The following is a transcript of the June 15, 2026, episode of Public Power Now. Learn more about subscribing to Public Power Now at PublicPower.org/Podcasts. Some quotes may have been edited for clarity.
Paul Ciampoli
Welcome to the latest episode of Public Power Now.
I'm Paul Ciampoli, APPA's News Director.
Our guest on this episode is Gary Huhta, General Manager of Washington State's Cowlitz PUD
Gary, I'm guessing that most of our listeners are aware of the PUD, but for those who may not be that familiar with it, could you provide an overview of Cowlitz PUD in terms of its history and service territory?
Gary Huhta
Cowlitz PUD was founded in 1936. We are a public utility district. Our headquarters are located in Longview, Washington.
And at the beginning of our formation, we acquired some private utility facilities that were serving this area, but they were serving primarily the populated areas.
So we we're able to acquire their facilities, and we were then expanding to serve the rural areas to bring electricity to the underserved. And we serve all of the county, which is about 1,200 square miles.
We have a relatively moderate-sized population. It's about 115,000 and interestingly, 2026 marks an important milestone for Cowlitz PUD. We are celebrating our 90th anniversary this year.
Throughout the year, we're going to celebrate this 90th with a mix of community and employee focused activities. For example, we'll be hosting later this summer a free community barbecue.
Throughout the year, we've been sharing historical facts and stories and photos in local publications. We have some standard monthly columns that we prepare for some of the local publications, and we're using those instruments to communicate out that history.
Each quarter, we're offering to our employees PUD logo swag items that highlight the 90th anniversary.
And we're doing things like lunch and learns with the employees that focus on PUD history.
As far as the utility in Washington, we are the third largest purchaser of hydroelectric power from the Bonneville Power Administration.
On a retail sales basis, we're about the fourth largest PUD in the state of Washington.
And for our energy resources, one of the key resources that we own is a 73-megawatt Swift number two hydroelectric project. It's located on the North Fork of the Lewis River here in Southwest Washington.
Cowlitz County borders the Columbia River, and, of course, the Columbia River forms the border between Washington and Oregon.
The county is very industrial in nature. It was rooted in logging history. We've been known for timber and paper industries for decades, and those industries have shaped the growth in this county.
Our largest city is the city of Longview, where the Cowlitz PUD has its headquarters. It is a planned city. It was structured with a civic center and streets that are set up like spokes of a wagon wheel emanating from that center.
The city founders or timber barons orchestrated the planning and they ended up building a historic hotel, a library, and a high school that anchor the community.
But also river trade and shipping, given the location here on the Columbia River, is an important element with three different fairly large port districts in an industrial area right along the river.
So our economy includes manufacturing, shipping, and services, but it definitely retains a strong blue-collar heritage.
Paul Ciampoli
In preparing for this interview, one of the things that jumped out at me is the PUD's strong track record as it relates to safety.
And I wanted to note the fact that you received two major safety awards for 2025.
Specifically, the PUD earned a platinum level APPA Safety Award of Excellence and a Northwest Public Power Association Safety Award with the PUD earning first place for outstanding safe operating practices.
So, against that backdrop, could you detail the steps that Cowlitz PUD has taken to earn this recognition for its safety-related efforts?
Gary Huhta
Safety is clearly communicated and reinforced as a core value here all across the PUD. We definitely make it a priority. It's highlighted in employee publications, in our strategic plan, et cetera, but we also try to live it out every day. We do receive strong top-down leadership support and trying to ensure safety expectations are visible and consistently upheld.
Even our Board of Commissioners -- the safety topic is top of mind, and it's frequently considered in our discussions and decision making.
So we've tried to develop a proactive mindset. Moving away from the concept of, well, that's the way we've always done it.
We're looking to continuously make improvements and innovation in our approach to safety.
And so an example of that over the last few years, we've made it a focal point to invest in modern tools and equipment.
One of our line superintendents is specifically responsible for ensuring the tooling needs of our crews are fulfilled. So we've observed that this doesn't only improve our safety and performance, but it's also improving work efficiencies.
So, we have a vacuum truck and vacuum trailers that we use to excavate pole holes. This helps prevent injuries and protects other in-ground utilities from damage, which can typically happen when you're using traditional digging methods.
We also acquired a backyard machine. And if you don't know what that is, it's essentially a narrow frame piece of heavy equipment capable of moving heavy transformers or a pole into tight space, for example, like a customer's backyard, where you might only be able to transit through, like, a 3-foot-wide gate or a tight alleyway.
We discovered some of our linemen were suffering with shoulder injuries or back issues so we invested in some lightweight wire pullers for secondary wire.
And so typically, the stiff secondary wire -- it doesn't like to make the 45 or 90 degree bends that are necessary to pull that wire to a customer's meter location. So the lineman would typically grunt and pull harder in those scenarios to make it work. And we did see injuries being sustained with that.
Transitioning to these lightweight wire pullers has been quite helpful.
And we actively try to engage with our employees and understand how best to support their day to day work.
We emphasize the relationship building and valuing our employee input, especially when it comes to their interest in tooling or training or other safety needs that are expressed.
A positive thing that I think has improved our ability to pay attention and innovate in our safety approach -- we did transition over the last couple years from a large, all-employee type of safety meeting format.
Instead, we're meeting in small groups, departmental focused type of safety meetings.
So, we've observed that this is resulting in a much more comfortable environment for the employees, given they're smaller groups, and you're in the meeting with your direct peers.
And so the discussion about near misses and department specific concerns is more robust than what we had seen with the large groups.
So much more employee participation and feedback. And so these types of ideas we receive in these small group meetings just feeds right into our concept and desire to continuously improve.
So in leadership participation, our directors participate in these meetings and then meet myself as the general manager. I also make it a point to attend these safety meetings.
And I really appreciate being able to have that direct communication with the frontline employees, so I'm able to hear directly. It creates an environment of transparency and open communication.
So with that, it's unlikely that some of the issues or concerns that are brought forward are ignored or swept under the rug or disregarded.
So, we also are trying to emphasize a we above me culture with our safety where the concept is we're looking out for each other on a day-to-day basis.
So we've had some shirts branded with this We Above Me concept and some other communications as well to try to keep that front of mind to be looking out for your brother sort of concept.
That's some of the things that we've been doing to improve our safety culture. And we did notice in 2025, our operations department, where we have probably the most substantial safety risk exposure -- in 2025, we did not have a single injury amongst that group, which is like the first time we've seen that in 20 years. We're pretty happy with our employees' performance.
Paul Ciampoli
Yeah, that is impressive. Okay, and so thanks for that overview, Gary.
So just switching gears here. In April, as you know, the Washington State Department of Commerce announced a $1.9 million award to the PUD for a grid resilience project in Ryderwood, Washington. Can you offer additional details on this project?
Gary Huhta
We're pleased with this development. Ryderwood, Washington, is a remote community. It's in the northern part of our county.
It was actually built by the Long Bell Lumber Company way back in 1923. The purpose was to house the loggers and their families because that community was located at the end of a logging railroad line.
But as logging slowed in that area, in 1953, Long Bell sold that entire logging camp to a group of investors, and they had the idea of turning it into a senior community.
So today, Ryderwood has a population of about 400 that are 55 and older.
The average age is about 76 years old and many of these folks rely on electricity for their essential daily needs, like medical equipment.
So, we serve that area with a overhead three-phase feeder. It runs through some heavily forested terrain, which is typical of western Washington.
Segments of the overhead line actually run along that old railroad corridor and we've seen where severe weather events cause frequent outages due to the heavy vegetation and vegetation contact with lines. So, we've seen outages.
We have some data...since 2016 through 2025, [there have been] about 38 events. You know, that's around four events per year. And these outages on average are over seven hours long.
So that can be a challenge for those senior residents that are at the end of the line there. These outages are typically caused by high winds or when snow loads up on the trees.
So with these elderly folks that are typically on fixed income, it can create a lot of risk for them when these extended outages occur because they use electricity for heating, medical equipment, and communications, so if they were to have some kind of a medical need, they're not able to reach out to 911 or other medical care with lack of communications, so what we're planning to do and utilize that award for the state grant is we would like to relocate the power line and place it along the state route right of way and also put it underground.
So with an underground line, we expect to significantly improve the reliability and safety along that corridor.
We are expecting the project to cost us in the range of about five and a half million in total. And we not only secured the $1.9 million grant award that you mentioned in your question, and that comes from the Washington State Department of Commerce, but we also received a FEMA Pre-Disaster Mitigation Program grant -- just over a million dollars, $1.1 million. And the remaining costs we will cover through our capital program.
And there's also the possibility some of that being in the northern part of our county, it is adjacent to our neighbor to the north, Lewis County PUD.
And they actually have some customers that are served from portions of that same line segment, so there's the possibility of doing some cost share with the Lewis County PUD on that project.
This project's been a little interesting. We've been at this for several years, trying to secure this type of funding, and earlier attempts have been unsuccessful.
Some of the federal budgets really haven't been fully adopted these last few years. There's just been continuing resolutions, which then results in the new budget initiatives that might have been included in that year's budget not actually being authorized, so with the budget passage a few months ago, that resulted in achievement of these grants, so very, very happy with that. We will be doing design and permitting for this project in 2027, and plan to construct in 2028.
And we are looking forward to accomplishing this so the Ryderwood residents will be more comfortable and a lot safer.
Paul Ciampoli
And with respect to the undergrounding of the power line was that decision kind of made early on in the process in terms of undergrounding versus overhead?
Gary Huhta
Yeah, it was. The simple fact that we're relocating the line to the state highway right of way. Pulling it out of some of those segments I mentioned, like where it ran along the old railroad corridor that's overgrown with very large fir trees.
That alone would have improved the reliability, but we were very interested in undergrounding, which would help reduce wildfire risk as well as improve outages.
So, yeah, the concept of undergrounding that line was put together in the early phases of planning for this project.
Paul Ciampoli
For my last question, I wanted to give you the opportunity to tell our listeners about any other projects either being pursued or recently completed by the PUD that you wanted to further elaborate on.
Gary Huhta
In the introduction, I stated that we are owners of the Swift No. 2 hydroelectric project. And then we also buy about 90% of our power supply needs from the Bonneville Power Administration, which, as you know, would be predominantly hydroelectric power.
So we are working on a project right now for our Swift No. 2 hydroelectric project to modify or install some new breakers. Right now, when the generating units are turned on and off or generating power to the grid or not, there are large 230 kV breakers in our switchyard that do that switching or connection to the grid.
It's not a typical function for breakers of that size to be switching in and out on a daily basis, or multiple times per day.
Wind generation has become more common on the grid in the last 20 years.
Hydroelectric units – there are demands for them to turn off and on more frequently to help balance the requirements on the grid.
So, our hydro project was never outfitted from the get-go, with what would be referred to as generator breakers, so we're implementing a project where we're going to install 13 kV lower voltage generator breakers, which will resolve the heavy duty that these 230 kV breakers are experiencing in our switchyard, where they're switching in and out multiple times per day.
They're just not designed for that kind of switching duty, so we're essentially here trying to invest in the project to ensure its reliability and longevity.
We find these hydro assets are so critical and beneficial to our operations that we just want to do everything we can to improve the reliability and keep them around for a long period of time.
Paul Ciampoli
And with respect to breakers, obviously it goes without saying that there's been some supply chain issues as it relates to transformers, for example. Any supply chain issues as it relates to breakers?
Gary Huhta
Yeah, all of the various electrical equipment is experiencing much longer lead times than we are used to, so we plan to accomplish the field work for this project that I just described at our hydro project in October of 2027.
But we will be going to our board of commissioners here next month to get authorization to order some of this long lead time equipment. But we do expect, based on what we understand today, that we will receive that equipment in time to accomplish the project in October of next year.
Paul Ciampoli
Thanks so much for taking the time again to speak with us today. It's been a really informative conversation that I know our listeners will benefit from. So, thanks again, and I just wanted to extend an invitation for you to return as a guest at some point in the future.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Public Power Now, which is produced by Julio Guerrero, graphic and digital designer at APPA.
I'm Paul Ciampoli, and we'll be back with more from the world of public power next week.
