Thousands struggle with high PUD bills
Published 9:00 pm Saturday, April 24, 2004
Connie McMahan’s electricity bill is so high it may force her out of her home.
She’s among thousands of Snohomish County residents who for the past three years have struggled to pay some of the highest electricity rates in Washington. McMahan, 77, owns her house, but finds it difficult to pay her bills on a fixed income.
Regional electricity companies have been pointing fingers and filing lawsuits, but so far they have not been able to roll back rate hikes linked to the 2000-2001 energy crisis and a West coast power shortage that contributed to the economic downturn.
The energy shortage forced a 46 percent rate hike by the Bonneville Power Administration, the federal energy wholesaler that produces half of the electricity used in the Northwest at its Columbia River dams and a nuclear power plant.
Because the Snohomish County PUD is BPA’s largest customer, the 2001 BPA rate hike forced the PUD to raise its rates 50 percent and hit the utility’s 290,000 customers particularly hard.
Caught in the middle are regular folks like McMahan, who lives in Everett.
PUD disconnections have been at record levels since the utility raised its rates in 2001. Those included an all-time high of 15,192 disconnections in 2002, followed by 11,696 in 2003. Until 1999, the PUD had never had 10,000 disconnections in one year.
Typically, customers find a way to get their power turned back on within 48 hours.
But for every actual disconnection, there are dozens of other families struggling to pay their bills, said Bill Beuscher, supervisor of the county’s Energy Assistance Program, which helps low-income families and seniors pay their bills.
"It touches all walks of life and age groups," Beuscher said. "They come to (our) window, and they’re very upset. They don’t know what to do."
PUD officials say they won’t be able to give customers a break until BPA lowers its rates.
***
Turn-off notices in Snohomish County are concentrated in neighborhoods where residents have the lowest incomes, a computer analysis by The Herald found. In 2003, nearly 1,000 customers had their power shut off in the south Everett neighborhoods along Casino Road and near Everett Mall. Both neighborhoods have a high ratio of apartment complexes.
However, a closer look shows that people have had trouble paying their power bills in nearly every part of the county.
Neighborhoods in Marysville, for example, where the median household income ranges from about $45,000 to more than $70,000, saw disconnections in the triple digits.
Dozens lost their power in Stanwood and in the Mays Pond neighborhood south of Mill Creek. Power was even disconnected to a customer in Woodway, where the median family income is above $110,000.
In 2002, the PUD had the highest residential electricity rates in the state, but over the past 15 months some other utilities have nudged past the PUD. The Benton Public Utility District in south central Washington is now at the top of the list, and Snohomish County PUD now has the sixth-highest rates in the state.
PUD leaders recognize that customers are struggling, but they say high-priced electricity contracts signed during the energy crisis and rate hikes by BPA prevent them from lowering rates.
"I’m very sympathetic to what some of our low-income customers are going through," PUD commissioner Dave Aldrich said.
But he added, "No matter what the rate is, there always has been a percent of the total customer base that struggles to pay their electricity bill — and all their bills."
Commissioner Kathy Vaughn added: "You can’t have a 50 percent rate increase and not feel it. It’s not good for the Snohomish County economy, and it’s not good for the Northwest economy."
***
McMahan, a senior citizen living on a fixed income, and other struggling PUD customers don’t care who is responsible for the hefty bills, they just want the rates to go down.
Like many in the Northwest, her home is kept warm with electric baseboard heaters, a remnant from the days when power prices in the Northwest were among the cheapest in the country.
McMahan would like to heat her home with natural gas, but there’s no connection on her street. She could switch to propane, but living on a fixed monthly income of $1,300, she can’t afford to make the change.
In the winter, it costs her $250 a month to heat her 1,800-square-foot home, though it’s not as warm as she would like. "Everything is 60 degrees except the family room. That’s 70. If I kept this as warm as I’d like it, my bill would probably be $1,000 for two months," she said.
McMahan had energy-efficient windows installed in 1999 and 2000, and PUD officials promised that her bill would go down. But just when she thought she had saved herself some money, the utility raised its rates 50 percent.
At that moment, McMahan’s day-to-day struggle to pay her bills started.
McMahan applied for energy assistance from Snohomish County and the PUD, but was rejected by both because she earns too much.
Beuscher said the demand for help has increased steadily since rates went up, with his office helping 114 households in the winter of 2000-2001, 272 homes 2002-2003, and is on pace to serve a record 500 or more households this year. His office will spend $1.6 million to assist families this season, with the average home receiving $341 to help pay down its bill.
Government documents show McMahan’s family lives off about $30,000 a year, which means she doesn’t qualify for energy assistance. But most of that goes to support her husband, Howard, who lives in a nursing home because of health problems.
"I’m really not living on what they tell me I’m living on," said McMahan, who suspects that her meter is malfunctioning. "The frustrating thing is, you get absolutely nowhere when you go down there" to the PUD.
"How do they know that something isn’t wrong?" she asks.
PUD officials say McMahan’s meter is working fine, and there’s nothing they can do about her situation.
****
When the electricity was turned off at Toni Davis’ home last year, the only way she could keep her children warm at night was to have them all climb into bed with her.
Davis is one of many single parents who have struggled to pay the soaring rates.
After playing an unending game of catch-up on her PUD bill, Davis fell so far behind that the utility turned off her power for three days — a low point she hopes never to revisit.
"Without my PUD, I have nothing," Davis said. "Before (the rates) went up, I basically was able to pay my full bill. It was still a struggle, but it wasn’t as bad."
Now she dreads the day when her heating bill arrives. It cost her about $150 a month in the winter to keep her apartment warm. Before the energy crisis, her winter electricity bill was about $90 a month.
"I believe in God, so I pray about it a lot more than I used to," she said.
A single mother of three, Denise Bresler’s power was scheduled to be shut off on April 16. With her turnoff notice in hand, she was able to convince staff at the county’s energy assistance office to see her at the last minute.
"It was hard to get help," said Bresler, who has struggled to keep up with her bills since separating from her former husband in August. "This was my last hope."
Davis said the PUD works with her on her bill but can only do so much.
"Sometimes I’ll call to make a payment arrangement that I know I can’t do, and then I call to reschedule," she said.
Davis’ four-member family lives off $1,000 a month. It usually takes her until the end of the summer to pay down her winter electricity bill.
Like many in her shoes, Davis has been helped by Snohomish County and PUD low-income assistance programs.
Mostly, though, her focus has been on finding ways to use less electricity.
"I turn the heat off at night — I have to," she said. That makes for chilly mornings. "Getting (my children) up is pretty tough."
***
Some homeowners have coped with the high rates by buying more energy-efficient appliances, something the PUD supports with low-interest loans.
In spring 2003, Mike Potratz of Snohomish replaced his furnace with a heat pump, which pulls warm air from the outside into the home without using as much electricity as a forced-air system.
So far, the results have not been that impressive, he said. But that may be because he expanded his home and because this winter was a bit colder than the winter of 2002-2003.
His monthly bills were $275 to $350 a month this winter, down from about $350 to $400a month the previous winter.
"I’d like to get our bill down more," Potratz said. "We can pay it, but it’s a shock to our finances."
Meanwhile, Potratz said his family will keep looking for ways to use less electricity.
At Darlene Miller’s home in Edmonds, last year’s decision to spend about $15,000 on a new heat pump and replace 20 aging windows worked wonders.
Miller estimates that her electricity bill has gone down an average of $50 a month since making the changes.
"We couldn’t be more thrilled," Miller said. "We feel we definitely got our money’s worth."
***
Paired with the economic downturn, high electricity bills can be especially crippling for those without jobs.
It costsKathleen Volk of Granite Falls $250 to $300 a month to heat her trailer. Volk has struggled to keep her home warm since being laid off last year from Weyerhaeuser, where she bundled lumber. She is now living off her savings.
"To have a rate that’s almost half as much as my rent is ridiculous," she said.
After waiting for three months, she recently had her interview with the county energy office, where officials said she appears to qualify for the maximum amount available, about $750. If approved, the money would go a long way toward paying off the $1,600 PUD bill she has built up.
Her power hasn’t been turned off yet, and she hopes money from the energy office comes soon enough to avoid a shutoff.
"This is serious," she said. In recent weeks, she’s had a yard sale every weekend just to get gas money. "I’ve sold my firearms and other things. I’ve had to downsize," she said.
Like many others, she keeps her home on the cool side. Two cats and two dogs help keep her warm at night.
"They all pile into bed with me," she said. "They follow me from room to room whenever I need to cuddle up."
Volk hopes her new job at Cascade Coffee in Everett will help her get back on her feet.
***
While energy providers continue to battle over costs, the cumulative effect of three straight years of struggling to pay the high rates is catching up with customers, according to Beuscher of the county’s Energy Assistance Program.
"We have seen an increasing number of people asking for help for the first time," he said. "For many of them, this is the first time they’ve ever asked for help."
Until rates go down, customers will keep walking up to Beuscher’s window to ask for help that he can’t always give.
Beuscher said he was recently touched by a woman who declined to ask for help this year, even though she qualifies.
"She said she wants to try to make it on her own," he said. "She said she was so grateful to receive help last year."
The sad truth, he said, is there are plenty of people to take her place in line.
Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@heraldnet.com.
