In response to Initiative 937, Puget Sound Energy says it will pay its customers as much as $2,000 a year to generate their own clean, renewable power.
I-937 was passed by voters this month and requires large utility companies to increase their renewable energy sources to 15 percent of their supply by 2020.
PSE announced this week that it will pay 15 to 54 cents for each kilowatt-hour that customers generate using wind, solar or anaerobic-digester systems.
PSE already allows customers to offset their energy bills by producing their own clean, renewable energy. In such cases, a customer’s system feeds excess power to the PSE grid for distribution to other customers, and the customer is billed only for the net amount of electricity drawn from the utility.
More than 100 customers take part in that program, PSE said. If those customers apply by Nov. 30, PSE will pay them retroactively for energy generated from July 2005 through June 2006.
Yakima: Life sentence for kidnap and rape
A man who went to prison after killing his wife and raping his stepdaughter in 1985 has been given an automatic sentence of life in prison without the possibility of release for kidnapping his new wife and raping her daughter.
Timothy Sommerville, 59, will undergo an evaluation to determine whether he qualifies for continued treatment at a state mental hospital; if he does, he will be transferred to prison when his treatment ends, a Yakima County Superior Court judge ruled.
Sommerville faced the automatic sentence at his hearing Tuesday under Washington’s two-strikes law for violent sex offenders. He was convicted of the 1985 rape and served four years, but was acquitted of the murder by reason of insanity and spent eight years in a state hospital.
Sommerville told the court he was sorry.
“I know that I am guilty of the deed I have done, not only this time but in my previous period of incarceration,” he said.
Spokane: Rapist out of jail under old laws
A man who was sentenced to consecutive life terms in 1984 for breaking into an apartment and raping two women at knifepoint is back on the streets.
Thon J. Edwards, now 46, is among the last of the state’s convicts sentenced under old Washington laws that allowed the state parole board to decide how long they should serve behind bars and left victims out of the loop.
About 500 of the state’s more than 17,000 inmates are serving prison terms under the former system, called “indeterminate sentencing.”
It’s possible his victims do not know he was released from prison last month.
“On those old sentences, the victims would have no idea when the person was going to be released because the state wasn’t required to notify them,” said Steve Eckstrom, manager of Washington’s Victim Services Program. “Now the parole board will notify people, but on those old sentences they may not.”
Port Orchard: Slide danger high in county
Kitsap County commissioners signed an emergency declaration Wednesday to help the county deal with a mudslide threatening several homes in Manchester.
The declaration allows county government to help residents mitigate any flood or landslide damage.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, tons of dirt waterlogged by weeks of rain oozed away from a large fill that had been put around a big foundation for a home under construction, the Kitsap Sun reported.
Dan Trudeau’s yard lay in the path of the mud. He said his chain link fence held it back for a while, but finally gave way, filling his yard with runny mud three feet deep. The mud then continued downhill on the other side of his yard.
From Herald news services
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