By CHERYL SCHWEIZER

Staff Writer

EPHRATA — Grant County PUD has established rate classes detailing the charges for transmitting electricity to irrigation customers. It’s the latest development in longstanding discussions between the PUD and local irrigation districts over the electrical transmission charges.

Utility district commissioners approved rate schedules 30 and 31 at the regular commission meeting Oct. 27. Commissioners approved the rates without discussion at that meeting.

The new rates won’t go into effect until 2022. Rates for 2021 are part of an agreement between the PUD and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

The electricity is generated by the BPA and sold to the irrigation districts, but transmitted by the PUD. The charges for transmitting the power are called wheeling charges.

The PUD had provided the transmission free of charge, under terms of an agreement signed in 1976. That agreement expired in 2016, and the two sides have been working on possible solutions ever since.

In the meantime, the interim agreement has been extended year by year. The charges are billed to the BPA and passed on to the irrigation districts and eventually to their customers.

Roger Sonnichsen, manager for the Quincy-Columbia Basin Irrigation District, said the 2022 rate increase would add about $190,000 to the district’s wheeling charges. In 2021, the QCBID will pay about $780,000, Sonnichsen said.

“These proposed rates are actually 34 percent above what we’re paying under this MOA (memorandum of agreement),” Sonnichsen said.

Currently, the increase in the wheeling charges would have the biggest impact on the QCBID, he said. The district operates nine large pumping facilities.

“We still have the opinion Grant (PUD) could work a contract with the Bureau of Reclamation and do it that way,” Sonnichsen said.

Bureau of Reclamation and irrigation district officials are planning to file an inquiry with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, asking if there is an alternative to the rate schedules. During the public comment period at the Oct. 27 meeting, Rob Skordas of the BPA asked the commissioners to delay implementing the rate schedules until the BPA and irrigation districts had the chance to make their inquiries. Sonnichsen asked the commissioners to delay implementation of the 2022 rate increase until there’s an answer from the energy regulatory commission.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at [email protected].