123 



So there is some give and take on it. We don't have the absolute 

 authority. It also forces us to be more credible in what we come up 

 with. Very frankly, in my estimation, if we come up with creditable 

 plans, whether it be in power planning or fish and wildlife, if our 

 plans are credible enough, the sheer weight of that credibility is 

 going to get us through. 



Mr. DeFazio. Mr. Duncan, would you care to address the linkage 

 between your plans or proposals and BPA's implementation? 



Mr. Duncan. Sure. I certainly agree with Mr. Grace that our 

 greatest strength is leverage and not direct statutory authority. 

 There are some 



Mr. DeFazio. But you are mentioned as having oversight author- 

 ity in the Act. 



Mr. Duncan. Oversight authority, and in any number of places 

 in the Act, it is clearly intended that we participate in the imple- 

 mentation of our plan. I doubt, for example, that you will find 

 many electric utiHties, including Bonneville, who would have ob- 

 jected to our very active role in bringing about energy-efficient 

 building codes in Oregon and Washington and some equivalent ex- 

 ercises in Idaho and Montana. That's one of many examples. 



There are certainly some folks in the utiUty community who try 

 to construe our authority much more narrowly. There are some 

 folks in the utility community who have argued that we should not 

 undertake a 6(c) review of the proposed Tenaska acquisition, that 

 we are not obliged to undertake that and perhaps we should simply 

 acquiesce and let it proceed. 



I think most members of the Coimcil are uncomfortable with 

 that. That is our principal direct statutory authority and I think 

 we are taking very seriously our responsibility to review not just 

 the attributes of Tenaska particularly, but how that fits in the 

 overall implementation of the Council's plan, how Bonneville is pro- 

 ceeding on other elements of that plan. 



That is one of our several opportunities to oversee the implemen- 

 tation of our plan and I see no interest on the part of anyone in 

 the Council in foregoing that responsibility, and I would hope that 

 Members of Congress, which gave us our authority, would confirm 

 that that's what they expect of us. 



Mr. DeFazio. Thaoak you. Ms. Ervin, you made a number of real- 

 ly good observations, I thought, about where in the future perhaps 

 greatest benefits lie with conservation in terms of the commercied 

 and industrial sector and the targeting and that, and I think those 

 are comments well taken, something that we need to focus a bit 

 more on. 



But, also, your comments about the conservation power plant, 

 £ind I'd just ask your observation as sort of a neutrsd observer. I 

 had heard over time of the fii^istrations of EPUD, but was also 

 present at the signing ceremony, which was just last week, of the 

 contract. 



Do you see the conservation power plant as done by EPUD — I 

 mean, it's estimated to cost them $150,000 to negotiate. It was a 

 3- or 4-year process, extraordinarily torturous. But do you think 

 now we have sort of a format and do you see its applicabihty. Is 

 there a transferabiUty in that agreement or at least a model and 



