Wwp, Inland Seek To Sort Out Territories Agreement That Has Stood For 25 Years Soon Expires

Top officials from Washington Water Power Co. and Inland Power & Light Co. will meet today to begin negotiating a new agreement separating their service territories.

The existing 25-year pact expires next year, but the two utilities already compete for new business in areas where service rights are uncertain.

Each is forbidden to target customers already served by the other.

The latest confrontation is taking place in the Spokane Valley, where a new YMCA and various other recreational and community facilities are planned on the site once occupied by the Walk in the Wild Zoo.

Officials from the YMCA, Mirabeau Point and the Inland Empire Paper Co. will pick a single power supplier for the 240-acre site.

WWP and Inland also competed for the Spokane Valley Mall contract, and the South Annex to Group Health Northwest’s offices on the West Hill.

Inland won the right to serve the annex and 20 adjacent acres, but lost on the mall, which forced the cooperative to move a line that crossed directly over the project.

But that, noted General Manager Dick Heitman, was before Inland was able to offer commercial customers a significant rate advantage compared with WWP.

Thanks to internal economizing and rate rollbacks by the Bonneville Power Administration, some customers pay rates as much as one-third lower than those of WWP.

In the past, WWP and Inland rates had been about equal. The widening gap made Inland much more competitive where new business was up for grabs.

“We weren’t getting many customers,” said Tom Dukich, WWP rates manager.

In a bid to narrow the gap, the utility submitted “banded” tariffs to Washington regulators that would have given WWP the flexibility to respond to competition from Inland.

The Utilities and Transportation Commission rejected the proposal last week.

WWP, according to the staff report adopted by the commissioners, is not entitled to more rate leeway just because Inland, as a member-owned cooperative, is a non-regulated utility.

And the proposal was considered discriminatory because only new customers would be eligible for the banded rates.

Heitman said he was disappointed WWP had sought relief from the commission. Inland, he said, beat WWP out of only 200 kilowatts of business so far this year.

“It pales in comparison to what WWP has been successful on,” he said, adding that Inland received only last-minute notice of the UTC hearing Wednesday on the WWP banded-rates plan.

Dukich said revenues from electricity sales are not the only money involved in the dispute. Utilities also make money off the wires that deliver the power, he said.

Those distribution systems will become more valuable as deregulation opens energy markets to all customers, Dukich said.

The key, he and Heitman agreed, is avoiding duplication of distribution facilities that increases costs for all customers.

Heitman added that another long-term pact makes little sense because changes in the market are likely to date such an agreement.

In Idaho, state law resolves disputes over new accounts by awarding the business to the utility with the closest facilities.

, DataTimes