Lewis County PUD Approves Larger Budget for 2015 (KELA Radio, Centralia, WA)

(CHEHALIS, WA) -- The Lewis County PUD Commissioners approved a budget of $71.2 million for 2015.  That’s an increase of 7.1 percent over 2014.  PUD manager Bob Geddes says there are several factors affecting the increase including a raise in power and transmission costs from the Bonneville Power Administration. PUD receives a large portion of its electricity from BPA.  Geddes says they have also opted to add an additional tree trimming crew to supplement the existing one tree trimming crew in an effort to stay ahead of outages caused by storms like the ones recently experienced in Lewis County.