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The Columbia basin Institute conducts research, worker education 

 and resource conservation projects at the direction of a Board of 

 Directors composed of representatives of organized labor, natural 

 resource conservation and farmworker organizations in the three- 

 state Columbia Basin region. 



In late 1992 the Institute distributed an analysis, which we 

 append, opposing the continuation of the irrigation discount and 

 BPA's imminent implementation of a water conservation plan proposed 

 by Northwest Irrigator Utilities (NIU) . In 1993, the Institute 

 intervened in the BPA rate case, opposing the irrigation discount 

 in its present form, and also filed a formal protest with the GAO 

 concerning BPA's failure to follow proper contract solicitation 

 procedures concerning the agency's intended funding of NIU's water 

 conservation plan. NIU's plan was criticized by many regional 

 water experts, economists and the Oregon members of the Power 

 Planning Council for being a redundant and uneeded water 

 conservation study proposal. In pre-litigation negotiations with 

 BPA, the Institute agreed to a modified NIU contract upon agreement 

 by BPA to form a water policy committee to develop an effective 

 water conservation program. To date, BPA has neither developed a 

 water conservation plan, nor initiated formation of the committee. 



We submit the following testimony as a briefing on questions posed 

 by the Bonneville Power Administration Task Force regarding the 

 agency's policies in irrigated agriculture. In particular, we 

 address the issues of BPA's water conservation and pumping power 

 pricing on the Columbia Basin, responding, respectively, to 

 questions 4 and 6 posed by the Task Force in its recent hearings in 

 Boise and Eugene. 



Due to the mounting social and environmental external costs of 

 irrigated agriculture in the Columbia Basin, in the following 

 comments we advocate investment by BPA in water conservation 

 measures which accomplish the secondary objectives of water quality 

 improvement and increased farmworker employment. But BPA's 

 investments in water conservation should be driven by and can be 

 justified in terms of a cost-benefit strategy based on the economic 

 values assignable to the water's instream recapture: e.g., 

 hydropower and the fishery. Because BPA's current policies in 

 agriculture are self -contradictory and accomplish none of these 

 objectivies, we generally advocate the elimination of the irrigation 

 discount and modification of the agency's conservation program 

 activities in irrigated agriculture. We recognize that BPA's 

 current efforts to rationalize its policies may jeopardize its 

 ability to fulfill its historic commitment to subsidy of rural 

 public utilities. Nevertheless, neither the irrigation discount nor 

 the agency's misnamed conservation program — Water Wise — is 

 economically rational. But their elimination should not conclude 

 BPA's special efforts in the Basin's irrigated communities. The 

 conservation of hydroelectric capacity in water can be good rural 

 policy, economically and environmentally. 



