The Columbia River Treaty doesn’t come up much in casual conversation. Even at this week’s Legislative Council on River Guidance in Missoula, the 45-year-old agreement was an eye-opener for the representatives of Montana, Oregon, Idaho and Washington. It governs the fate of 8.5 million acre-feet of stored water in Canada, which can produce around 450 megawatts of electricity before it reaches the U.S. border and goes through more reservoirs and dams. The council members were merely in Missoula to learn about future water issues, and had no power to take action on the treaty. But Matt Rea of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stressed that their state governments needed to be thinking about their stakes in international water questions sooner rather than later. The treaty runs through at least 2024.
California state regulators have approved a proposal allowing SanDiego Gas & Electric to build its own solar farms here and buy power from others who build them – up to 100MW. SDG&E would spend up to $100 million putting 26 megawatts photovoltaic cells on land and buildings it owns in San Diego and purchase three times as much power from local solar farms. To control costs to customers, the PUC is capping how much SDG&E can spend on the projects it builds, and it’s requiring the company request bids for the power it buys and choose the cheapest ones. The focus on this program is on facilities of 1 to 5 megawatts to be done in the county, and which won’t require new power lines like the controversial Sunrise Powerlink.
