ests and taken away from the people." And, of course, that hap- 

 pened. Even the small public utilities were captured. 



Once at a convention, I actually heard a former BPA adminis- 

 trator, Charlie Luce — it was here in Eugene in a speech to hun- 

 dreds of people — Luce said, quote, *The people are our enemies." 

 He was applauded. This was in 1980. What he meant was that 

 they wanted to build a more, bigger and costlier empire, and public 

 groups were trying to stop them. Has the BPA changed today? Not 

 much. It is obvious it still regards itself as an arm of the utility 

 industry. Its halfhearted attempts at conservation amount to little 

 more than lip service. Utilities want to sell more electricity. Cer- 

 tainly, that is their job. I understand that. But BPA is not a pri- 

 vate utility. 



Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a proposal for legislation af- 

 fecting the BPA. This legislation barkens back to another amend- 

 ment I offered during the filibuster of the Northwest Power Bill, 

 and this amendment almost passed. The vote in the Interior Com- 

 mittee — ^which you now call the Natural Resources Committee — the 

 vote in the Interior Committee was 21-21 — I had to go over to the 

 floor of the House and get Austin Murphy, who promised to vote 

 with me, back to make it 21-21. And that was under intensive lob- 

 bying against it by the utility industry and its allies. Indeed the 

 Oregonian newspaper was adamantly opposed to it. But I saw re- 

 cently that the Oregonian had editorialized for the approach I am 

 about to mention, and it is called two-tier rates. 



I first introduced the idea of two-tier rates over 20 years ago. By 

 the way, both for gasoline as well as electricity. It is something I 

 think that would go a great way toward resolving most of the con- 

 servation issues that we face. Let me explain briefly how two-tier 

 rates work. They mean simply that the first amount of electricity 

 you purchase is at a low rate. If you are prudent with use of elec- 

 tricity and use conservation methods, you may have only to pay 

 that low rate. Those that use more electricity would pay a much 

 higher rate. They would be penalized for extravagance. The utility 

 itself would adjust these rates to receive on average the same 

 amount of dollars they would under any other rate structure. 



When I first introduced this 20 years ago, the utilities screamed 

 that poor people with leaky houses would bear the brunt of this ap- 

 proach. It was, of course, the first time utility executives ever con- 

 cerned themselves with poor people except to cut off their elec- 

 tricity when they did not pay their bills. The answer to this, of 

 course, is to insulate those \eaky homes, providing, by the way, lots 

 of jobs in local communities. 



There are, of course, Mr. Chairman, many complications involved 

 in two-tier rates, but there are just as many complications in 

 present rate structures. BPA under legislation could strongly moti- 

 vate local utilities to implement two-tier rates while leaving precise 

 details to the local communities. I encourage the Chairman, if he 

 has not already done so, to introduce a bill requiring BPA to imple- 

 ment two-tier rates. 



In closing, I have always hoped that my local utility, EWEP, 

 would do this. It is another public agency that also acts like a pri- 

 vate utility. 



