Apr 21 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Michelle Dupler Tri-City Herald, Kennewick, Wash.


Franklin PUD spokeswoman Debbie Bone-Harris was struck by something she saw on a drive from the Tri-Cities to Portland on Monday.

"We're driving down the highway and the wind turbines are not blowing today, but the dam is churning away," she said. "It's a good marriage between the two of them."

And that highlighted for her the point of a debate that has heated up in the Legislature over the last few days over whether to define hydropower as a renewable energy source.

At the crux of lawmakers' disagreement is Initiative 937, approved by about 52 percent of the state's voters in 2006, that required electric utilities with 25,000 or more customers to meet targets for the use of renewable energy and energy conservation.

The initiative didn't count hydropower -- which makes up nearly 75 percent of the electricity generated in the state -- among renewable energy sources for meeting those targets. Some dam proponents have argued that was a mistake and have worked to change the law.

Wind turbines don't function on the hottest or coldest days, or when there's just no wind. And no one yet has devised a way to store electricity generated by wind turbines to use when they're standing still.

So utilities have to rely on other sources such as hydropower to keep power supply consistent, Bone-Harris said.

Hydropower is cheap and doesn't produce greenhouse gases. And Washington is the nation's leading producer of hydro, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, so it's good for the economy, proponents say.

But environmentalists say there are other consequences from hydro dams, such as interfering with river flows and salmon migrations.

Rich Bowers, Northwest coordinator for the Hydropower Reform Coalition, said conventional hydropower purposely was left out of Initiative 937 because environmentalists -- and ultimately voters -- wanted to encourage development of new renewable energy technologies such as wind, solar, biomass or tidal power.

Previous efforts to define hydro as renewable have failed in the Legislature, and it looked like another attempt this year was doomed.

But Rep. Larry Haler, R-Richland, managed Friday to convince a majority of the House to tack an amendment onto a bill that proposed to make other smaller changes to the initiative. The amendment declares hydropower a renewable energy source.

Several House Democrats voted for the amendment only because they thought it went far enough that the Senate never would agree. And they were right.

The Senate on Sunday said "no" and asked to take the bill to conference committee -- a meeting of three members each of the House and Senate -- to negotiate a compromise.

Whatever comes out of the conference committee will have to be voted on with no more amendments. And that's just what lawmakers like Rep. Dave Upthegrove, D-Des Moines, were hoping for.

Upthegrove said he supports the general idea for Senate Bill 5840, which was supposed to "tweak" the initiative, but feared Friday that several possible amendments would break deals that Gov. Chris Gregoire and Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, reportedly had negotiated with environmentalists.

He said some Democrats decided to support the hydropower amendment because it significantly altered the intent of the bill and a big change would be more likely to get the bill sent back to the drawing board by the Senate than a few small ones.

"There was a small group of us whispering on the floor," Upthegrove said Monday. "We feared we would lose control. I saw this as a path to getting a clean vote."

Rep. Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, said he voted for Haler's amendment because it was a blatant attack on the initiative's original intent and he wanted other lawmakers to see what was happening.

Dunshee said, "There has been an effort by a lot of people to repeal the initiative. This put the clear light on it."

He said he thinks if lawmakers are going to override voters who approved Initiative 937 they ought to take time and do it carefully instead of leaping at the first opportunity. It takes a two-thirds majority to undo a voter-approved initiative within the first two years, and this legislative session was the first time Initiative 937 could be changed through a simple majority.

"I think (the initiative) was good environmental policy," Dunshee said. "I think there might be some amendments needed but let's give a little more thought to the process."

Haler said his motivation in trying to rewrite the initiative was to preserve an inexpensive, clean and efficient power source for Washington state.

"We've got to have a total mix of everything we can to wean ourselves off of oil," he said. "But we can't do that at the expense of a proven resource such as hydro."

Bone-Harris and Karen Miller, spokeswoman for Benton PUD, said when utilities are forced to replace hydropower with more expensive sources such as wind or solar, consumers' rates go up. And the state's hydropower is sold to California instead of used at home.

Sen. Chris Marr, D-Spokane, the bill's original sponsor, said the compromise negotiated won't include Haler's amendment. In fact, it was Haler's amendment that led the Senate to refuse to vote on the bill Sunday because Marr and others recognized the bill would fail if it included hydropower as a renewable resource.

Like Haler, he's trying to tweak the initiative in some smaller ways.

"The real question is are most utilities or are most ratepayers better off under 937 or under 5840," Marr said. "The bottom line is we can't have this die because ratepayers would be worse off."

A compromise will have to be reached and the bill voted in the House and Senate before the legislative session ends Sunday.

(c) 2009, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services