Victory: CUB Wins Rate Decrease for Gas Customers in Southern and Eastern Oregon

Editor’s Note: Interested in learning more about your monthly bill from Avista? Read more on the CUB Blog entry Utilities 101: How to Read Your Avista Gas Bill.

This year, Avista Utilities requested to raise bills for their natural gas customers in Oregon. After months of hard work, CUB is proud to announce that households in Southern and Eastern Oregon will not see a bill increase. Instead, billing rates will go down for Avista households.

As natural gas bills spike across the country and state, this is a major victory for Oregon households. The new billing rates went into effect in August 2022.

Avista serves parts of Southern and Eastern Oregon, including Roseburg, Medford, Klamath Falls, and La Grande. Under the utility’s proposal, its Oregon natural gas customers (numbering about 104,900) would have seen a rate increase of $3,774,000 or 3.1%. (Read more about the rate case in a recent entry on the CUB Blog.)

Thanks to CUB’s advocacy, Avista will lower rates by 1.1% for Oregon households.

This decrease is largely thanks to CUB’s advocacy around an issue of how taxes are reflected in rates. Avista has changed how it receives tax incentives for its capital investments (money spent on gas lines, power plants, and other infrastructure). These incentives are passed back to customers. CUB’s advocates pushed to speed up how quickly customers receive these incentives, saving money for Oregon households in the coming years.

While this is a big win for Avista customers, the fight against rising natural gas bills is far from over. CUB will continue pushing for affordable utilities for all Oregonians. Sign up for the CUB email list to stay up to date on the latest utility news, advocacy, and action opportunities in Oregon!

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