Government Performance and Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call the order of the Government Performance and Finance Committee meeting of August 4th, 2026. Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Vice Chair Gosnell?

Present.

Council Member Rova? Here. Council Member Segalge?

Here.

And Chair Hines?

Here. All right, we'll now move on to public comment. Clerk, will you please read?

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Alright. Clerk, has anyone decided to speak for today's meeting?

No. Okay.

That will go ahead and close public comment. And we'll move on to our briefing items. And the first and only briefing item is the Tacoma Power Hydro Relicensing. And I'd like to call on Matt Fleisch from Tacoma Power and anyone else who's going to be joining him.

Good morning, Council Member Hines, members of the committee. We've been asked to come here this morning to give you everything on high-power licensing. We have Matt Bleich, he's the National Resources Manager in the generation section of ComiPower. And Shannon Maloma, who newly joined ComiPower as our licensing manager to lead the program for the next decade. So I'm going to pass it off to these folks to give their presentation.

All right. Thanks for the invitation to be here today. walk you through the program that we're engaging in for the hydropower program we're licensing. We can go ahead and go to the next slide. We'll just start jumping in. Chris just walked us through our introductions, so we can go ahead and move to the next slide as well. First thing I want to do is just introduce you to our hydropower power supply portfolio. And this graphic is really helpful in helping to understand what our portfolio looks like. This mix of assets really represents what allows us to be effective and cost effective for our customers in the most cost effective way that's possible for our customers. What you're looking at in the biggest portion of the pie represents the power supply in the form of power purchase agreements through BPA. The rest of these colors represent the power supply that comes to our customers, which is about 40 to 45% of our customers of our own assets. The biggest portion of that pie is the Calitz River program, and then Nisqually and And Cushman, thank you. And then Wainuchi is the smallest portion of that proportion. So you can see in that very small sliver at the top, that represents less than one half of the 1% of the portfolio. You are already familiar with the fact that we already made the decision to remove that from our portfolio when we start to move forward. That small proportion is one of the major reasons that we've made the decision to remove that from our portfolio in relation to the overall risk and overall generation that it represents. So we'll get into this in just a little bit here as we go forward, but relicensing itself is required across each license that we own and each license that we operate. And it takes a lot of time for us to get into that and be very intentional with what that looks like. So we can go to the next slide here. So why do we engage with re-licensing now? And what's this whole program look like for us? So we have four licenses. And licenses are a requirement for any non-federal hydropower operator. Each of our licenses across each of our hydro power projects represent a license for between 30 and 50 years. That's what the license is issued for. Each of our licenses, we have three out of our four licenses that are set to expire within a one year period between 2037 and 2038. The only one that isn't set to expire within that period of time is Cushman, which is the one that's set further out at this point. The formal statutory licensing process takes between five and five and a half years, but the literal time that it takes to move through that takes roughly double that period of time to work through, which is why we start talking about it now. What that really represents is our ability to be as effective as we possibly can for our customers, to look for opportunities to be as cost effective and be as effective as possible for what that represents during as we move forward beyond the licensing period. So these opportunities and the risks are best guarded by engaging with that process today.

So that's what we're looking at for the YNAH. And Shannon and Chris, feel free to jump in. I'm not going to say anything. If you have any questions, feel free to jump in. Absolutely.

Yeah, go ahead. Councilor Shilohi.

like the practical 10 years. Do you have like examples, specific things that we have to do in those 10 years? Because, you know, a regular person is going to say, oh, 10 years, obviously this is government waste or something like that. But there's like real things we have to do. Yeah.

You know, just a good example is your point. I'm jumping in, but maybe talk about Cushman because we started that relationship process in 1997. 1977. And so, yeah, I mean, Cushman's interesting, but your point about why Cushman's so far out is we just re-licensed it, right? And so maybe can you talk about why Cushman took so long, or is that unique compared to some of these other ones?

Well, it is unique, but it is also a really good example, so I agree with you. And part of the reason that it takes so long, we'll get a little bit further into this in some of the other slides as well, but Part of the reason it takes so long is that it takes a lot of time to do the pre-work to be ready to get into the actual required work that is the formal process. The pre-work really comes down to how do you understand what is best for the organization internally and then what will work to be effective with all of the highly complex web of external partners that you're going to need to work with and work together towards the formal process when you get into it. And so keep that in mind, just that question in mind, as we get into it. You're going to see a slide that's going to really clearly call some of this out in a little bit better clarity.

Yes, thank you. Could you remind me what the cost of not relicensing the ONG is? How much is it going to cost us to not?

To not proceed with it financially?

Yeah.

Yeah, so we're... we're kind of viewing this through the lens of a total portfolio perspective. And what we're really trying to do is take this from the lens of what for all three of these programs, what will it take for us to take this entire effort and for all three of these programs and plan for it in the most effective way for our entire customer base. And we've kind of developed what we've done. We've worked with a outside consulting party, worked with our internal finance department, RPA, and developed the best picture for what we think that will look like given what we know today, which is very, again, this is very early in the process. So you'll see a time phase chart on this in a few minutes to see just how early we are today. That's going to be very fluid as we continue to move forward. But our estimate, we developed a range around what that looks like today across all three programs with a mix just helping us to understand.

So you don't just, so I guess my question is, you don't just remove that, you're looking at it as a whole. And I'm just trying to understand how your, if it's a portfolio, if you're going to think about not relicensing one, you're not thinking about it separately, you're thinking about it together still, or?

We do have a cost range. We develop each individual license, right? You recall what the range was. for one issue specifically, but we can get that.

I just was curious, because I thought when we talked about the one issue before, there was like, there's costs because you're not going to relicense based on where it's located and what it means to that community.

Yeah, so we estimated a range for each license for Caledon's quality force for attending the relicense, and so there's a range of estimated costs for that process based on what other utilities have gone through. A transfer of surrender is much more uncertain, much less defined than a regulatory process would occur. So we have estimates of that range. I don't have those numbers.

Okay.

I'm sorry. Thank you. But they're very uncertain, I would say, in that process because it's much less defined by the regulatory process.

Thank you.

Okay, so we can move to the next slide. So what exactly is FERC relicensing itself? This is not the process of moving, exiting the license. This is actually relicensing itself for the other two projects as well, again, Cowlitz. And relicensing itself, like I said, is what authorizes us to continue to operate a hydropower facility for a 30 to 50 year time period. The standard default is 40 years, but it's gonna be arranged depending on the complexities the concerns that are involved with other regulatory agencies or politics or anything else. We'll go into that. And what it really comes down to is bringing a hydropower facility up to what you consider kind of up to code and what that looks like. You can imagine, so the Federal Regulatory Commission, FERC, is operating under authority granted by the Federal Power Act. And that was established back in 1920. and it's been updated several times since then with a couple of major updates. You can imagine that up to code is related to some pretty significant other federal powers within that. So bringing it up to code across a time span of 30, 50 years can involve a lot of different topics that are important to keep in mind. So things like things like ESA, Endangered Species Act, or Clean Water Act, or things along those lines that weren't part of the conceptual thought process back in 1920 have advanced into and have to be, are good examples of what brings that up to code in the next time around. Okay, next slide. So this is the slide that I was referring to when I said this gives you a picture of kind of why does it take, to your previous question, why does it take so long ahead of time? This is not, there's not a quiz here. This is an example of the level of complexity of why does it take so much engagement to get into and get through a relicensing process. And a lot of what this is meant to represent is this is not, All of these steps are what it takes, and all these participants are what it takes to get through and to interact with any one license. And remember, we have three that we're going to have to navigate with all of these same perspectives. So these laws on the left, the documents and permits in the middle, and the participants on the right. These are not good ideas. These are requirements. These are things that we will navigate. We won't navigate once. Don't view this as like a check the box, move down the list, do it. This is something that you'll navigate in a kind of a web of interweaving continuously throughout licensing process. So kind of going back to the question of like why does it take so long? ahead of the actual getting into the formal process, as much of these as you can get a pretty good idea of and kind of lock in your internal perspective versus the people who are the key participants outside and line those up before you get into the formal process, the more effective you're going to be for your customers, the more effective you're going to be identifying opportunities, identifying risks, and kind of dialing yourself into what that looks like for us for not just the relicensing period itself, this period that goes through the formal process, but also that commitment here for the next 30, 50 years along the way. So that's kind of the short answer to the why. One thing that I think is, this is a big kind of complex slide, but there are a couple things that we'll highlight here. I guess highlights, high points that are important in here. There's some things that you may or may not be familiar with, but some might like ring true for you from just experience or maybe news articles or things like that. The NEPA, National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act. You see those in laws, regulatory documents, permits. These are aspects, these are kind of like high profile and high level aspects that we will absolutely be navigating as we move through this. There are some of the key pieces that will be some of the deliverables as we move through these licenses. And then some of the major aspects that we'll be aware of and engage in continuously, but certainly not the only things, and non-federal. You may have heard of the Fishway Authority section to engage in. That's absolutely going to be an aspect that we'll engage along the way. And then you may have heard, you may not have heard of 4 conditioning, but it's basically mandatory conditioning authorities that has a pretty heavy influence over what is required within our license. These are just examples of aspects that we have to be very aware of, and how we can be effective along the way. So this slide represents, I mentioned that I'd be showing you a timeline, and this slide represents kind of that timeline. as a snapshot in time for what we perceive our plan to be today. Yeah, it's not meant to be. It's not meant to be like, hey, take a look at it and read every detail right now. It's really meant to be this kind of high level, like, understand this is our idea for the moment, right? And there's a couple of takeaways I think are important here. One is, I mentioned that we have three out of our four licenses that are set to expire basically for all types of purposes all at the same time, right? But this, which first thing you'll see, your eye will say, well, that's not what it shows, right? It shows them kind of being spread out right here. Well, that's because we're thinking about this plan to maybe not have them all happen at the same time, right? But that's the requirement currently with nothing changed is for them to all happen at the same time. So if we were not exercising a plan to try to do something different, you could just basically say this will all get kind of switched to one to the left, essentially, right? And we have all, or to the left. And that's kind of how we do business right now. And we have to, that's the step shorter part. We happen to do that. We're exercising a plan to try to consider doing this in a different way if we, as we go through kind of these different decisions along the way, kind of continuously evaluate what's best for our business, best for our customers. If this works the way that we continually evaluate, then we'll be continuing to do this. But this is dynamic. New information will come in. A lot of these things are not in our control. And so this will change. This will continuously change. And there's examples of this already coming up. Mainuchi is a good example of this. We're already seeing some very clear aspects of this that are not in our full control. We're co-licensees on this topic with the city of Aberdeen. That's a really good example where this is not fully in our control. So we're already seeing that one start to very likely, not yet, but very likely shift to the right. And that's okay. This is not problematic. This is just us setting a plan and starting to gain our understanding and figure out how to work through our total program. So I just wanted to. see you guys live. This is our scrapping report.

Okay. Let's pause here for a second, because we saw you had a question.

Real quick, I did want to wait and see it, but I think this visual kind of shows something that I have to ask. I know there's an option to do them separately, and you showed all the crazy number of, you know, say, policy frameworks we have to look under. Why wouldn't we do them together when it looks like there could be potential synergies in being able to do both of them together instead of apart, since you'd already be touching all of those various things?

Yeah, that's a really great question. Actually, it gets to a point I wanted to touch on in the slide. So this is a really good reminder. Thank you. So what you'll see when you look at this slide, too, is I guess what you won't see is that we're starting this timeline on the top. is starting in 25. We actually started in 23, looking at the different plans and alternatives and dynamics around this. And one of the things we looked at there was just that question. Is there efficiencies to be gained by actually keeping it stacked and not staggered? Are there potential opportunities for us with the stakeholders we'll be working with or the different agencies that we'll be working with? And this is not a There are some opportunities, there are some that are more challenging. But on balance, what we decided was there were more opportunities for us to consider, to lean further into asking the questions here, to consider pulling these apart, until we got more answers to understand, is it less beneficial for us to potentially bring them back together? It may be, so look at the bottom two lines there on the call, it's option one, option two. We're currently in the process of actively asking this question, making a clear decision about, do we extend to option two or not? And it could be that that proves out to be like, that's not a good decision for us. And if that's the case, we'll get option one. And it'll stay on its course. Get the one stack, get in. That's a good example of us asking a very intentional request if you're asking. It is.

Okay.

I have questions, but I'll... Well, I guess I could just ask, right? Sure. So, as I know a lot about Cushman, as we have a lot of conversations around, so one of the challenges of Cushman that I'm sure many of you know, Ray, is that in the 1920s, we shut off the North Forks and the Homers completely, so it kept flowing. For how many years did it not flow?

We didn't turn flow on until 2009.

So from the 1920s to 2009, it didn't exist. And so as part of the relicensing process, we had to agree with the Homers tribe to rebuild the fish run on the North Forks and the Homers River. Do we have anything like that in here? Because I know the Cowlitz was a major fish river beforehand, so it's baked into the dam, and we had to preserve the fish run on that one. Isn't the Squally in a similar place? I guess my question is, with any of these realizing things, that seems like a big rock that really had a problem. The question was that complete rebuilding of that fish run. And is there anything like that with any of these three projects that is kind of top of mind that we're going to have to navigate?

Yeah, okay, that's a good question. I don't want to beat around the bush on this and kind of nod to the question, but I think the best way I can answer that is that every, and I've been, Shannon's been in this field for a long time too, so I guess the best way I can answer this is that every license is unique in its own way, and that situation you're describing at Cushman, the Cushman license was unique. nationally in its own way for the reasons you kind of described already. That could be its own, we could have hours and hours of conversation on that in its own way.

We could have that conversation.

No one else needs to hear that one. And the situation you just described is fairly unique in its own way. Re-establishing a fish run in the Pacific Northwest is a fairly unique situation, right? That said, each license especially in the Northwest, typically does have its own set of fill-in-the-blank things that you have to be very aware of and treat very seriously. As a licensee, you kind of enter into it at your own risk if you're very cognizant around what those aren't around. And we are very clearly active in that. By taking the very proactive approach that we are, trying to be aware, trying to engage, trying to listen very actively with awareness and understanding about what those things are. They're not all going to be the same, though. I guess that's the best way to say that.

I wouldn't say there's anything as significant and dramatic as what you're talking about, fisheries within our other basins. But there are varying degrees of fisheries. issues and opportunities that we discussed throughout the licensing process and like Matt said, you can .

Yeah, I mean, the fisheries is, I think, another question. And it's also a great success story and the amount of work we've done to rebuild the fish run on the fish river, or the Sycoma River. So it's a whole, also a great success story that exists too. I guess this is like my one historical question. Your point, I agree. I like the idea of bringing things up to code. So when were these dams last brought up to code, right? So Kushner was built in 1920, and now it's 2026, right? Squally was built in 1912. So when was it last brought up to code? When was the last licensing process? Like how many years of technology are we being able to catch up on in this one process, this jump?

Squally was built in 2000.

Oh. Yeah, right.

Yeah, when we say up to code, that's a little bit of just the terminology that we're trying to equate it to, right? But yeah, that's the best way to view it. It's like the last license. Yeah.

And during that, so it's different vintage, right? So during that last licensing process, we did reintroduce flow and air reach between the powerhouses that they have about a two-mile reach that had not had water in it prior to that license. And so we've already made that adaptation, done that work. So that's why I say it's not as dramatic and as efficient as an airy license. So no, we don't have that. an issue of that dramatic as in the other places because they're more modern places.

If you take a house built in 1912 to today's standards versus a house that was updated in the 70s, which I guess in some cases could have been worse. I mean, the jump, I just try to get it in my mind of the jump of how much change is needed. But it sounds like all of these have been, there's been touches that you're always managing the process.

Also, I would say there's a separate kind of concurrent draft within federal energy regulatory commission, which is focuses on dam safety. We have regular dam safety inspections. We have to conduct, you know, FERC will actually come out and tour the dams. And so in terms of like bringing the actual facility of the dam up to code, that's been ongoing throughout the permit license.

And just one other note on that too is when we enter into a license in that agreement, that is a clear kind of milestone for us to be engaging in. Then we also, as I think you're all very aware of, we enter into it very seriously and then engage in the ongoing commitments of the compliance. And that's kind of this very important dynamic that we're constantly taking very seriously with our regulators, the tribes along the way. So that also helps us pretty clear to stay kind of in compliance and along the way as we move forward too. So that also helps quite a bit with these topics.

Yeah, I want to go back to the 10-year question since we're on the slide. So the formal process is about five and a half years? Yes, that's right. So there's five and a half years. It's a formal process with birth. It kicks off with the initial intent to relicense. It would be that the green bar is there. So then what, you know, the question is what do you do your internal team together and you're defining what your interests are, what you're building relationships in those bases. Because once that green bar kicks off, you're in the flurry of activity and there's no more time to plan, there's no more time to build those teams or to understand what you value in that base of utility.

I would also imagine there's a fiscal and financial planning requirement. Because I imagine this process is not free or cheap. And so you probably have to, as part of that preparation, have done your work to say, here's how much we think it might cost. And then prepare for how we build up towards it. So I imagine that's a component of it too. Yeah, that's right.

So we do have the range of the overall portfolio. Yeah, the range that we've currently estimated is between 90 and 140 million across the entire program for all of them. For the permitting process. And that's not implementation. Licensing is done. those commitments over the life of the next license, that's called implementation. So there will be significant costs, you know, after 2037 or 2040 for that implementation.

Yeah, and one thing I want to highlight there is that's a mix of capital and O&M between that 90 and 140 estimate right now, and it's kind of early in costs as well, but that'll shift as we start to move forward.

Can I ask just a quick question? So there are all these federal, you know, whether it's EPA, Clean Water Act or whatever, when you enter the formal process, are those sort of set in stone? Because it seems like right now the federal government is tweaking things all over the place and I can imagine we don't want to keep bouncing around. When you enter the formal licensing thing, does the federal government say, these are your targets? I can take that.

Or can it keep bouncing?

Is the short answer? The longerish answer is, so your formal relicensing process, it starts with a pre-application document, and it ends with your actual license application, where you're outlining These are, this is how we want the project to look for the next 40 to 50, 30, 50 years. And the time that your license application goes in is like the current regulatory environment. So we start it, right, it's a five year window, right? So if you start it and the, I don't know, the Cougars, the Northwest Cougar is not listed as an endangered species. but it is when you put it in your application, you need to make sure that that animal is covered by mitigation measures in your application. Or what is more typical is you have worked out, based on your really fantastic relationships with your agencies that you worked on those five years meeting up through licensing, you have worked out some sort of adaptive management with this agency that's that they can trust that you're going to take care of any changes in the regulatory environment that happen once your license gets issued. So it's kind of like what Matt said a minute ago. We have these commitments and our proposed project that we put in in our license application for the next four years, those conditions. But we're going to be working throughout those conditions and those commitments with our partners as license implementation.

And then there's a legislative backdrop, you know, as well. And there are – there is certain legislation working its way through Congress right now to reform certain parts of hydro licensing. My honest answer would be I'm not sure how that would play out in the middle of licensing and how Burt would, you know, or agencies would think about those changes that may happen then. But an example of that is there's legislation proposed to kind of limit the conditioning authority of certain agencies to specifically project effects. There's some cases in licensing proceedings where owners have been asked some things that might be viewed as beyond the effects of the actual project. you know, hopefully that is more or less the same. I don't know what would happen if it didn't. Great question. Great questions.

Great. Yeah, we can move to the next slide, I think, which is really about some of the questions we're already hearing. It's just the next steps. We already talked a little bit about the first one, which is just establishing our team. Chris just talked about this. Why is it that it's so important for us to move ahead? And really, honestly, these first two bullets really relate to that. That's our internal and our external team. This is such a big program. It's such a big, impactful program for us across all of our communities that we serve and operate in and all of our customers. So establishing our team, our internal team, is critical. Shannon is sitting here as one of our first hires around that. We've also had a hire recently with our tribal liaison. Her name is Shana Barehand. I don't know if you had a chance to meet her yet, but if you hadn't, we're really super excited to have her as part of the team. She sits in government relations and will be a fantastic contributor and partner to this. And then Shannon's going to be hiring out the rest of the team to contribute to this as well. We'll have a licensing lead for Nisqually, Kalitz, and Wainuchi, as well as a coordinator for the overall program. And we'll also have leads for the Aquatics and Uplands for these as well. So it's a significant program that we're taking really seriously to make sure that we have what we need in effect both through licensing and beyond for the communities that we're making for the duration. The consulting team itself also is hypercritical for what we're entering into. We're working with internal legal to establish our external counsel or outside counsel. We've already established a framework for what the outside counsel needs to look like, and we're entering into those legal agreements right now or those contractual agreements right now with them. And similarly with our technical consulting framework, we're establishing what are the really critical ones initially and then we'll build out from there as we go. So we've already established a couple of those contracts and we're really viewing our consulting framework as an extension of our internal team. It's just going to be very critical that we have this very strong foundation for our team continuously across this next decade as we move together. It's one of the most impactful programs that we're going to be for our entire organization for quite a long time. The work we do today for the next decade will impact us for the next half century, so we have to take it as seriously as we possibly can.

Yeah. Director Flowers?

I was not going to say anything, but I did feel the need to emphasize two points. Matt talked about the team that they're putting into place. and you will see next week or next meeting in the rates and budget presentation. That team has been developed using vacant positions that have been repurposed. So we set a net zero FTE growth count for the budget process. We're coming in negative seven FTE. We repurposed a lot of vacancies and this was one of the priorities. The second piece that I wanted to mention is this is really an opportunity to establish and retain our clean energy foundation for the next generation. And so Matt said it perfectly at the end. It's a very important initiative. It's more than an initiative. It's who we are, right? It's retaining who we are and retaining that clean, low-cost power. And it's a very important initiative. So having the durability. When you think about a 15-year time period, we will have a lot of council turnover. We will have a lot of board turnover. We will have a lot of staff turnover. So we're really trying to think with a continuum, both with internal staffing and consultants, so that we've got a very durable foundation in order to execute the plans. Yeah, sorry, I just... No. It was absolutely... I have to say it. I have to say it.

And for a financial standpoint, those estimates that we've developed at this point will continue to be maintained by Shannon's team. They are, we did get outside consultant help to develop those.

Yeah, which leads to the last bullet there. Thank you very much. The last bullet there is really about just what it is that we're, one of the next steps that we're already engaging in, which is kind of internally just developing our own licensing roadmap and strategies. Really just kind of comes down to making sure that we've identified our own, what's important in opportunities, what are kind of our no-fly zones, what are we setting up for our own our own priorities and that will set us up for success with just being very clear and direct with our outside parties when we engage and engaging in this very complex set of discussions that we'll be having to continuously work through that is that's all the slides that i had and i don't have discussions

All right. Thank you. We've got questions. We have questions. All right. Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you so much for the presentation. It's actually not the first time I've heard about these things. My question is, it does seem like, you know, it's difficult for us to handle doing relicenses like this. right at basically the same time. Is it in the realm of possibility to, as we do these licenses, to stagger them out in the future so that way 30, 40, and 50 years from now it's in a much better timeline? Is that something that we're able to do or consider in order to kind of help benefit the next generation when they have to do their re-licensing as well?

Yeah, great question. Got any thoughts on that, Shannon?

I think that, like many things, I think that the financial implications of that would have to be evaluated. But basically what that would mean, at least where we sit today, if we are able to push back one of our projects that Matt talked about earlier. We're exploring the potential of requesting a longer license timeline for their college project. So that would push that project back by a few years. And it works. If we decide that doesn't make sense right now, or if we're unsuccessful, the only other way to stagger them would be to request shorter licenses, right? So right now, you heard Matt talk about it's a range of 30 to 50 years, right? 40 years is typical. So FERC will typically give you a 40 year license. If you're making a lot of significant capital improvements, like upgrading, large upgrades to a catastrophe or something, you could probably get a 50-year license. A 30 to 35-year license isn't really something we would want, because then you're just shortening the amount of time it takes to do this again. And relicensing is such a big cost, financially, obviously, like dollars and cents, but also just staff resources and time, we'd have to look really closely at if it makes sense.

Yeah. And even if we decide, reach the decision that we want to seek the CALS extension, that doesn't mean the regulator wouldn't approve. And there's another NAM upstream off of the regulator that's on the same

I think if I'm hearing your question correctly, I think your question is, would we and is there a mechanism to seek authorization from FERC to issue licenses that would de-stagger it into the next set of licenses 50 years down the line? And I think the short answer there, Shannon, correct me if I'm wrong here, and the short answer is we don't really have the I think for issues like the license that they choose to, I don't think we really can request it. I think that's true, right?

We do request in our final license application. We say in our photo letter, we are requesting a 50-year license. But for a license, it's completely different.

This stacking that we have currently, these three, this wasn't, we actually didn't ask for this. This was kind of the idea. draw that we drew based on the way FERC issued their licenses to us, right?

Yes.

And there could, even if we were somehow successful, by the time we put in our license applications or FERC grants us our new licenses, even if we were successful at that point, there could be other things along the way that could amend our license in such a way that they could end up really helping each other again.

There's no guarantee. There's no guarantee. You can stagger it that it wouldn't come back together at the same time. I'm just thinking about staff time and resources.

And I don't know how many other agencies own more than one day app, not that many apps. There's quite a few, and there's a lot there, and bigger owners like PG and Internet. Thank you. All right.

Thank you. That's all right. God, all your questions. No, I think, thank you. It was a good conversation. The goal, I think, of this conversation, in my mind, for the committee and our listening fans, is I just understand the scope and scale of what we're talking about here and the potential, not only cost and time, effort, energy, but also monetary cost across the finish line. So I just want to make sure that's really clear here. I think there was another question I had around it. No, Deputy Rochelle got to my point, which is like, how do we stagger it? And your answer was probably the one I thought, which is like, we could always take a shorter license, but I don't know if that would, the cost-benefit analysis, I mean, I guess it'll be, the next 15 years will be good for you all to see, all right, is this something we want to do again, or once we get to the first two, it's like, okay, we really can't do this again, so maybe a shorter license would be worth our time. So that makes a lot of sense. I think, what was it, I think there was one other question I had, oh, you know, NEPA reform has been in the conversation at the federal level lately. I know that they did some NEPA reforms related to housing as part of the Road to Housing Act that just passed, but is there any, did any of that touch any of the NEPA policies that we are doing with our dam or have we seen any major NEPA changes recently?

Right, I haven't seen anything recently. There was CEQ or something, environmental quality, where they did, this was a few years ago now, but the federal government directed for it to stop looking at council of environmental quality. That's what it stands for. To stop evaluating environmental justice impacts. So that's no longer included in the third complication. I do know that there is some talk about, you know, streamlining the FERC application process. It's important to note that the FERC CINEPA review doesn't start until we file our final license application. I mean, there's parts of it start at the beginning with, like, studies and scoping and things like that, but FERC won't actually evaluate, conduct their environmental analysis until the end of our process. There's just so much fluctuation and so many things that we should be pushing now in 2035. Okay.

Yeah, I agree. I haven't seen anything direct around NEPA in this field, but there have been some efforts from the federal level around defining what native species act take looks like, which would feed into the NEPA final documentation.

We're monitoring all that, but I haven't seen like direct significant impact to deferred licensing process yet. A lot of reports.

And then I think your point earlier about there's this licensing process, which is what allows us to continue to operate the dam that the federal government oversees, but then there's this whole other process like how do we make sure the dam is functional and safe and, you know, so those are happening. They're related, but also separate processes that move on separate tracks. So with cowlitz specifically right so with the kind of retrofits that are needed or improvements to the water level can go back up again and with the fact that we have this kind of vacant space where we can add a third turbine if we wanted to. Is that part of the conversation with FERC and the relicensing, or is that completely separate to that? Do they have to happen together?

I've actually been in regular conversations about what are those alternatives with increasing capacity, and how does the dam safety program, the work that needs to be done to restore Wright Lake, intersect with licensing, if that is a part of the consideration of licensing.

Yeah, it's part of the considerations. They definitely intersect, but I definitely agree with Chris that the dam safety conversation with all of them for that part of work will always be continuous. It will.

Yeah, the reason it's a consideration is when you do studies as a part of the process for remodeling a system between two accounts, there's this concept called a baseline, because your baseline operation had currently operated in the facility. We wouldn't want our baseline to be a

So we have to make decisions about those kind of improvements before we kind of go to the final decision on the FERC license. Because I guess what my question would be, does the FERC license lock us in at some point in time, right? So if long-range IRP says we want to add a third turbine because carpentry power is really important, it was built for it, this makes sense. Do we need to go into the FERC license saying we want to be able to look at this as the baseline, or can we get the FERC license and then make a decision later? Is it a one-way door or a two-way door?

Yeah. The way I answer that is, in general, could you want to seek and pass an agreement?

Yes. Gotcha. That makes perfect sense.

Okay.

All right. I'll just add to that. That is... Generally, yes. And that's a question we're also intentionally asking to make sure we get it absolutely right.

So we are currently analyzing the 30 contexts of the RRP based on that information beside how that impacts the licensing stepwise.

Yeah. It makes sense. That's also why this process takes a little more time than just turning your application in.

Yes. Good example. Thank you.

Yeah. OK. If there are no other questions, Thank you all for the presentation. We really appreciate it. And nice to meet you.

Yeah.

All right. So that was the end of our reading items, and we'll now move on to topics for upcoming meetings. I'd like to call on Andrew Lowe, Executive Liaison, for topics for upcoming meetings. Okay. August 18th, in a couple weeks, we will have Environmental Services and our friends from TPU back to talk about rates. So it's a big meeting. I recommend making sure you're here for that one. As we have that, September 1st, we're canceled. And then September 15th, we're going to have budget folks talking about our fee schedule and then returning with some talk about housing acceleration.

Busy calendar in September.

Back again. Yes, the appointment you don't want to miss.

August 18th.

Rates for all of our utilities. Okay. Are there any other items of interest?

I remember that fiscal notes were here before. And if someone is working on fiscal notes, this is something you want to see in your committee. Sure. Yes. Okay. So should I bring it back through here?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. I will be doing that at some time.

Yeah.

In the future. Okay. Not right away, but probably after the first of November.

Sounds great. I can coordinate with you and Andy to get you on the phone.

Perfect. That would be great. Thank you.

Okay. Move to your door. Second. Second. The move is seconded. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? We are adjourned. Thank you.