By Steve Johnson

Supporters of public power in Jefferson and Skagit counties, and on Whidbey Island, have come to recognize the central elements in Puget Sound Energy’s campaign to derail their community efforts: fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Earlier this summer, PSE released a study claiming that public utility districts in Jefferson and Skagit counties, and the new PUD proposed for Whidbey Island, would find it difficult — if not impossible — to obtain power from the Bonneville Power Administration.

When that didn’t slow the grassroots efforts in those communities, the power company tried a different tack. A new study, PSE claimed, showed that providing power to those new electric-service PUDs would drive up rates for thousands of other customers throughout the Northwest whose local utilities get their power from BPA.

So which is it?

Is there BPA power available for new PUDs or not? And how would that affect other public power utilities?

The fact is that BPA has reserved the last 210 megawatts of low-cost power from the federal Columbia River hydroelectric system for new public utilities — probably enough to serve all three communities.

In addition, BPA, which is required by federal law to serve public power utilities, would acquire any additional power it needs from the marketplace, essentially becoming the new PUDs’ agent in buying wholesale power. And by its very nature, BPA would be able to negotiate the best possible purchase contracts.

So, there is no question that any new PUDs would have access to power from BPA.

Meanwhile, BPA has acknowledged that there is a remote chance, should all three new PUDs apply for power at the same time, that meeting those needs could have a small impact on the wholesale rates paid by other public utilities.

That’s because BPA is counting on that 210 MW reserved for new public utilities in case it runs short of low-cost power for existing utilities. If the entire reserve is claimed by the new PUDs, BPA could need to buy some market-rate power to meet its other obligations.

But BPA doesn’t intend to release all 210 MW at once. And considering that 210 MW only represents about 3 percent of the 7,000 MW of low-cost hydropower that BPA sells to other utilities, mixing in a few megawatts of market-priced power would not have much impact on its wholesale rates for public power utilities across the region.

In fact, BPA says that to reach the level of impact that PSE projects would require market rates that are incredibly high, and which would also send PSE rates through the roof because PSE buys much of its power on the market. The PSE study doesn’t tell you that.

This may sound confusing, and the temptation is to counter PSE’s outrageous claims with easy answers. But in addition to reliable, low-cost electricity, public power is about local control and local accountability.

Voters are being asked to make a long-term commitment to their communities and they deserve to have a clear understanding of what’s involved in creating their own electric utilities – without the misinformation and misdirection from PSE.

Another argument in PSE’s campaign of “fear, uncertainty and doubt” is to claim that local folks simply don’t have the skill and expertise to run an electric utility in today’s complicated energy environment.

That is also nonsense.

More than 50 communities in Washington do what PSE says the residents of Whidbey Island and Skagit and Jefferson counties can’t do, manage their own electric utilities, including 23 public utility districts. And every one of those locally run electric utilities provides power at residential rates that are significantly lower than PSE charges.

The fact is that a local PUD would hire the expertise it needs to run a utility, just like PSE does, and pay them decent wages to live and work in the community, including electrical engineers, linemen and customer service representatives.

In reality, a PUD would have more expertise on hand, especially when it comes to keeping the lights on, since a PUD would have its own repair crews, while PSE contracts most of its line work to a company in Pierce County.

Imagine the response to a local outage when the repair crews actually live in the community, and when their “bosses” (the locally elected commissioners) have to answer your questions in public meetings or when they run into you at the grocery store.

PSE would have you believe that a small community could never afford the millions of dollars it would cost. What PSE doesn’t tell you is, as ratepayers, you are already paying for the cost of the system today.

The bottom line is that voters on Whidbey Island, and in Jefferson and Skagit counties, have an historic opportunity to take charge of their energy future — to form public utility districts that are focused exclusively on meeting your local needs.

Steve Johnson is executive director of the Washington Public Utility Districts Association.