Committee recommends City Light fiber-sharing agreement with Ziply Fiber to improve Skagit communications

The Sustainability, City Light and Arts & Culture Committee recommended approval on June 6 of an ordinance authorizing Seattle City Light to enter a long-term indefeasible-rights-of-use (IRU) fiber-sharing agreement with Ziply Fiber to create a redundant communications path between the Skagit hydroelectric project and City Light’s Bothell substation. The committee’s recommendation will be transmitted to the full City Council for consideration on June 17; the committee vote was 3 in favor, 0 opposed, 1 abstention.

Seattle City Light presented the ordinance as a cost-effective way to add redundancy and resilience to critical communications that support operations at Skagit, a generation asset the utility said serves roughly 20% of the electroload in its service territory. Dawn Lindell, general manager and chief executive officer for Seattle City Light, said the agreement would allow City Light and Ziply to use fiber strands in each other’s systems and share maintenance costs while avoiding the environmental and construction impacts of building a separate line.

Jeff Wolf, City Light legal-affairs advisor, described key contract terms: the agreement covers two 15-year terms; either party must give one year’s notice at the end of a 15-year term to terminate; the contract includes default provisions allowing City Light to exit if Ziply fails to maintain its fiber; and no direct money payment is exchanged for the IRU rights. City Light staff said the two route alternatives each run roughly 96 miles and that the utility had previously paid about $7.5 million to build a comparable line in the early 2000s; staff estimated the present-day cost to construct the line would be at least double that figure.

City Light staff said the connection work to splice into Ziply’s system would be minimal in cost — roughly the effort of two full-time employees for a day — and that the shared network would carry emergency communications, surveillance camera feeds and dam-failure warnings, as well as routine Internet and telephone systems.

Committee members asked technical and legal questions. Council member Strauss summarized the arrangement as an exchange of isolated fiber strands and said the agreement requires Council approval because of its long term and maintenance obligations. Council member Saka urged caution, calling the deal “complex” and requesting more time; Saka proposed tabling the measure, then indicated a preference to abstain rather than vote in favor. In the discussion about security, Saka cautioned that “there is no such thing in that space as 0 risk” and urged continued review of cybersecurity and contractual risk-allocation despite staff assessments that the proposed arrangement did not present a security risk.

Chair Alexis Mercedes Rank said the committee would move the ordinance forward at the committee level and that Council member Saka could abstain; the committee then voted to recommend approval with the 3-0 (one abstention) tally. City Light staff said similar redundancy agreements exist with other utilities such as the Bonneville Power Administration for alternate communications paths.

The ordinance as read in committee was identified as Council Bill 120968 (authorizing an IRU fiber-sharing agreement between Seattle City Light and Ziply Fiber Pacific LLC). The committee instructed staff to transmit the recommendation to the full City Council for the June 17 meeting. City Light staff indicated no environmental impacts from the shared-agreement approach and said the agreement has been reviewed by the City Attorney’s Office.