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Council's plan, and I view Tenaska as part of that process. I mean 

 I will not say Tenaska itself, but certainly the acquisition of 



Mr. DeFazio. We aired this at my Portland hearing and the con- 

 cern I expressed to the Council was a lack of assertiveness on their 

 part where they rather passively said, oh, you mean the price of 

 the gas is secret and we cannot know it? Oh, okay. You know, that 

 was not the kind of public scrutiny I want to see. 



Mr. Drummond. We have no position on Tenaska and that is 

 not 



Mr. DeFazio. I mean I am not going to get into it. I do not have 

 the capability of evaluating it, but I think that was a breakdown 

 of the public oversight process in that case. I do not know how any 

 public body could have responsibly made that decision, not knowing 

 what the adjusters were, what the contingencies were and all that. 

 I mean it is very difficult. It may make tremendously perfect sense. 

 BPA may have made the best decision, but I would just like to 

 have that second level of scrutiny. Mr. Reiten. 



Mr. Reiten. There is a potential problem and that is that in the 

 investor-owned utilities who go through least-cost planning process, 

 all the factors are considered — demand-side management pro- 

 grams, gas prices, renewables and the least-cost path, including 

 some allowances for the higher cost resources that may have better 

 environmental benefits than some others — all are melded together 

 through an open process, and we arrive at a point. 



In terms of resource acquisition for the public, if the public, par- 

 ticularly the customers of Bonneville, go out and acquire their own 

 resources of let us say 30 mills, and the preferential rate is 27 

 mills today, but Bonneville, as a result of public power influence, 

 federal influence, other influences, goes forth with even larger miti- 

 gation programs for fish on the river and we go from $300 million 

 to $350 million or $400 million in cost, the resource that goes to 

 the Bonneville customer by an independent power producer does 

 not carry the cost of the social programs, which I would agree 

 needs to be done. Bonneville's revenues have to reflect those be- 

 cause they in fact are doing them, but they are losing businesses 

 to resources that are coming in that are not priced with any fish 

 mitigation or demand-side management program or so on with 

 them. And this is the path that is being started today, principally 

 on the public side. So there is a difference between the least-cost 

 planning process in investor-owned utilities and what we are see- 

 ing happening on the public side in this particular area. And you 

 could have larger demand-side management programs, fish costs, 

 on fewer kilowatt hours at Bonneville as a result of these new re- 

 sources coming in that are not fairly reflecting the prices of those 

 public-policy-driven requests and requirements for Bonneville. 



Mr. DeFazio. Yes, I think that is an excellent concern. Do you 

 want to comment briefly on that, supplement that? 



Mr. GrOLDEN. Yes, once again on the conservation 



Mr. DeFazio. Well we had a whole hearing in Portland on con- 

 servation, we do not need to 



Mr. GrOLDEN. I would actually like to address though the 30 mill 

 gas project, because I think this gets to the heart of the issue of 

 whether people can be held accountable to least-cost planning goals 

 in a market that says, 30 mill gas, why do an5^hing else. There are 



