Chelan PUD Board in talk with Alcoa to restart smelter at Wenatchee

The Chelan County Public Utility District Board of Commissioners is negotiating with Alcoa Corporation in anticipation of reviving a smelter and hundreds of well –paid manufacturing jobs. Commissioners voted in favour of postponing a charge against Alcoa for idling the Colombia River smelter near Wenatchee at the beginning of 2016.

Alcoa has many years left on a long-term contract to buy electricity from the Chelan County utility and the power contract contains both benefits and disadvantages for Alcoa to keep its energy-intensive aluminium smelter and its jobs running. ?

PUD Board President Randy Smith said the utility board agreed to defer almost all of a $67 million charge Alcoa faced next for the smelter closure.

"My desire is not to put any impediments in the way of a potential reopening for Alcoa,” he said.

Alcoa management is still not sure about reopening the smelter in Wenatchee.  A company vice president, Michael Padgett, said that forcing Alcoa to pay up now would remove the last possibility of restart.

The PUD board agreed to charge Alcoa $7.3 million now to ensure the deferral has a neutral effect on the rest of the district's ratepayers for the next year. If the Alcoa smelter in Wenatchee remains closed in June 2018, then the company would owe $62 million.

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"I made a comment to the Alcoa vice president as he was leaving the room today," Smith related Monday. "I said, 'I really hope six months from now that plant is open and making aluminum."

Alcoa curtailed Wenatchee operations last year amid falling aluminium prices causing job loss of more than 400 union workers.  Aluminum smelting, which used to be an economic driver for Pacific Northwest, has seen a huge downfall in last few years leaving Alcoa's Intalco Works in Ferndale, Washington, as the only smelter in operation in the entire region.