236 MULTIPLE PURPOSE RIVER DEVELOPMENT 



taking is provided by the distribution of recent additions of power 

 to the Bonneville system. Between June 1954 and June 1955, total 

 BPA sales increased from 18 billion to 21 billion kilowatt-hours. 

 Of the total increase, an estimated 37.5 per cent was sold to munici- 

 palities, PUD's, and rural electric co-operatives; 34.4 per cent was 

 sold to private electric utilities for distribution to their customers; 

 another 5.8 per cent was provided for use of the federal agencies 

 in the area, most of it for activities related to national defense. 

 Finally, 22.3 per cent of the total increase in sales was accounted 

 for by increased deliveries to electro-chemical and electro-metallur- 

 gical industries, a substantial portion of whose output is also related 

 to defense production. 



Conceivably there would be circumstances under which all of 

 the output in our hypothetical illustration could be distributed to 

 public bodies or rural co-operatives. At the other extreme, if the 

 requirements of all of these preference customers were already met, 

 the total conceivably could be made available to private utilities. 

 So while the preference clause requires that first choice should go 

 to public bodies and rural electric co-operatives, private utilities in 

 the Northwest have in practice relied to a considerable extent on 

 the federally developed hydroelectricity as a source of supply. 



Given the enormous hydroelectric potential in the sites on North- 

 west streams in which the federal government has a paramount 

 interest, it appears likely that an economically efficient rate of 

 development could provide adequate energy to meet all of the 

 requirements of preference customers as well as a substantial por- 

 tion of the private utilities' needs. Hence, for purposes of the fol- 

 lowing analysis, we will assume that the distribution of project 

 output from our hypothetical Willamette River site would conform 

 closely to the distribution of the increment added during the fiscal 

 year 1955. 



Distribution of project output by a federal agency involves the 

 wholesaling of most of its power for resale by the public or private 

 distributors. In BPA's marketing territory, there are close to 90 of 

 these retail distributors of which 17 are municipalities, 25 are 

 public utility districts, 37 are rural electric co-operatives, and 10 are 

 private electric utilities. In order to get an idea of the distribution 

 of gains, or the ultimate distribution of project output to customers, 

 we need to learn something about the sales patterns of these dis- 



