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Becky Kramer

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News >  Idaho

Avista ratepayers to get their say

Heating bills sap Karen Fournier’s budget. The single mother is volunteer executive director of Hearth Homes, a nonprofit shelter for homeless women and children that operates out of a 1907 Victorian house in Spokane. The roomy, two-story structure has space for three families. But in the winter, the monthly bill from Avista Utilities – which Fournier frequently pays out of her own pocket – can hit $350.
News >  Idaho

Avista trims request for gas rate increase

In a day filled with dire economic news, Avista Corp. delivered a bit of cheer to its natural gas customers Monday afternoon. Gas bills won’t go up by 20 percent, as previously anticipated. Instead, the utility asked for a 1 percent increase for its Washington customers in Monday’s filings with the state Utilities and Transportation Commission. In Idaho, Avista trimmed its request to 4 percent from 14 percent.
News >  Idaho

Eroding confidence

Spokane County’s efforts to craft new regulations for 750 miles of shorelines along rivers, lakes and streams are too little, too late, according to the Washington Department of Ecology, where officials are prepared to intervene and may end up rewriting portions of the county’s shoreline master plan. In 2004 the county received $300,000 in state grants to update its 33-year-old plan. The county was supposed to adopt a new shoreline master plan by January 2007.
News >  Idaho

EPA says it miscalculated phosphorus limits for Idaho

A multiyear effort to lower phosphorus levels in the Spokane River – and reduce algae blooms and improve water quality in the reservoir behind Long Lake Dam – has hit a major snag. The Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday it erred when calculating phosphorus limits in permits for Idaho cities that discharge treated sewage into the river.
News >  Idaho

Miscalculation by EPA will set back river cleanup

A multiyear effort to lower phosphorus levels in the Spokane River – and reduce algae blooms and improve water quality in the reservoir behind Long Lake Dam – has hit a major snag. The Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday it erred when calculating phosphorus limits in permits for Idaho cities that discharge treated sewage into the river.
News >  Idaho

Hearings scheduled on Avista rate request

Avista’s Eastern Washington customers can comment on the utility’s proposed rate increase at two upcoming public hearings. The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission will take comments at noon Sept. 18 in the Tesla Room at the SEL Event Center, 1825 Schweitzer Drive in Pullman. The second public hearing will be held at 6 p.m. the same day in the Blue Room of the Spokane Masonic Center, 1108 W. Riverside Ave.
News >  Idaho

Private cabins, public area

KETTLE FALLS, Wash. – On misty mornings, Eric Weatherman watches river otters frolick in Lake Roosevelt from his front deck. “They look just like dolphins,” says the 45-year-old tugboat operator.
News >  Idaho

UI pronghorn antelope expert gets $600,000 grant

Pronghorn antelope are the fastest animals in North America, accelerating from zero to 40 mph in seconds. The speed in their long delicate legs is an adaptation from a pre-Ice Age existence, when they had to outrun fierce predators that roamed the grasslands – lions bigger than those on the African Savannah, American cheetahs, wild dogs and fleet-footed bears.
News >  Idaho

Pollution pipeline

LIBERTY LAKE – Arianne Fernandez donned elbow-length rubber gloves, a plastic apron and a splash-protection face mask before lowering a collection jar into a manhole. The cloudy water she brought up came from Liberty Lake’s sewer system.
News >  Idaho

Bluegrass burning begins

The annual torching of bluegrass fields has begun in North Idaho. Farmers set fire to 140 acres on the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation on Monday – the first of about 35,000 acres of bluegrass that will be burned on the reservation this year.
News >  Business

Avista to trim Idaho price hikes

Avista Corp. has agreed to trim its request for higher electric and natural gas rates in Idaho. Under a settlement worked out with several parties, the utility will accept an electricity rate hike of 11.98 percent, down from the 15.9 percent requested earlier this year.
News >  Idaho

Study of aquifer looks at the future

When scientists undertake a $3 million study of the Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer, they’ll examine how climate change could affect the drinking water supply for more than 500,000 residents. “It’s an inexact science to be sure, from the standpoint of looking at the future availability of water,” said Hal Anderson, an administrator for the Idaho Department of Water Resources. “The main change we anticipate with warmer weather is the runoff coming sooner.”
News >  Idaho

Avista starts dredging river behind Monroe dam

Avista Corp. is using heavy equipment to scoop rocks and gravel from behind the Monroe Street Dam in downtown Spokane. Company officials say the work, which began Wednesday, is a routine procedure to keep rocks out of the dam’s intake areas. But the action is drawing fire from Rachael Paschal Osborn, the Sierra Club’s Spokane River coordinator, who says the work may be stirring up PCBs, heavy metals and other toxic materials deposited behind the dam.
News >  Spokane

Rival buys Priest River mill

JD Lumber Inc. is selling its sawmill in Priest River to competitor Riley Creek Lumber Co., creating uncertainty about the future of 216 jobs in the North Idaho mill town. Employees were notified of the sale late Friday afternoon. The mill in Bonner County will close at the end of September, and it’s unclear whether the new owners will reopen it.
News >  Idaho

Water quality remains issue on Spokane River

Getting tangled in water lilies is a hazard of kayaking at Long Lake. The reservoir’s upper end sports a luxuriant growth, and as I paddled I periodically flung tendrils of vegetation at my kayak partner. The graceful white flowers signal trouble in the lake. They’re fertilized by 66 million gallons of wastewater that flow daily into the Spokane River.
News >  Idaho

Blue ribbon provider of energy also offers fresh view of downtown Spokane

Mike Aho refers to the stretch of the Spokane River below Upriver Dam as “urban wilderness.” Thick screens of willows and cottonwoods shield paddlers from views of rendering plants, railroad yards and congested arterials, but there’s no masking the ranker smells of the city’s industrial core, or the rumble of overhead traffic as you pass beneath bridges.
News >  Idaho

Fish from river carry toxic risk

Armed with a clipboard and “How to Skin a Fish” handouts, Sean Hackett approached a woman and her baby daughter as they played on a sandy beach at Peoples Park. Hackett, an intern for The Lands Council, introduced himself, and started asking questions.
News >  Idaho

White water in the heart of Spokane

‘Listen,” said our rafting guide, “that’s the Devil’s Toenail.” The rapids were still out of sight, around a bend in the Spokane River. But we could hear the chaotic crash and churn of the water echoing from the canyon’s walls.
News >  Idaho

Afloat over – and in – the aquifer

About 10,000 years ago, the Missoula Floods laid the bedrock for the region’s water supply. An ice sheet crept across the Idaho Panhandle, damming the Clark Fork River and creating glacial Lake Missoula, which extended 200 miles to the east. The ice dam failed repeatedly, sending water, ice and house-size boulders roaring through the Columbia Basin.
News >  Spokane

Spokane River paddlers note thick development, landscaping practices

Ross Walkinshaw feels fortunate that his view hasn’t changed since 1947, when his parents bought 80 acres on the south side of the Spokane River. From his boat dock, Walkinshaw still sees a wall of towering pine trees on the opposite bank. “That’s the Post Falls Kiwanis Park,” he said last week, pointing to a sandy beach where kids were playing. “And that’s the Ross Point Baptist Camp.”
News >  Idaho

Spokane River reflecting a new image

Don’t go down to the river. Generations of local kids heard that warning. Parents didn’t want their children playing on the Spokane River’s polluted banks. Chris Donley’s dad was one of them.
News >  Idaho

Avista’s river-use conditions challenged

Avista Corp. should do more to protect the Spokane River in return for harnessing its water for hydropower generation, two environmental groups say. The Sierra Club and the Center for Environmental Law and Policy filed an appeal Tuesday with Washington's Pollution Control Hearings Board, saying the state was too lax in issuing conditions for operation of four Avista dams on the Washington side of the 111-mile river.
News >  Business

Avista subsidiary buys Ohio business

Advantage IQ, a subsidiary of Avista Corp. that manages energy use and other utilities for corporate clients, has bought a competitor in Cincinnati. Shareholders of privately held Cadence Network will receive a 25 percent minority stake in Advantage IQ. Together, the combined firms will have annual sales of about $62 million, serving more than 500 customers at hundreds of thousands of sites across the U.S. and Canada, officials said.