Utility gives tribe $13.5 million, land

NESPELEM, Wash. – The Colville Confederated Tribes have received a $13.5 million settlement payment from the Douglas County Public Utility District as compensation for lands flooded by the utility’s Wells Dam.

The Colvilles received the lump-sum payment Wednesday under the settlement agreement reached last fall.

Tribal compensation has been an issue since the dam was licensed in 1962, and the agreement calls for the tribes to support the PUD’s bid for a new 50-year federal license in 2012.

It’s not yet been decided whether the entire amount will go to the tribes’ 9,100 members, as part may be used to pay for attorneys, said Joe Pakootas, tribal chairman. If the entire amount is shared with the membership, each would receive about $1,400.

The settlement also will provide the Tribal Council with quarterly payments for 4.5 percent of the power produced by Wells Dam and sold, an estimated $4.5 million annually. The council has not yet decided how to use that money. The first power-sales payment, of $545,456, was made in June.

The tribe also was given 460 acres near the dam in exchange for dropping other land claims.

Tribal Council member Michael Marchand said his family used to spend summers on the Columbia River, at the mouth of the Okanogan.

“All that area is under water now,” he said. “There are people who gathered there for hundreds of years. … It’s a very sacred area for the history of our people.”

Douglas County PUD’s three commissioners and general manager Bill Dobbins traveled to tribal headquarters to present the check Wednesday.

“Every year when we’d go through our financial audit, we’d have a footnote that referred to tribal land claims, and it was always a dark cloud. The other times we’d see it was when we’d go to borrow money. We were always reminded of that,” Dobbins said.

“On your books, it may have been a dark cloud. To the tribe, it was more like a ray of hope or sunshine,” Marchand said.

The utility will be selling bonds to cover the settlement in the next few weeks and will not have to raise rates immediately to cover the cost, PUD spokeswoman Meaghan Vibbert said.

Costs will partly be covered by four long-term power purchasers, she said, though the PUD may eventually have to raise consumer rates to make its bond payments.