By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
Talk about a surprise bill in the mail.
The Central Lincoln Peoples Utility District was recently forced to dip into its reserves to pay the Bonneville Power Administration $1.6 million after the agency said a malfunctioning meter miscalculated almost six years of electricity it delivered to the coast.
The BPA discovered the problem in December, notified Central Lincoln in April and gave the utility 90 days to pay the bill.
Central Lincoln – after complaining to the regional power agency — paid the bill in two installments in June and July.
Central Lincoln has 33,000 residential and 5,625 commercial and industrial customers along the Oregon coast in Lincoln, Lane, Douglas and Coos counties — including the Yachats area.
The BPA transmits electricity to Central Lincoln at nine different locations on the coast. Its malfunctioning meter was at a substation near Lakeside, south of Reedsport.
Because it is a public rather than investor-owned utility, Central Lincoln gets lower-cost electricity from the BPA’s dams on the Columbia River. About $54 million of its $84 million in yearly expenses is to buy electricity from the BPA, said Chris Chandler, spokeswoman for Central Lincoln.
Chandler said neither agency caught the error until late last year.
“The amount of power we buy from BPA varies, primarily due to weather conditions,” she said. “ We had noticed a small anomaly, but it was small enough that our very active conservation efforts could have accounted for it, so we didn’t pursue the matter further.”
Chandler said the BPA has fixed the meter and that Central Lincoln is now double-checking every month to see that its readings match BPA’s when it receives their monthly bill.
“To our knowledge, this has not previously been necessary in the nearly 75-year-old relationship we’ve had with the BPA,” she said.
According to minutes of Central Lincoln’s board meeting in May, general manager Randy Grove “has had several discussions with BPA staff and the BPA administrator, in an effort to impress upon them the impact of such failures to Central Lincoln’s customers.”
Even though the mistake originated with the BPA, Chandler said Central Lincoln was unable to negotiate a discount or work out a longer payment plan with the agency.
“Our contract with BPA stipulates that we pay for the power we use — no exceptions,” she said. “ We did indeed ask for a longer payment plan, but BPA policy doesn’t allow for more than 90 days without charging interest. We opted to pay within that 90-day time frame instead.”
Chandler said it was a matter of cutting into the utility’s reserves “and then having to replenish those reserves.”