61 



The point is, in dealing with these State agencies or anyone else, 

 sole contracts, you know, they are going to rip you off if they can. 

 I mean they have got Measure 5 in Oregon and they have got ev- 

 erything else going on, and if they can pick up some money from 

 you they don't have to get it out of the licenses or somewhere else. 

 That is just a concern with your sort of general contracting proce- 

 dures when you get to sole source contracts. I think we should only 

 use sole source contract when there is some very unique attribute, 

 and that still doesn't mean we let them bargain like a monopoly; 

 we can hold them to some reasonable accountability. 



Maybe we could close on a couple of general questions. I think 

 we have got a pretty good picture of where we are headed this 

 year, and we are looking at out years in the budget, but I am con- 

 cerned that there is ongoing litigation. I would think we know pret- 

 ty well where we are headed with water this year and other poten- 

 tial problems, and it looks as though the Treasury payment is not 

 imperiled, in my opinion, at this point in time for this year, which 

 I think is very desirable in the current climate in Washington, DC. 



I just can't follow all this stuff, but it seems to me that Judge 

 Marsh is our Judge Dv^^er of fish, and there are some cases pend- 

 ing before him that might have some impact on the system or sys- 

 tem operations. 



Could you briefly comment on that and what the potential impli- 

 cations of those are possibly — best case/worst case? 



Mr. Hardy. To speculate on the state of mind of a federal district 

 judge is probably a little beyond my purview. 



TTiere is a hearing before Judge Marsh tomorrow which could 

 fundamentally change things. I don't know if it will or not. It is on 

 the permit that National Marine Fisheries gave the Corps to trans- 

 port fish by barge fi-om the upper part of the Snake down below 

 Bonneville Dam. That has been challenged by a group of interve- 

 ner, tribes and environmental groups — in particular, American Riv- 

 ers and the Sierra Club. 



When the judge held his initial hearing on that last Thursday, 

 what the Department of Justice argued was that this was a fairly 

 narrow issue associated with a strategy that has been in place for 

 20 years and that it should be treated that way. The judge indi- 

 cated, as I understand it — I was not in the courtroom — that he was 

 not inclined to treat it that way. He swore in several experts who 

 happened to be there in the courtroom and basically went through 

 four hours of trying to understand how the river system ran. He 

 had significant questions about increased spill, about potentially 

 more flows, about other hydro system measures, and he indicated 

 he would reconvene everybody tomorrow. He asked for a couple of 

 specific witnesses to appear before him and potentially make some 

 Mnd of a ruling. 



If he were to uphold the permit and allow the barging to con- 

 tinue, our revenue situation would be basically unchanged, and 

 from my perspective, this is a question really that the MNFS recov- 

 ery team should address in a comprehensive fashion as opposed to 

 singling out one issue. 



But S" the judge were to decide to take control of this situation, 

 it is unclear what the impHcations would be. But any more flows 

 or increased spill would have significant revenue implications and. 



