Oregon
regulators set deadline for
irrigator rates
Wednesday June 8, 2005
Klamath Falls
Herald and News
By DYLAN DARLING
By
this fall,
Oregon
officials will decide whether power rates for
Klamath
Basin
irrigators will go up.
The Oregon Public Utility Commission said Tuesday it will decide two issues
at the same time: Whether rates for irrigators should go up as much as
tenfold, and whether PacifiCorp should be able to raise rates 12 percent
statewide.
A
decision is expected no later than Sept. 12, said Bob Valdez, commission
spokesman.
"There will be a decision by Sept. 12, but that does mean the rates
will be going up then," he said.
A 50-year-old contract inked by PacifiCorp's predecessor has kept rates at
about half a cent per kilowatt hour for irrigators in and just outside of
the Klamath Reclamation Project. The contract for Project irrigators is set
to expire on
April 16, 2006
, and the contract for off-Project irrigators doesn't have an expiration
date, according to the PUC.
PacifiCorp has argued that both contracts should be terminated and the
irrigators' rate increased to what other irrigators pay in
Oregon
.
Irrigators argue that the company benefits from the Project's existence and
that federal law requires them to offer irrigators the "lowest
reasonable rate available," said Lynn Long, a farmer near
Lower Klamath
Lake
and member of the Klamath Water Users Association's power committee.
"It's cut and dried, plain and simple," Long said.
What's
not simple is a tangle of jurisdictions, contracts, laws, new legislation
and negotiations.
"That
thing is so mixed up that average folks can't understand it, and I'm one of
those average folks," Long said.
Some complicating factors:
n Irrigators holding contracts with PacifiCorp are also in two states.
Oregon
's legislature is working on a law that would phase in any rate increase
that if passed, wouldn't affect irrigators on the
California
side of the Basin.
n
A potential jurisdictional struggle between the state commission and the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Many of the irrigators also wanted a decision about a rate increase held
until the federal commission relicenses PacifiCorp's hydroelectric project
on the
Klamath River
.
The
company's license expires in 2006, its 7,000-page renewal application is in
and the federal process could lag for several years.
"All of the irrigator parties are arguing that the reduced rate should
be a condition of the FERC license," said Edward Bartell, a
Sprague
River
rancher and member of the Klamath Off-Project Water Users.
Even
if the PUC rules that the irrigators' rates should go up, that doesn't mean
they will, said Scott Seus, a Tulelake farmer and member of the Klamath
Water Users Association's power committee. He said FERC will have the final
say.
The PUC says differently. Its order says FERC has twice declared that the
rates PacifiCorp charges to its retail customers are not relevant to its
relicensing review. And, "this Commission, not FERC, has jurisdiction
over rates charged by PacifiCorp to its
Oregon
retail customers."
Seus
said the irrigators are taking the rate issue one step at a time and they
are still disseminating the PUC's order.
"This is just one little brick in a brick path from now to April,"
Seus said. "There's a long time from now until then."
|
