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Grant PUD sticking to its story

Christine Pratt/pratt@wenatcheeworld.com
July 15, 2010

The Grant County PUD has denied claims that it acted inappropriately in its decision to evict Crescent Bar Island leaseholders when their leases expire in 2012.

PUD attorneys delivered their denial to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Friday.

The utility’s response follows motions filed June 25 by two associations representing 110 condominium leaseholders and 253 owners of private RV/homes on leased island land.

The leaseholders asked FERC to intervene to allow them to stay on the island, which the PUD owns as part of the lands around its Columbia River dams, Priest Rapids and Wanapum.

In the response, the PUD defended its commissioners’ April 26 decision to evict the islanders, saying that it complied with both FERC policy and the utility’s dam license.

The utility argues that:

• FERC doesn’t “condone residential development and occupancy” of lands needed for operation of federally regulated hydro dams. Rather federal policy seeks to maximize these lands for public recreation.

• The leaseholders’ private use of the island is “extensive,” and the public does not have access to the lands “exclusively occupied by these residential users.”

• If the PUD were to let the leaseholders stay, the utility could face potentially “significant” mitigation costs considered “not in the best interests” of Grant PUD ratepayers.

This could include buying and developing property elsewhere for public recreation, as well as improving sewer and water systems and emergency access on the island, a utility spokeswoman said.

• A 2003 version of a mandatory land-management plan could have allowed leaseholders to remain on the island, but it was a draft, not final document, and subject to change and commission approval.

• The decision to exclude the condo and RV leaseholders from the island was not sudden and subject to insufficient public discussion, as the leaseholders claim.

The utility cited an April letter from condo leaseholders that references a 2008 PUD presentation that recommends the leases not be renewed.

An environmental-impact study that leaseholders say is lacking for the island isn’t clearly addressed in the PUD response to FERC.

Kelly Larimer, lands resource manager for the utility, said that such a study wouldn’t come until after the PUD approves a plan for the island — a decision expected by late October.

FERC has 30 days to respond to the leaseholders’ motions, but can add more time if needed.

The federal agency upheld that Crescent Bar Island was necessary for dam operation in July 1999, when it rejected a 1998 petition by island leaseholders who then asked that the island be excluded from the dams’ project boundaries.

The 110 condos and 305 RV/homes roughly cover half the nearly 160-acre island’s developed portion.

Many of the leaseholders have held their leases for decades. They are fighting to stay on the Columbia River island, a summertime tourist hot spot.

Leaseholders last month proposed paying increased lease payments to help fund island sewer and other improvements, but PUD commissioners turned them down.

In both motions filed by the islanders, the islanders ask the feds to reject the PUD’s proposed change to its land-use plan.

In their motions, the islanders claims include:

• The revised land plan is “inconsistent” with the dam license and federal law, because the plan’s change was sudden, lacked enough time for public comment and wasn’t accompanied by an environmental study of the impact to the island of removing the condos and RV homes.

• That PUD officials did an “about face” by assuring the islanders that they would receive new leases once the utility received its new federal dam license. A new 44-year license was issued in 2008.

To support this claim, the islanders point to an earlier draft of the dams’ land-use plan that let the islanders stay and balanced existing private use of Crescent Bar with federal calls for additional public use.

• The dam license does allow existing private residential use of the public island, but not additional or expanded private use.

• Islanders, through their lease payments, cover the maintenance costs of the island so Grant County PUD ratepayers don’t have to.

Wenatchee attorney Lewis Card represents the RV owners. Bellingham attorney Mark Quehrn represents the condo owners. Each attorney prepared the motion for his respective group of clients.

Large passages of both motions are identical. They differ, in part, in their implications over who is responsible for island problems that have been identified by PUD staffers and Grant County officials. The problems include an overworked island sewer system during busy summer tourism months and overcrowding.

Owners of the condos — permanent buildings constructed on-site between 1978 and 1985 — say in their motion that the majority of island health and safety issues raised by Grant County PUD “relate to the density and services provided to other users.”

The only other private residential users on the island are the RV homeowners, whose arrival predated condo construction.

The RV association’s motion, by contrast, reads “The Association was the first residential development on the island and many of the health and safety issued raised by GCPUD... relate to density and services created when subsequent recreational developments were allowed on the island.”