LOOK WHO'S IRATE NOW by Patrick Mazza The word is that these are right-wing times, that we must accommodate to a conservative shift in the American mind. Yet at the grassroots, below the attention threshold of the national media, there are stirrings that belie that image. Put your ear to the ground, and you can hear them. Tough economic times are closing in, and it is becoming obvious to increasing numbers of working and middle class Americans that their interests are not the same as those of the institutions that govern them. The old consensus is breaking down. The righteous wrath of the American public is beginning to break surface. "We never had this many people at anyof our meetings/'said the organizer. "I just wish they had been here five years ago." In Washington state, that anger is being directed at an immensely powerful complex of public and private bureaucracies that runs the regional electrical supply system. In recent months, a full- scale ratepayers revolt has erupted over a nuclear construction program that has doubled power bills over the past few years and threatens to double them again this year. On the eastern side of the state, a major campaign against the construction of a coal-fired power plant has suddenly risen among traditionally Republican wheat farmers alarmed at the potential effects of pollution on their crops. Everywhere around the state the feeling is the same: Utility May 1982 RAIN Page 17 administrators and their legions of experts are operating outside of public control and contrary to popular sentiment. “They just are not listening to us," people are saying. In the Northwest, with its strong traditions of direct democracy and public ownership of utilities, this perceived insensitivity has inspired a strong movement at the political center. People are demanding that they once again be heard by the electrical powers that be. One of the sparks that set off this explosion was the cancellation in January of two partially constructed nuclear plants (see RAIN VII: 5:5). They were part of a five-reactor program created by the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS), a consortium of the state's public utilities. Skyrocketing costs of the two nukes had begun to create serious angst on the East Coast bond markets through which WPPSS has been financing its program. There was uncertainty that the plants would be economically viable. Faced with that, WPPSS officials tried to postpone work on the two. That would have required funds from participating utilities, but growing popular opposition to spending any more money sank that plan. WPPSS officials tried to avoid the inevitable end, but finally gave in and cancelled construction. With that, utility ratepayers found they were already in debt for the plants to the tune of $2.25 billion. In addition, their Public Utility District (PUD) boards were asking them to pay additional termination bills for these “dry holes," as they came to be known. The result was the sudden emergence of a well-organized, largely middle class movement to demand a rollback of the power rates and to begin legal action to escape the burden of the WPPSS bonds. The movement caught fire early in Grays Harbor County on the Washington coast. Massive unemployment in the wood products industry has left the timber-dependent local economy in disastrous shape. Huge power bill hikes were the last straw. In their economic pain, the people cried out and formed the Irate Ratepayers of Grays Harbor County. Over 2,000 of them packed the gym at Hoquiam
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