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Bonneville's goals are the goals of the Northwest Power Planning 

 Act. I think those goals encompass the goals of Bonneville's original 

 legislation— but bring them out of the 1930s into at least 1980, and 

 I believe that they are still every bit as relevant today. 



Frankly, many of Bonneville's customers would have preferred 

 an Act without fish and wildlife goals, without environmental 

 goals, without conservation mandates, and frankly without a Power 

 Planning Council at all. There were original proposals that had a 

 governing board that consisted entirely of utilities, and they did not 

 prevail in that position for a lot of good reasons. 



Now I think under the mantle of competitiveness, although the 

 market pressures the people describe are real, but under the notion 

 that Bonneville is imminently in danger of losing its competitive- 

 ness, I think many of those customers frankly are trying to reverse 

 the Act's verdict on those other purposes. I will give you some of 

 the signals that I hear that suggest to me that that is the case. 



Bonneville in 1991 adopted a mission statement that said, To 

 m£ike Bonneville the most competitive and socially responsible 

 power supplier or utility system in the Nation. I do not think those 

 two goals are in conflict with one another, but frankly, I find it 

 alarming that the second half of that goal seems to have dis- 

 appeared without a trace from Bonneville's rhetoric. 



There is an influential customer review group looking at Bonne- 

 ville's programs right now and making, I think, some pretty impor- 

 tant decisions. There is no parallel group for non-customers, for 

 Congress, for the Power Planning Council, for public interest 

 groups, for anyone but customers. 



There was recently completed a survey called "From Insight to 

 Action: Customers' Values and Satisfaction." I did not receive a 

 survey about non-customers' values and satisfaction, or about retail 

 customers' values and satisfactions. And I assure you that the 

 Power Planning Council and probably yourselves did not either. 



In a recent letter, the head of the Oregon Rural Electric Coopera- 

 tives railed against the Power Planning Council because they are 

 out of control on fish and wildlife issues and that Administrator 

 Hardy appropriately made some decisions that put the customers 

 firmly in control of the region's energy future. Well, I do not think 

 that is what the Act said. I think the Act said that the Council and 

 the people of the region would be in control of the region's energy 

 future. 



There are a number of other examples. Probably the most color- 

 ful description of the appropriate role of public interests in Bonne- 

 ville planning decisions was delivered by Harney Electric Coopera- 

 tive, and I urge any of you who have not seen that colorful descrip- 

 tion to get your own copy. 



There is a persistent emphasis in Bonneville, and among its cus- 

 tomers now, on emphasizing business relationships and de-empha- 

 sizing political relationships, which means relationships with you 

 and me and the Council and anybody besides its wholesale cus- 

 tomers. Well, Bonneville is of course not a business, as you have 

 heard from many of the folks here today. I think Bonneville can 

 learn a lot from businesses about how to run a tighter ship, about 

 how to be a more effective and efficient agency, but let us pursue 

 this business analogy a little bit. When a business says the cus- 



