Washington Attorney General argues that Avista’s retroactive settlement payments to Coeur d’Alene tribe to compensate for “unlawful trespass” cannot be passed on to company’s rate payers.
The Washington Attorney General’s office is appealing the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission’s approval, last month, of a $37.3 million rate increase by Spokane-based Avista Corporation.
The appeal was filed Tuesday in Thurston County Superior Court, by Simon ffitch [editor's note: ffitch is the correct case and spelling], the chief of the AG’s Public Counsel Section.
Among other things, ffitch argues that the WUTC erred when it allowed the Avista
rate increase to include additional charges that will be used to pay the Coeur d’Alene tribe for the utility’s past use of Lake Coeur d’Alene as a storage basin for water the company used to generate power at its dams on the Spokane River. As part of a settlement reached with the tribe last month, Avista agreed to pay $39 million to compensate the tribe for its past use of the lake for water storage.
“Penalities or other payments attributable to unlawful or imprudent conduct are not recoverable from ratepayers,” ffitch argues in the filing. In a press release, ffitch noted that the appeal “is not challenging recovery of payments to the tribe for future use of the lake.”
The appeal also argues that WUTC erred in allowing the company to recover advertising, charitable contribution, and other company expenses. It also contends the rate increase is unjustly inflated.
Whereas the WUTC agreed, on December 29th, to allow the utility to increase rates by 9.1 percent on electricity sales ($32.5 million) and 2.4 percent on natural gas sales ($4.8 million), ffitch says the rate increase should be no greater than $24.8 million for electric customers and $3.4 million for gas customers.
The appeal does not address the larger rate increase seeking an additional $74.7 million from electric and gas customers that Avista filed with the WUTC late last week.
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