I understand that Sonoma County is in the process of starting its own power agency, with some very excellent ideas. Sonoma County has steamwells on their side of the hill and we, in Lake County, have our steamwells on our side of the hill.
PG&E keeps charging more and more, stuffing SmartMeters down our throats when they do not want it anyway. Now if you do not want a SmartMeter you have to pay a one-time fee and a monthly fee not to have it. I believe now is a good time for the County of Lake to make a deal with Calpine or something similar. There used to be a state power agency at the steamwells, not sure if it is still there. I believe that the county could come up with some kind of a plan to do two things:
1. Buy power at a bargain price and resell to rate users so it would be a bargain for the people of Lake County and the county for the many lift stations, sewer and the water agencies throughout the county that pump from wells and the lake that uses abundance of power.
As you know all Lake County sewer water gets pumped to the steamwells to recharge the wells. This would be a win-win for all taxpayers.
2. Come up with a program that people could buy solar, financed by the County of Lake, and charged to the homeowners property taxes and sell back the excess power to PG&E. Right now property values are way down and this would be a major asset to the property and possibly increase the property value; money saved by the homeowners/renters in the form of a lower PG&E bill. Then the people of the county would have extra money that could be spent in the county.
We have the best power source in the world in our own backyard that is not being beneficial for the little guy who feels the pain everyday. I believe that this could be an asset for the whole county. I would like to see if the Board of Supervisors could come up with a plan by checking into the research performed by Sonoma County, because it”s already been researched there.
For years, Ukiah has had a successful electric power agency with part of Mendocino County also having natural gas. Many years ago there was talk about bringing a gas line over Highway 20 from Mendocino County to Lake County and the powers at be at the time said we do not need that we have propane.
Thank you for letting me blow off steam. If anyone has other ideas, I would be more than happy to listen.
Ron Rose
Lakeport
