costs of huge, central station multimegawatt coal and nuclear plants and send a false economic signal to the consumers. This has, until recently, kept alternative, renewable energy resources from being cost effective because the real costs of coal and nuclear were disguised. After 1973, though, when the BPA contracts with the investor-owned utilities ran out. the coal and nuclear plant construction costs directly impacted the private utility rates. The rates doubled in five years, and Oregon ratepayers responded by voting in a ban on including construction work in progress (CWIP) in private utility rates by an overwhelming 67 percent. BPA has been attempting a federally controlled solution to the problem of scarce energy supplies in the future for the past 10 years with their Hydro- Thermal Power Program. We know what their results have been: plants that are not cost effective and not reliable. plants that are environmentally unacceptable, plants that are too large to live around, take far too long to build, and rely on fuels that are not renewable and are always escalating in This vast conspiracy to put the electric utility rate payers o f the Northwest into billions o f dollars o f deb t.. . cost. The ratepayers of the Northwest were not consulted on this program and are finally recognizing the disastrous economic impact it will have on this region if it is continued. These bills have always promised vague solutions to concrete local problems. The results have been and will continue to be negative. These energy questions must be resolved from the bottom up, not from the top down. Expanding the authority of the BPA Administrator is not what we need to solve our problems. Already the BPA Administrators have used their authority to bully the public utilities into slicking with this bankrupt energy program. The BPA Administrators have refused to reallocate the federal power according to law after the 20-year contracts with the private utilities ran out in 1973. Instead. BPA served the customer-owned utilities with a “ notice of unsufficiency," stating that BPA would not be able to renew the contracts the public bodies have now when they expire in the late 1980s. However, BPA also had their Hydro- Thermal plan, which would solve the problem by getting BPA involved in coal and nuclear power projects and also mix the public and the private utilities in generation projects together by exempting the private companies from some provisions of the Public Utility Holding Company Act, which was passed in the 1930s to prevent the conglomeration of utilities into holding companies prior to their financial collapse in 1929. This is another example of BPA trying to get around the law. This entire approach of having the federal government “ fix" the energy shortage is characterized by pie-in-the- sky theory. For instance, the pass- through of federal power to the investor-owned utilities is described as the way to lower the electric rates for the majority of Oregonians who are presently served by private utilities. The facts are that BPA already has authority to sell to the investor-owned utilities on an annual basis and did sell to Portland General Electric Company during the nine-month period their Trojan Nuclear Power Plant was closed last year. The PGE rates did not go down 20 percent the way the investor-owned utility advertising promises their rates will go down if the Jackson Bill is passed. The Administrator is still trying to get the public and investor-owned power supplies together. Local control over power supplies and rate making, of course, disappears and becomes vested instead in one federal appointed official—the Administrator of the BPA. Rather than expand the authority of the Administrator, 1 want to cut it back and force this agency to obey the law. The publicly owned utilities should have sued BPA for reallocation of power in 1974 and never allowed themselves to be blackmailed this way. This idea is bad economics, filled with prejudices about the technology, and generally out of touch with what the people in Oregon want. During the 1979 session of our state legislature, we revised the statute on formation of People’s Utility Districts. Committees are now working to form new PUDs and energize old ones in several parts of the state. In July our legislature passed an 18-month moratorium on nuclear power plants to allow time for an initiative to be placed on the general election ballot in 1980 that would ban construction of nuclear power plants until the federal government licenses a nuclear waste disposal plant. In addition, an effort was also made in our state legislature to activate dormant powers of the state constitution to create an Oregon Energy Development Commission to bring the bonding power of the state behind the decentralized, renewable energy projects of the Oregon publicly owned utilities. This measure will also be taken to the initiative with the nuclear moratorium. Polling done both during and after the Oregon legislative session indicate Oregonians are going to make their minds up about both their energy future and ownership of electric utilities in the general election in 1980. This is exactly the wrong time to impose a federal program that will usurp this local control. You have heard enough about these bills already to know that there are many other conflicting uses of Columbia River water to be worked out. howto get the depleted fishery into the cost-benefit analysis, and how to coordinate the multiple agencies involved with all these issues. At EWEB we have found the only federal legislation we need to proceed with bringing on decentralized, renewable energy sources that are part of our local economy and not arbitrary economic penalties externally imposed, has been dealt with on a problem-by-problem basis very effectively by our Congressman Jim Weaver. These things can be done in much simpler ways, much quicker, than with these regional, omnibustype efforts. Let us lay aside this idea of a big federal solution controlled by federal bureaucracy, take what we have learned in the five years about energy in the Columbia Basin, and start again from the bottom up. Thank you very much for coming to Oregon to see how the ratepayers view this legislation, and thank you for not holding this hearing at the Bonneville Power Administration headquarters. Two days after this Congressional hearing, EWEB voted unanimously to oppose passage of the Jackson Bill until BPA allocates the federal hydropower according to the present federal law. More later, John Bartels Fuadty KeigkMcW State pWucc al fempriced Kaiwiaf Jwwid Rodd fiuit Ca. S IV. (Mett &IVkitaken Yesterday’s Paper 324S .W .9 th 227-6449 Custom Framing—Ready Made Parrish. Icart, Fisher, Russell, Vanity Fair, Currier & Ives, Old ads and art prints postcards, books, mag’s Vintage radios and tubes maps, stock certificates cigar and fruit labels and more Visa — Masterchargc Wed.-Sat. 11:30-5:30 The Only Full Service Restaurant in the John’s Landing Area 6:30 a m. - 8 p.m. Everyday Live Music Thurs.-Sun. Nights Beer and Wine 6439 S.W. 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