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STATEMENT OF JEFF SHIELDS 



Mr. Shields. I am Jeff Shields, I am general manager of Emer- 

 ald People's Utility District, which surrounds Eugene, Oregon. 



I represent 15,000 end users, many of whom will not be rate- 

 payers for perhaps another 10 or 20 years, and if you can accept 

 that, I would ask you to keep that in the back of your mind 

 through the course of my comments. I am concerned about those 

 future ratepayers as well as today's end users. 



Many of us in the electric utility industry tend to feel that things 

 are in a real state of disarray, that things are changing so fast, it 

 is real hard to keep up with. I recently described that as flowing 

 over the spillway of the twenty-first century with very little struc- 

 ture. I think we need some structure, we need some leadership. I 

 think we have the institutions in place to provide that. I question 

 is whether we are actually using those institutions for the purpose 

 that they were intended. 



Bonneville's rates are set to increase 16 percent next week, not 

 the largest increase in BPA's history by far. They have advised us 

 in the industry not to overreact to those increases; half of that is 

 a one-time increase and should not be of great concern to us. So 

 what is at the root of the uncertainty and discontent? Well I think 

 a lot of it has to do with what we are seeing from Bonneville, what 

 we are seeing from the leadership in the industry. Bonneville has 

 initiated several processes which have created a flurry of activity. 

 As you analyze what is going on with those, very little really 

 changes. Tiered rates is a prime example. Tiered rates was dis- 

 cussed through the PPG and other institutions in the Northwest for 

 6 or 8 weeks as kind of the new thing that was going to happen. 

 All of a sudden, it has taken a backseat to unbundling. It is hard 

 to keep up with a lot of those things that have potentially dramatic 

 effects on us. 



WNP-1 and WPN-3 was going to be dropped out of the plan. 

 Nothing has happened. And so with all the changes that have sup- 

 posedly taken place, I think if we step back, we can take a little 

 bit of a breath and look at what is really going on and try and put 

 some of these things into some kind of structure that is going to 

 guide us over that spillway so that we land on the bottom safely. 



We do have to keep Bonneville competitive. We have the ability 

 to do that. They are competitive today, and I really have not heard 

 anybody say anything other than that. People have alluded to the 

 fact that maybe they are not competitive, I have never heard any- 

 one say Bonneville is not competitive, but they are certainly ap- 

 proaching a non-competitive position. 



Bonneville has the obligation to acquire environmentally respon- 

 sible resources. We need to provide leadership in the region to en- 

 sure they do that, and we have to provide some leadership to en- 

 sure that Bonneville maintains the public trust. There was a little 

 bit of a discussion I think in the last panel about public trust and 

 public utilities' ability to represent and get the trust of their rate- 

 payers versus maybe the investor-owned and regulated community. 

 And I would like to discuss that as we get into the questioning a 

 little bit if the opportunity arises. 



The brave new world of the electric utility industry — I look back 

 to what Dwight Eisenhower proposed, which was not a federal mo- 



