Few challengers get elected to OPALCO board

When asked what future steps the Orcas Power and Light Cooperative (OPALCO) Board of Directors will need to take, Shaw islander Al Wilding laughed, then urged members to vote for his opponent, incumbent Leon Fonnesbeck.

“Leon and the board are both doing a good job,” Wilding said, explaining that the only reason he is running is to give Fonnesbeck some competition.

Jim Lett, who is challenging incumbents Ed Marble and Bob Myhr for the two seats on the board from Lopez Island, also was glowing in his praise for the incumbents. “They do a great job,” he said. “They’re expense conscious, and they avoided the debacle in California by maintaining an extraordinary relationship with the Bonneville Power Administration,” the federal agency which sells OPALCO its power. California got itself in deep trouble when it opted to buy electric power from the private sector.

Only rarely -- the last time was in 1991 -- has a challenger defeated an incumbent on the OPALCO board since the by-laws took effect in 1937.

The Shaw seat now held by Fonnesbeck, and the two from Lopez held by Marble and Myhr, are up for election this spring. All terms on the OPALCO board are for three years. Next year San Juan Island’s two board seats will be up for reelection, while those from Orcas will be on the ballot in 2006.

OPALCO members intending to cast their vote can either mark the ballot that is inside a booklet they should have received in the mail, “OPALCO 2004 Annual Report,” then mail or hand deliver it to the OPALCO office in

Eastsound or Friday Harbor no later than Friday, May 7. Or, they can submit their ballots when registering at the annual meeting which will take place on the ferry Saturday, May 8, from 11:10 a.m. to 12:50 p.m. See the booklet for specific travel information from the four ferry-served islands. For more information, call OPALCO at 376-3500.

The elections may be a foregone conclusion, given a general sense that things are going well. In fact, when asked what the primary concern of the board should be, General Manager Randy Cornelius said, “to maintain a reliable system.”

Nevertheless, the board will be facing some critical decisions in the months and years ahead.

For example, while board members have agreed to purchase four new submarine cables -- between Blakely and Decatur, between Blakely and Orcas, between Shaw and Orcas, and between Shaw and Lopez -- they don’t yet know how much it will cost. Cornelius estimates that the total amount for all four cables will be about $3 million, but there are no assurances. “Price will be the key,”Marble said.

In 2006, Bonneville will likely raise its rates by 30-35 percent for the power it sells wholesale to OPALCO. Assuming that these rates will take effect, and they are now just estimates, OPALCO’s customers will see their rates go up by about 15 percent, Cornelius said.

OPALCO’s contract with Bonneville runs through 2011, but it remains to be seen if Bonneville will be able to provide enough power to keep up with future growth, in which case the cooperative will have to buy electric power elsewhere.

OPALCO’s worst nightmare is that Congress will eliminate Bonneville entirely, privatize the entire industry, then sell power to the highest bidder. If that happens, “Look out,” said Fonnesbeck, “the small utilities will have to pay a lot of money to get power from the big ones.”

That makes one of the OPALCO board’s most important roles lobbying Congress to prevent that from happening. They do most of their lobbying through state, regional and national organizations that are committed to maintaining the present system.

Other priorities of the board are to complete OPALCO’s fiber optic network, manage energy efficiency and load management, encourage careful use of electric power, and continue undergrounding transmission wires.

Summing up, Myhr said, the board’s challenge will be to keep OPALCO “a strong and independent cooperative.”

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