ADVERTISEMENT
How the Relicensing of a Hydro Project Led to Improvements for Salmon on Washington State’s Sultan River
Andrew McDonnell, an environmental coordinator at the Snohomish County PUD, conducts a fish survey in the Sultan River.
I
t’s been 10 years since Snohomish County Public Utility District (PUD) relicensed its Jackson Hydroelectric Project on the Sultan River. Since that time, the utility has followed through on commitments made as part of the relicensing agreement to manage the project for healthy fish populations. In this interview, Natural Resources Manager Keith Binkley looks back on a decade of mitigation interventions, including modulating the temperature of water released and scheduling flows to support salmon at all stages of their life cycle. Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.
Hydro Leader: Please introduce Snohomish County PUD.
14 | HYDRO LEADER | May 2022
hydroleadermagazine.com
PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE SNOHOMISH COUNTY PUD.
Keith Binkley: I got my bachelor’s degree in wildlife management at North Carolina State University and my master’s in fisheries science from Montana State University. Then I consulted for many years in California, Idaho, Montana, and Washington. In 2002, I was selected for a fish biologist position at Snohomish County PUD and served in that capacity during the relicensing effort. For the last 10 years, I’ve served as the natural resources manager.
Keith Binkley: Snohomish County PUD was founded in 1936 and began water supply distribution in 1946. In 1949, the PUD became primarily an electric utility. We had few resources of our own and would basically purchase power from other entities and then distribute it within our service territory. We applied for a license with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for a joint project that would both supply water for the City of Everett and generate power on the Sultan River. The license was issued in 1961; however, we initially proceeded only with the construction of the water supply reservoir, since the energy supply was not needed at that time. In 1976, we got a notification from the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), which supplied the majority of our power, that it was not going to be able to meet our needs in the future. In response, we started developing the 112‑megawatt hydropower portion of the project, which would eventually be named the Henry M. Jackson Hydroelectric Project. Since that time, we’ve brought several additional small hydropower projects into our portfolio. Those are run-of-theriver facilities that don’t store water and that run when conditions allow, typically during the fall, winter, and spring, but not in the summer. We continue to be a major purchaser of power from the BPA. Our hydro operations constitute a small but significant portion of our portfolio, at about 7 percent.
