County legal adviser outlines benefits and risks of Seattle City Light FERC settlement; districts decline to sign

Will Hoehne, the county's legal representative on relicensing, told Skagit County commissioners on March 10 that a negotiated settlement with Seattle City Light would form the basis of a new 50-year federal operating license for the utility's three Skagit River dams and carries "immense impact on Skagit County" for flood control, fisheries, agriculture and tourism.

Hoehne outlined key provisions he said are important to Skagit: a drawdown schedule for Ross Reservoir that would start on Nov. 1 (rather than Dec. 1 under the prior license), an increase in guaranteed flood-storage capacity (hard storage plus a variable pool and safety buffer that Hoehne said could approach roughly 200,000 acre-feet), and a long-term commitment to study and implement fish passage. "Seattle City Light is seeking a new 50 year federal license for its 3 Skagit dams," Hoehne said, and described the settlement as the practical opportunity to ask for anything from Seattle and its dams for the next 50 years.

Hoehne told the board the settlement includes a conditional pledge from Seattle City Light of up to $979,000,000 for fish passage work and nearly $190,000,000 for downstream land acquisition and habitat projects, but he emphasized those commitments are complex and partly conditional. "The risk here is this is a conditional promise," he said, adding that the fish-passage element will require sustained, good-faith implementation across years of R&D and operational adaptation.

District leaders, however, told the commissioners they would not sign the settlement. Jenna Freebel, executive director of the Drainage and Irrigation District Consortium, said the consortium supports flood-control and fish-passage elements but "is not planning to sign the settlement due to concerns specifically related to the Estuary Habitat Fund," criticizing its potential to convert farmland and the lack of local decisionmaking and transparency for fund allocation. Daryl Hamburg of the dyke/diking districts said his board secured technical gains including "140,000 acre feet of hard storage" and an earlier drawdown date but declined to sign because estuary-funded projects need to be linked to salmon-recovery goals and local planning.

Hoehne also raised public-safety issues the settlement does not resolve. He described catastrophic dam-failure scenarios as low probability but high consequence and said the "only realistic mitigation measure is early warning with certainty as to the time of failure and evacuation planning." The county is upgrading its alerting system (from Code Red to Skagit Ready), he added.

On the question of land ownership, Hoehne said Seattle City Light has acquired roughly 11,000 acres upriver in Skagit County, much of it timberland; those holdings remove property from local tax rolls and prompted concern from some local officials about management and local input. Hoehne warned of a governance gap if a distant utility controls a large habitat fund and prepares ecosystem plans without clear mechanisms for county and district authority and said the joint explanatory statement in the settlement preserves the county's land-use and infrastructure authorities.

Hoehne recommended the county consider approval of the settlement while attaching expectations about good-faith implementation and transparency. He said the settlement would next go through FERC review and federal environmental review (NEPA) and that challenges from NGOs were possible. He reminded the board the county would not take a formal vote that day and that a public hearing on the settlement was scheduled for March 24 at 9:30 a.m. "We will have a public hearing on March 24 at 09:30 in the morning," the chair said during the meeting logistics announcements.

What happens next: Commissioners will accept written comments prior to the March 24 hearing and further deliberation will follow the public input and federal-review timelines. The county and districts said they will pursue a locally led integrated plan for habitat restoration and infrastructure coordination to align recovery goals with farmland preservation and flood-risk mitigation.