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TESTIMONY OF RALPH CAVANAGH 



BEFORE THE BONNEVILLE POWER ADMINISTRATION TASK FORCE 



OF THE COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES 



July 12, 1993 



This testimony responds to Chairman DeFazio's invitation of 

 June 21, 1993; it represents the views of the Natural Resources 

 Defense Council (NRDC) . NRDC is a nonprofit environmental 

 organization with a national membership of some 160,000, of whom 

 more than 8,000 reside in the Pacific Northwest. Although NRDC's 

 agenda is international in scope, we have a longstanding regional 

 presence; I have directed our Northwest Energy Project since 1979. 

 I also serve as a member of the Electric Power Research Institute's 

 Advisory Council and the National Academy of Science's Energy 

 Engineering Board. The subject matter of this hearing has been one 

 of my principal interests for almost fourteen years. 



I would like to begin by noting NRDC's appreciation for the 



leadership shown by the Chairman and eight of his Northwest 



colleagues in a June 14, 1993 letter to BPA's Administrator. You 



could hardly have been more timely in urging Administrator Hardy 



to avoid cutting important long term investments in the 

 face of short term rate pressures. Specifically, you 

 should continue making every effort to acquire all cost- 

 effective conservation. A time of increasing rates and 

 increasingly expensive power generation is precisely the 

 wrong time to defer investments in energy efficiency. 



Too many who have written lately to Administrator Hardy seem 

 to have had nothing more in mind than staving off rate increases 

 for a few more months, regardless of the cost to the region's long- 

 term economic and environmental health. With his usual disdain for 

 understatement, Cyrus Noe recently characterized this approach as 

 "a picayune, nitpicking, self -obsessed, ungenerous, hyper- 

 competitive, humorless psychology ginned up by remorseless 



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