Washingtonians put the bitter private-public power wars behind us more than three quarters of a century ago.
The battles of the 20s and 30s raged for decades, but since then they are sharing service areas in an uneasy peace — until now.
Some activists in Skagit County want to load the cannons and rekindle the feud. It is not a war we want to fight if we are to improve our state’s competitiveness and provide jobs for our children and grandchildren. Despite differences over the sale of Puget Sound Energy, it is a bad idea to carve up PSE’s customer base.
Here’s the deal. The Skagit Public Utility District (PUD), which provides water to its customers, has announced its intention to ask voters this November to condemn the PSE’s distribution system.
The PUD plans to take over Puget’s 57,000 Skagit County customers and run the system itself. But before they go any further, they should check their math to see if the county’s families, schools, hospitals and businesses can afford it.
At first glance, the math might look promising. After all, the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) has set aside 250 megawatts of power for start-up utilities. The Skagit PUD wants to use those incentives as leverage to confiscate the PSE system. However, there are no guarantees that Skagit can clear the necessary hurdles, successfully wrest control of the PSE customer base, and get the electricity.
At a minimum, Skagit ratepayers would have to fork over $238 million in legal and takeover costs. The PUD would have to recover those costs from its customers and then go out and find long-term sources of electricity.
There’s more.
The new utility would have to comply with Initiative 937, which requires utilities with more than 25,000 customers to purchase 15 percent of its electricity from renewable generating sources. Since I-937 excludes affordable hydro power from the definition of a “renewable,” Skagit would have to join the hunt for more expensive wind, solar and biomass power. Skagit also would have to get in BPA’s line along with Northwest Tribes and others to compete for the electricity BPA has set aside.
Former BPA Administrator Randy Hardy calculates that, even if Skagit PUD is successful in the November elections, it would take 7 to 10 years before BPA could service the entire power load currently provided by PSE. That uncertainty alone should send shock waves through voters’ spines. Eventually, the new PUD would have to wean itself from BPA and find its own electricity, which is far from cheap these days.
PSE has provided its customer with reliable service for more than a century, and the question voters in that county need to ask is, what is to be gained by the takeover? For example, would the new PUD have the resources to deal with a Dec. 14, 2006 storm with 100-mph winds that crippled the entire Western Washington power grid?
PSE was hardest hit, losing 85 of its 208 high-voltage lines and 159 of its 358 neighborhood substations. In total, 70 percent of PSE’s one million customers were without electricity, and PSE lost $90 million in damages alone.
Would a start-up PUD, saddled with a quarter-billion debt, have the financial resources to absorb the short-term costs and losses from a major storm? Could that new government-run operation have the staff to mobilize line crews from across the country, bring them to Western Washington, and restore power within a matter of days?
Those are questions Skagit County voters need to ask before they sign petitions putting the PUD takeover measure on the ballot next November.
Also, the rest of the electric ratepayers around our state need to be concerned about what the costs of this proposal and others like it may do to their power rates and electricity supplies.
Washington doesn’t need another public-private power war. It needs new ways to conserve and generate electricity so we can have lower electricity rates to offset the high cost of living and doing business in Washington.
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