Box Butte County
WAPA RATE INCREASE TO HAVE LITTLE IMPACT ON ALLIANCE (Audio Report)
By DOUBLE Q COUNTRY NEWS
Oct 13, 2008 - 7:12:11 PM

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The recently announced 23 percent rate increase by the Western Area Power Agency, otherwise known as WAPA, will not affect City of Alliance electric customers.

City of Alliance Electric Superintendent Larry Heinrich says the amount of electricity the city purchases from WAPA is very small, so the impact will be minimal.

"We've known about WAPA's rate increase for about a year," he said. "However, the City of Alliance only takes about seven percent of its energy and 13% of its demand from WAPA, which would make the cost to the City of Alliance 1.862 cents. Right now its 1.621 cents. You can see we are dealing with small pennnies."

Heinrich went on to say that since the WAPA increase is so small and the fact that the City knew about the upcoming increase months in advance, he recommended the council not implement a rate increase when the council was preparing the Fiscal Year 2009 budget last July.

WAPA Agency spokesman Randy Wilkerson attributes their increase to several years of drought -- which resulted in reduced power production from Missouri River dams and forced WAPA to buy more expensive power elsewhere, but Heinrich says Alliance electric customers cannot make a blanket assessment that just because WAPA is increasing its rates it would have an immediate impact on citizens electric rates.

Heinrich says he invites Alliance electric customers to call him at 762-1907 if they have questions about how the City's power supplier rates will affect Alliance rates. He says that unfortunately, it is a complicated structure.

The last electric rate increase the city council approved was in November, 2006. At the time, the council approved increasing rates by 3.9 percent on January 1, 2007, with another 2.3 percent rate increase going into affect October 15, 2007. Those rate increases were approved to offset wholesale costs passed on to the city by the MEAN, the Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska.