History of PUDS in Washington

In 1929, the Washington State Grange, a populist agricultural organization, collected more than 60,000 signatures – twice the number necessary – to send Initiative No. 1 to the Legislature, allowing rural communities to form their own publicly owned utilities.

When the Legislature failed to act, the measure went to a statewide election, where it passed in 1930 with 54 percent of the vote. The new PUD law went into effect in 1931.

The law, now known as RCW 54, authorized the establishment of public utility districts to “conserve the water and power resources of the State of Washington for the benefit of the people thereof, and to supply public utility service, including water and electricity for all uses.”

In 2000, as access to the Internet became increasingly important, the law was amended to include wholesale broadband telecommunications service.

The first PUD to go into operation was PUD No. 1 of Mason County. Formed in 1934, the PUD began serving Hoodsport and the surrounding area in 1935.

A second PUD – Mason PUD No. 3 – was formed soon afterwards and now provides electricity to other parts of the county. Mason No. 1 also provides water and sewer services, while Mason No. 3 provides broadband telecommunications. Mason is the only county with two operating PUDs.

In 1934, voters in Benton and Franklin counties approved the first countywide PUDs. However, in 1940 the Skamania County PUD, which received voter approval in 1939, was the first countywide PUD to actually begin operations.

Early efforts to organize public utility districts often faced fierce opposition from privately owned utility companies. But after the state Supreme Court upheld the PUD law in 1936, the Washington State Grange organized an all-out effort to get PUDs on ballots across the state.

Although not all of them were immediately put into operation, the voters created PUDs in nearly two dozen counties over the next eight years, including:
• Douglas (1935)
• Chelan (1936)
• Cowlitz (1936)
• Ferry (1936)
• Kittitas (1936)
• Lewis (1936)
• Okanogan (1936)
• Pend Oreille (1936)
• Skagit (1936)
• Snohomish (1936)
• Stevens (1936)
• Wahkiakum (1936)
• Whatcom County (1936)
• Pacific (1937)
• Clark (1938)
• Grant (1938)
• Grays Harbor (1938)
• Klickitat (1938)
• Thurston (1938)
• Jefferson (1939)
• Skamania (1939)
• Kitsap (1940)
• Clallam (1944)

The newest PUD is the Asotin County PUD.

Asotin PUD was created in 1984 by voters who were upset with the high cost of water provided by a private utility. After two years of court proceedings, the PUD acquired the Clarkston General Water Supply Co. through condemnation and began operations in April 1987.

In 1936, soon after the first public utility districts were organized, 34 PUD commissioners gathered at the Grange headquarters in Seattle to form a trade association.

Initially known as the Washington Public Utility Commissioners Association, that organization is now the Washington Public Utility Districts Association, which represents the interests of its members in Olympia, the Northwest region, and Washington, D.C.

In 2007, the WPUDA moved from Seattle to Olympia, where it built the first new office building in Washington to be certified “Platinum” under the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program.

PUDs in Washington get nearly 82 percent of their energy from hydropower, a clean, renewable resource that produces almost zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Many PUDs get all or most of their power from the Bonneville Power Administration, a federal agency created in 1937 to sell and deliver power generated by the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River. BPA now markets electricity generated by 31 hydroelectric dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers.

However, several PUDs also own and operate their own hydroelectric dams.

The Pend Oreille PUD was the first in the state to build its own dam – the Box Canyon Hydroelectric Project on the Pend Oreille River in the Selkirk Mountain Range. The dam, which began producing power in 1956, was built without using any local, state or federal tax dollars.

Chelan, Douglas and Grant PUDs are often referred to as the “Mid-Cs” – which refers to their operation of five hydroelectric facilities on 118 miles of the Columbia River in Central Washington.

Chelan PUD owns and operates three hydroelectric projects, including Lake Chelan, Rocky Reach and Rock Island. Rock Island is the old hydroelectric dam on the Columbia River, put into operation in 1933.

Grant PUD owns and operates the Priest Rapids and Wanapum dams, which collectively make up the Priest Rapids Project. Wanapum Dam, named in honor of the band of Native Americans who lived and continue to live along a stretch of the Columbia River, went on line in 1963. Priest Rapids, which began producing power in 1959, was named in recognition of a Wanapum religious leader, Smowhalla, and a small band of Wanapum that lived at a village near the last of seven rapids, called Priest Rapids.
Douglas PUD owns and operates the Wells Hydroelectric Project, which produced its first commercial power in 1967.

The Cowlitz County PUD also owns a hydroelectric facility, the Swift No. 2 Hydroelectric Project, on the north fork of the Lewis River.

In 1953, the state Legislature also enacted a law allowing public utilities to form joint operating agencies. Four years later, 17 public utility districts organized the Washington Public Power Supply System, which opened the Packwood Hydroelectric Project in Lewis County in 1964.

Now known as Energy Northwest, the agency also owns and operates the 1,150-megawatt Columbia Generating Station, the only commercial nuclear power plant in Washington, which began operation in 1984.

In 2002, Energy Northwest added the 38-kilowatt White Bluffs Solar Station, the largest solar power project in the state, and Phase I of the Nine Canyon Wind Project. Phase III was brought online in 2008, bringing the capacity to nearly 96 megawatts. In 2009, Energy Northwest announced an agreement with ADAGE, a joint venture between AREVA and Duke Energy, to develop wood waste biomass power plants in the Northwest.