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| Link River Dam at Klamath Falls, Ore., is part of a hydropower system PacifiCorps wants modified in 2006 relicensing. Klamath Water Users Association makes continued discount electricity rates a priority for 2006. |
Tam
Moore
Oregon Staff Writer
Capital Press - October 21, 2005
KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. – From a system built on gravity
flow of water starting in 1905, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Klamath
Project emerged a century later so tied to electricity that farmers predict if
a discount electrical power deal goes away, the whole thing will collapse.
“This won’t work with the projected power rates,” Scott Seus, new
chairman of the Klamath Water User’s Association power committee, said in a
report to the membership last week.
Seus said it’s not just the rates to individual farmers like himself, it’s
the cost irrigation and drainage districts pay for the elaborate network of
electric pumps that move water around. The existing rates – a half-cent per
kilowatt-hour inside project croplands and 0.75 cents per Kwh beyond but
inside the larger Klamath Project boundaries – are part of the federal
license and a sidebar 50-year contract made with PacifiCorp, the hydro system
operator.
The whole package vanishes in April 2006 unless the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission decides to again make it part of license renewal terms, or
PacifiCorp changes its position. The utility wants to bump rates up to the
same agricultural pumping charges paid by similar customers in Northern
California and Oregon service areas.
Seus, a second-generation farmer from Tulelake, Calif., told the water users
they are paying a lot to keep power rates low. Six consulting lawyers are at
work on parts of the deal, including Paul Simmons, the Sacramento lawyer who
is primary legal adviser to KWUA.
Tariffs proposed by PacifiCorp, said Seus, would increase power costs as much
as 2,500 percent for some classes of project users.
If that happens, he predicted, the federal government’s $75 million
investment with farmers in water conservation in the past four years will sit
idle. So, he said, would the drainage pumps around which the project was
built. It reclaimed over 200,000 acres of former lakebed and wetlands over a
50-year period. Most of the reclaimed land is farmed or part of national
wildlife refuges.
“If 100 years (of the project) is a milestone, then power is the cornerstone
of our success,” said Seus.
Most irrigators know little more than public statements about how KWUA is
doing in the battle to retain “a justifiably low-cost power rate.”
That’s because the association and its power committee are part of
PacifiCorp’s closed-door negotiations to wrap up Klamath issues in
settlement agreements that become part of the FERC license. Parties are sworn
to silence until there’s a deal.
PacifiCorp has indicated based on past relicensing experience that those
agreements need to be reached a month or two before actual license renewal
dates. FERC began formal study of the Klamath renewal application 15 months
ago.
Steve Kandra, the grain and hay farmer who serves as KWUA president, told
members that directors feel preserving power rates is equally important with
assuring there’s a dependable water supply as the project starts its second
century.
The PacifiCorp license renewal application proposes distancing the company
from BuRec water operations. Under the present contract, the power company
operates the dam that creates the main project irrigation diversion, running
two generators at the Link River Dam site here. It also operates a regulating
dam at Keno, downstream from where project return flows rejoin the river.
The primary electrical power generation comes from a large plant in the
Klamath River Canyon near the state line and from turbines installed at three
dams in California. All operate primarily with water released by the Klamath
Project.
It’s that tie, Seus has argued, that links power rates with water. Elsewhere
in the West, BuRec owns the turbines at most projects and sells electricity to
reduce project costs. Rural electric cooperatives around projects get discount
rates to pass on to irrigators. At Klamath, the first deal put generation with
California Oregon Power Co., PacifiCorp’s predecessor, with the FERC
contract term delivering a similar benefit.
Tam Moore is based in Medford, Ore. His e-mail address is tmoore@capitalpress.com.