Our Pockets Are Your Pockets
I get asked sometimes what it means to be a public power utility. It’s a fair question—and the answer goes back to the very founding of Northern Wasco County PUD.
For decades, a private power company was the only option for electricity in The Dalles and Wasco County. Residents paid what they were told and had little say in how their utility was run.
In the late 1930s, local Grange members and businessmen decided that wasn’t good enough. They believed this community deserved a utility that belonged to the people it served—1 where the community’s money stayed in the community.
Voters agreed, and on Aug. 15, 1939, Northern Wasco County People’s Utility District was born. It took 10 more years of legal battles before we served our first customers in 1949. The people who built this PUD fought for a simple idea: Your power company should work for you, not the other way around.
Nearly 90 years later, the simplest way I can describe what they built is this: Our pockets are your pockets. We’re not-for-profit and owned by the community. There are no distant shareholders expecting a return. When we find ways to operate more efficiently or negotiate better power contracts, those savings go directly into keeping your rates low—not into someone’s dividend check. When costs rise, we feel it, too. Our employees live here, pay the same rates, and shop at the same stores. We’re not making decisions from a distance. We live with them.
Every dollar you pay on your electric bill stays right here. They maintain the system that keeps your power on, fund the crews who respond when storms hit, and rebuild aging infrastructure so future generations have the same reliable service you’ve come to expect.
Just like our first board members—Byers, Foster, Johnson, Ott, and Seufert—our current board members are elected locally. They’re your neighbors who pay the same rates you do. When our upcoming May rate adjustment was on the table, they genuinely discussed and deliberated on how it would affect each of our customer-owners differently, always balancing what’s best for the utility with the real impacts on the people we serve. That’s what shared stakes look like.
Our pockets are your pockets. That was true when this PUD was founded, it’s true today, and it will be true tomorrow.
Roger Kline
General Manager and CEO