Douglas County PUD commissioner candidates face off

In Douglas County, contenders are incumbent Aaron Viebrock and Rock Island Mayor Randy Agnew.

Here’s what Viebrock and Agnew said in response to questions posed by the chamber moderator, Josh Stendera, at Thursday’s forum. The answers have been lightly edited.

Wenatchee Valley Chamber of Commerce: Where do you see differences and similarities between the mid-Columbia (mid-C) utilities (Douglas, Chelan and Grant PUDs)?

Aaron Viebrock: Well, the mid-Cs do get along. It’s very fortunate that we don’t have any squabbles. They are different. Both are different than Douglas. They’re bigger is the main difference, so that creates more problems for them and issues. We have one dam on the Columbia. Chelan has two on the Columbia, one up on Lake Chelan, and then Grant has two dams. Chelan and Douglas both have power sales, contracts, and subsidies… So there’s differences, but we do get along… Generally we find we have common problems and ways to get around them.

Randy Agnew: To me, the biggest difference I see between, basically Douglas County, Chelan County versus Grant County, is as Aaron (Viebrock) mentioned. Grant County sells most of their power locally to the data centers. And I looked at the rate schedule for Grant County. If you look at various users and the rates, I noticed, if you just flip the rates over then they would match what Douglas County charges. The residents in Grant County pay the highest rate, which I’m not advocating for that, but that’s the way it is, and businesses pay the lower rates. In Douglas County, it’s the exact opposite. Residents pay the lowest rates and the (businesses) pay the highest rates.

WVCC: How do you see the mid-Columbia utilities working together to achieve common goals?

Agnew: I keep hearing every few years of a new record salmon run, so it seems to me that we’re pretty well on that, working together. And I know that they’re working together to put a 230-kilovolt, I’m not sure, line connecting Douglas County and Grant County together, their grids. And other than that, they seem to work together fine for me.

Viebrock: I think the biggest challenge the three PUDs have right now is the Columbia River Treaty and that is a whole can of worms, but to sum it up the power users on the Columbia are supposed to be paying Canada for flood control, etcetera, and we were supposed to be doing that for 60 years, but at year 50 we were supposed to say we were done in 10 years. We never gave that notice, so in 2024 that treaty is supposed to expire, but the entire provision of that won’t end so the three mid-Cs and Bonneville are going to keep paying Canada. Well, Douglas PUD pays anywhere from $9 to $18 million a year for power to Canada every year, to pay for that entitlement portion and we don’t think we are getting any — we’re paying more than what we’re getting. So, we’re working with Chelan, Grant and Bonneville and whoever we can to make this right. But we do get along great. We work together well.

WVCC: What steps is the Douglas County PUD taking to ensure resource adequacy in the future?

Viebrock: I think the biggest thing we did is… A couple years ago we decided any new large loads that come to the county over two megawatts would have to buy their power on the open market. And that’s simply so we can keep power available for our ratepayers and future ratepayers. I would hate for a building developer to come in and want to build something and we’d have to tell them we don’t have energy for them because we gave it all to a large data center.

Agnew: Well, that’s a good question. As Aaron (Viebrock) said, Douglas County does have a limited amount of power that they produce and I do understand, you know, the need to limit, you know, don’t sell it all because if there’s any shortage all of a sudden we all start having blackouts and brownouts. On the other hand, the question is what are we going to do for the future? As we all know, they’re shutting down coal plants. I think as Carnan (Bergren) mentioned, there was, I forget how many megawatts, thousands of megawatts of production being shut down. That’s going to put a tremendous amount of pressure on the hydropower, the public utility districts. That said, I think the PUD needs to be looking at ways of creating more electricity. I know there’s a company from Spain putting in a massive solar plant up on Badger Mountain. It’s supposed to generate 200 megawatts of power and I think the PUD should be doing things like that. I know Douglas County PUD, I believe, owns 10% of the Lind farm (Rattlesnake Flat wind farm), so they get some power there. I think they need to extend that. I think they also need to look at pumped storage (hydropower, or PSH), which if you’re not familiar with that, they pump water out of the river, up on top of some mountain somewhere and store it, and then when they need more power they can run that water back down and generate electricity. The geography of our valley would suit that sort of operation really nicely. If you combine that with solar, wind, which as we all know only work when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. But the pumped power, pumped storage, they could run that anytime they need to. So between the three of them, might provide good options for meeting the needs of the high demand that’s coming.

WVCC: The 2019 update to the Douglas County PUD integrated resource plan recommends exploring additional resource alternatives. What do you consider the most opportunistic option?

Agnew: I don’t want to repeat myself, but… The world does a lot of experiments with solar and wind, so those are probably the safest and easiest to implement at this point. Again, I think pumped storage provides a lot of benefit in the fact that it can be run whenever you need it, not just when the sun is shining. So I’d say all of the above, except nuclear power. I’m not too wild about that.

Viebrock: I think at Douglas (PUD) we understand the legislative mandates are going to force our hand on solar, so we have been talking about it and having a conversation, but I think the biggest thing we’re doing is our hydrogen production facility. Where there’s times of too much energy on the market, on the grid rather, we can shift that energy to produce hydrogen, and down the road I would hope that we could store that hydrogen, and when there’s times of we’re deficient on power, we could burn that hydrogen to produce power, and the great thing about hydrogen is when it burns in an engine the only exhaust it produces is water. And so we are looking at, a lot of companies are wanting our hydrogen for transportation at, you know, warehouses with forklifts, but we’re just dipping our toes in that right now, so there’s a lot more to come.

Stendera: How can a commissioner progress, affect and affirm the core values, mission and vision of the Douglas County PUD?

Viebrock: I think the biggest thing I can do is, or any other commissioner, to be a team player. You have to be willing to compromise. You know, it’s like a little family, and I don’t know about your family, but mine doesn’t always get along or agree on everything, but eventually we have to come to a conclusion and so most decisions are not easy to make and a lot of them are really big decisions that affect our ratepayers, but we’re fortunate we have a great commission and a great staff at the PUD and we usually are able to come together with a decision that benefits everybody.

Agnew: I thought that Carnan made a really good point on this one, this question. As a commissioner or, I’m emphasizing on a number of boards because I’m a mayor, and I found over the years that all you have is your opinion, but your opinion, I tend to think outside the box, but your opinion presented well can often sway whatever the board is, or the commission, and that would be, you know, as Aaron said, you don’t agree on everything, so you argue for your side and then ultimately you have to, as he said, come to a unanimous decision. Anyway, so my perspective is, I would be pushing for the, more of the economic development, use of the power, than where it’s currently being used.

Stendera: What would be your primary focus on the first 12 months on the commission?

Agnew: Yes, it is likely repeating myself, but my focus would be the economic development piece. I want, I would like Douglas County (PUD) to become more competitive with Grant County (PUD) for high-tech, high-load business users. Interestingly, Alcoa, when it was closed down a few years ago, that was considered a big loss for the valley, and they employed about 400 people. The Microsoft data center in Quincy also employs about 400 people. So to me, these high-tech businesses can help provide, offset, the loss of having an agricultural industry and the old, traditional industries, such as the… plant that’s been closed for 20 years right across the highway from Rock Island.

Viebrock: I guess in the next 12 months the biggest thing I would want to do is just keep doing what we’re doing. We’re a year or two away from being completely wired fiber in the county. And I’ve been pushing hard for that out in the rural part of the county, on the eastern part of the county where I live and we’re almost there. We’re a year or two away, so we’re going to keep pushing for that. We’re going to keep pushing on this Columbia River Treaty thing. We need to focus on resource adequacy. A lot of loads coming online and there’s a finite amount of power, so we need to figure out how to make that work.

Stendera: In 60 seconds, explain why people should vote for you.

Viebrock: Well, it’s been a blast doing this. I’ve really enjoyed it. I met a lot of people… There’s a very steep learning curve in this process. They say it’s like drinking from a fire hose and that’s exactly what it is. They say it takes about one full term to get to know everything. I can tell you the first three years I didn’t ask very many questions; I didn’t want to sound stupid. There’s a lot to learn here and there’s so many unknowns legislatively that we need to keep track of and… well frankly, we can’t prepare for it because we don’t know what’s coming. (There’s) the (Clean) Energy Transportation Act that we have to figure out how to deal with. It has been a major hurdle, but like I said, we have a great commission, and a great staff. I’m excited. So, I just want to keep doing what we’re doing. It seems like most people are happy with the PUD. We did a customer survey — 94% satisfaction rate. So, I think we’re doing things right, but there’s always room for a little improvement. So, I want to keep on track of what we have going on.

Agnew: Again, my focus is economic development in Douglas County. I’ve been talking about that through all these questions. In 2020, the Douglas County PUD sold 75% of the power they produced outside of the county. The last time that Aaron and I were talking to a group, we had to question that, so I went back and double-checked to make sure I’m not lying. According to the financial statements of the Douglas County PUD, that number is correct. And again, I would like to see a little more of that power used, utilized, in Douglas County to provide power for those businesses that create jobs and all the other economic benefits they bring.