Frequently Asked Questions
Get answers to your burning PUD questions!
Why Re-elect Andrew Miller?
Experience.
The job of a water commissioner comes down to three things: policy leadership, fiscal management, and stakeholder management. I've spent a lifetime building all three — and six years on the PUD board putting them to work.
That's what it took to replace aging water main before it failed, finish the Judy Reservoir transmission line, and bring fiber internet up the valley to Concrete, Lyman, Hamilton, and Marblemount. It's also what made seasonal water transfers to farmers possible — leasing surplus rights so growers can keep irrigating through a dry summer, a first for this district.
Water only gets harder to manage from here. I've got the experience to meet that.
Do you support data centers coming to Skagit Valley?
No. I testified before the county in July that large-scale data center facilities directly conflict with our valley's commitment to agriculture and the limits of our utility infrastructure, and I've worked to keep the PUD's approach aligned with county policy on this. When we're given the opportunity to put our water to work or position our community for investment, we shouldn't choose high-demand infrastructure that puts scarce resources like water and farmland in tension.
Do you support battery energy storage systems (BESS)?
No. While there's a real need for energy resilience, and there may be places in Skagit County where storage facilities make sense, that is not what I have heard proposed. Even then they should never be permitted near residential areas, farmland, or waterways — never. Those resources are too scarce and too important to put at risk for this kind of infrastructure.
What does a PUD Commissioner DO?
Skagit PUD Commissioners set policy and budget for the county's largest water system — the infrastructure that delivers drinking water to Burlington, Mount Vernon, Sedro-Woolley, Guemes Island, Alger, and the east Skagit corridor, plus broadband service through SkagitNet to communities like Concrete, Lyman, Hamilton, and Marblemount. That means decisions on rates, capital projects like pipe replacement and treatment plant upgrades, water rights, and long-term investments that keep the system reliable for the next fifty years, not just the next five.
The board also directly manages the General Manager, holding that person accountable for the performance and culture of the entire district — everything from field crews to the treatment plant runs through that line of accountability.
Commissioners are elected countywide by district, serve six-year terms, and the board meets publicly on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of each month.
How should PUD support farmers?
Agriculture is the backbone of this valley, and the PUD supports it in two ways: selling treated water at a reduced agricultural rate, and leasing untreated water rights to farmers who need seasonal irrigation access they otherwise wouldn't have. Since 2024, that's meant surplus rights the district already holds — not new withdrawals from the Skagit — going to growers whose own rights get cut off in a dry year.
That leasing program is still under policy review, and I have introduced and advocated a first-ever draft Water Priority Policy to the Board of Commissioners that formally acknowledges ag water as the primary use for untreated water rights transfers.
Why should Skagitonians care about this race?
Because this is the board that decides whether your water is safe and reliable, what you pay for it, and whether farmland and water resources stay protected as pressure from things like data centers and outside development grows. It's easy to skip a race this far down the ballot, but PUD decisions touch your tap, your bill, and the land around you more directly than almost anything else on it.
Six years in, I know where the risks are before they become problems — and that's exactly the kind of experience this job requires.