. And I think one more thing that says a lot about this district, a local beekeeper called to say crews were spraying while the blackberries were in bloom. The general manager called the beekeeper back and they worked out a three-week window. And I'm glad he called. So it's the kind of involvement that, again, if any of the PUD activities are affecting you, your property, or something like your beehives, make sure that you contact folks. They are very eager to help you. So if spraying near your place matters to you, you're going to definitely also want to call in the fall and not in June. And finally, I didn't think this could be a complete episode without noting the empty chair. We'd like to take a moment to remember Commissioner Liz Green, who passed away on July 10th, adding a few more details from her biography supplied by those who knew her best. She was 64 and she had served 12 years. She was also president of the State Association, which is why its officers drove down from Olympia on July 21st. Bruce Pollack spoke for them. He said that Liz carried the voice of all 27 public utility districts with clarity, conviction, and grace. Then the thing that he said made her real. She used to raise her hand, look up from her notes, look around at everybody, and then speak softly, but she really commanded the room. When she spoke, everybody turned and listened. So what happens now? On August 13th, at a special meeting, the board nominated Dev Bell to fill the District 3 seat. This opens a 15-day window where anyone can nominate someone else, including themselves, before the appointment is made. What's next? September 1st, a budget workshop at 8 in the morning, then September 15th meeting, which is moved to the 22nd. So the state auditor will be in the building. So the written version has all of it with all of the documents and more information about how the Schemania PUD and all public utility districts work in the written dispatch at SchemaniaDispatch.com. You've been listening to a production of opengorge.org, home of Schemania Dispatch and the Click of Tattler. We believe that informed communities are stronger communities. To support our work and stay up to date on everything happening in the Gorge, head over to SchemaniaDispatch.com to sign up for our newsletters. You can also find us on Facebook at Facebook.comslash OpenGorge. Join the conversation and share your thoughts on today's episode, or let us know what agency or government service you'd like to hear a deep dive into in the future. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll talk to you next time.