Clallam PUD candidates tout experience and leadership
By Jim Casey, Peninsula Daily News
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Attorney Hugh Haffner, who has served in the position for 14 years, spoke of "making sure our ratepayers get the best shake."
Communications company owner Bob Jensen cited his family's holding various offices in Clallam County since settling here in 1887.
"To me, this is a public service position," he said.
The position pays $16,800 per year, plus per diem and travel expenses.
The candidates for the Sequim-area District 2 seat spoke before the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce weekly luncheon meeting.
Broadband and broadband
Jensen's family owns Angeles Communications, and he also is an owner of Capacity Provisioning Inc., a voice and data utility that provides broadband service.
So does the PUD.
"That kind of has been a campaign issue for you," he told the audience in his opening remarks.
"The PUD has gotten into the telecommunications industry. That's what I do."
However, Jensen did not comment further on any conflict of interest between the two utilities despite this being the second time someone with ties to CPI has challenged Haffner.
Haffner won his second six-year term in 2002 by defeating Bill Roberds, one of Jensen's partners.
Jensen, a six-year Marine veteran with combat experience in the Gulf War, said a challenge for the PUD will be offsetting rising rates caused by a mandate to use power generated by renewable resources.
Wind power at home
"Put tools like load sharing into the customers' hands," he suggested, encouraging using cheaper power during daily periods of low demand.
He also advocated helping homeowners develop their own "green" energy sources like windmills to supply their own needs and even feed power to the PUD grid.
As for one of the PUD's other utilities, water, Jensen said the district should be shopping for land on which to locate a reservoir in case of an interruption in supply.
"We can't live in our homes without water for three or four days," he said.
"The water portion of the PUD is an under-funded utility. I'd like to see it a lot more healthy."
Jensen also questioned the district's decision to base all its crews out of Carlsborg, which means a delay if they must answer an outage in Joyce.
Haffner said that decision was made when diesel fuel was much cheaper but that it still wasn't a simple question.
"You have to do some sort of a matrix analysis," he said, of whether the savings of a single center for all PUD crews outweighed the cost of sometimes sending them into Clallam County's West End.
(Haffner asked for such an analysis during the PUD commissioners' weekly meeting he attended after the candidates' forum.)
Store water underground
As for water storage, he said the PUD, Clallam County, local tribes and the state Department of Ecology are testing the idea of pumping water in winter into underground aquifers for use during summer dry spells.
He said the district had "really good managers" to handle day-to-day operations.
"Part of my job is to be a critical thinker, to ask the tough questions: What's going to be best for the ratepayers?"
Still, Jensen and Haffner shared one observation:
Lots of people outside the Northwest want its low-cost electric power.
"The rest of the United States wants this power," Jensen said.
"The Bonneville Power Administration is trying to keep it here in the Northwest."
Haffner agreed.
"We have some of the cheapest power in the country, but they are always out there trying to get our cheap power.
"If it isn't the investor-owned utilities or the federal government, a lot of the environmental groups want us to pay for environmental costs."
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Reporter Jim Casey can be reached at 360-417-3538 or at jim.casey@peninsuladailynews.com.
Last modified: September 08. 2008 9:00PM