Port Townsend city officials were surprised by news that Snohomish County Public Utility District officials are looking at the possibility of installing underwater turbines to harness the tidal power off Point Wilson.
And so they responded, City Manager David Timmons said, by retaining legal counsel and expressing their intent to file a competing application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to study the site.
Thus began what Snohomish PUD Manager Steve Klein called an "adversarial" relationship between Port Townsend and the public utility that serves more than 600,000 people north of Seattle.
Timmons said a Leader story published last month about Snohomish PUD's application to study the possibility of installing 450 underwater turbines - which could look something like windmills anchored to the ocean floor, each 60 feet in diameter - came as "kind of a surprise to a lot of different jurisdictions."
"It's like someone coming into your home and telling you they're going to remodel your house. It's just bad form," Timmons said. "A phone call, an e-mail - they had time for any of that."
Rushed application
Klein said they didn't have time to notify anyone.
While tidal power has long been considered an excellent source of renewable electricity, serious efforts to develop technology capable of harnessing tidal power have begun only recently. Klein said that one company, TRC Environmental, has seen this and has started filing applications with FERC to study the potential for power extraction at some of the best sites all over the country.
Trey Taylor, chairman of the Research and Development Committee of the National Hydropower Association, said it was a "land grab," and likened it to the early days of Internet URLs.
While FERC looks at a number of criteria in determining who to award permits to, the date the application is filed is a major factor, making it almost a first-come, first-serve process, Klein said.
TRC Environmental is already listed in dozens of FERC applications to study the potential for tidal energy extraction in Washington, Alaska, California, Massachusetts, New York and New Hampshire.
Concerned that TRC Environmental could file applications on all viable sites for tidal power extraction in Puget Sound, Klein said Snohomish PUD officials had to rush to complete a complicated application to study sites throughout the Puget Sound, including Admiralty Inlet.
"In order to be credible, we had to suddenly speed up a process that we were going to spend months or maybe even a year on," Klein said, adding that he used "all available resources" to complete the applications.
One of the things left by the wayside, he said, was notifying the communities that could be affected by the installation of the underwater turbines.
"Normally you would take your time on it and develop a communications plan, recognizing that this has some sensitivity and people want to feel like they were thought of and they are a part of this," Klein said.
'Blanket claims jumping'
Timmons said they at least had time for a phone call.
"They could have even done it after the fact," Timmons told The Leader. "It kind of taints the whole integrity of the process, in my mind."
Timmons said in a July 19 e-mail to Klein that the application appears to be a "blanket claims jumping effort."
"We appreciate the valor of the PUD, but frankly you could focus your efforts closer to home and trust that we could do the right thing for this region," Timmons wrote.
Timmons told Klein he intended to file a "motion to intervene" in the FERC application, as well as a competing application to study Admiralty Inlet.
"This notification is acknowledged but along with it come consequences," Klein responded on July 21. "I must assume you know what you have done and how you have established a relationship that is by its legal nature an adversarial one."
Timmons said the city has retained attorney Steve DiJulio of the firm Foster Pepper.
In any case, Timmons said he thinks the environmental impact of a project on the scale Snohomish PUD is considering would prevent it from coming to fruition.
"I just can't see something of that scale," Timmons said.
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