May 16, 2007

Voters spurn PUD coal plan
PUD’s Langer hears ‘clear message’ in Tuesday’s vote

By KATHY GRAY
of the Chronicle

     Modest turnout, uncontested races and clear-cut results characterized yesterday’s special election, as voters trounced two measures from the Northern Wasco People’s Utility District and Rod Runyon easily won reelection to the Port of the Dalles board.
     Eighty-one percent of voters in Tuesday’s special districts election said no to each of the PUD measures, which sought authorization from ratepayers to get power from a coal-fired electric generating facility in Delta, Utah, and a coal gasification plant, in Kalama, Wash., respectively.
     PUD General Manager Dwight Langer said he doesn’t take the results as a defeat but rather as a “clear message” about voters’ preferences.
     “We felt our recommendation was the best in terms of reliability and overall cost to the customers,” he said, “but [they] have given us clear direction that they wanted something else, and we’ll get to work on that.”
     Langer says the PUD and its board will need time to reassess ways to solve the enduring challenge of finding an adequate energy supply at an affordable price.
     “It doesn’t change our mission or responsibilities one iota,” he said. “The direction may have slightly changed; the goal and the mission are still there.”
Wasco County Elections Clerk Linda Brown credited the PUD measures with generating just enough interest to push voter turnout 6.27 percent beyond the 30 percent typical for special elections with uncontroversial ballots.
     Still, for the controversy those measures had promised she considered that turnout low, a fact she attributed to the large number of uncontested races.
“There just wasn’t anything to get excited about,” she said.
     More than 68 percent of voters favored Runyon over challenger Scott Abts for the Port board’s position number 2. All other races were uncontested except the one for South Wasco County School Districts’s zone 7 position, where Dennis Beechler edged out opponents Chrystal Conley and Tara Dodge.