Lewis County Moves Closer to New Agreement With Tacoma Power

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Lewis County commissioners are looking over proposed changes to the county’s mitigation agreement with Tacoma Power, which would put in place new escalations to the utility’s annual payments for the two dams it operates within the county. 

“This is great,” said county commissioner Edna Fund, upon hearing that Tacoma Power had sent the long-awaited proposal on Friday. “This is good news. We need some good news.”

The changes are due to a technicality, not a negotiating maneuver. The previous agreement had raised the annual payments according to the Consumer Price Index in Portland-Salem — an inflation statistic that was discontinued by the federal government last year. Since then, the utility has been paying the agreed-upon minimum of a 2 percent increase, but the county has been eager to put a new CPI escalator in place. 

Tacoma Power is proposing to use the West Size Class A CPI, which has risen at a rate similar to the previous Portland-Salem designation. 

“From our perspective, it’s a fair and equitable CPI to the one that was discontinued,” said Chris Mattson, generation manager at Tacoma Power. “This West Size Class A has tracked the most closely to the way the Portland-Salem one performed.”

County officials, while acknowledging they need time to look over the proposal, had favorable reactions after looking at a chart that showed the proposed CPI outperforming many alternatives. 

“That’s not a bad number,” said county commissioner Bobby Jackson. 



Additionally, Tacoma Power is planning to reimburse the county for the amount it would have paid over the past year, had it been paying the proposed CPI instead of the 2 percent floor. 

“In the absence of having a CPI last year, we used the only other provision in the agreement, which was the floor of 2 percent,” Mattson said. “We wanted to make sure that we stayed in alignment with the spirit of the current agreement we have with Lewis County.”

The document submitted to the county shows Tacoma Power would pay about $47,000 to make up for the previous underpayment. 

The mitigation agreement, which came to just less than $1.6 million last year, exists to help offset the damages that Tacoma Power’s Cowlitz River dams have cost the county, including the thousands of acres of land that were taken off the tax rolls when they were submerged by the creation of Riffe and Mayfield lakes. The hydroelectric dams in turn provide much of Tacoma’s electricity. 

County commissioner Gary Stamper’s district is home to both dams. He said he’s eager to get more information from the Lewis County Prosecutor’s Office about the next steps. 

“Obviously they’ve been working on putting this Consumer Price Index together, so I’m encouraged by that,” he said. “That could be something that I think would be fair and equitable, especially in our location.”