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diverse region. Additionally, as others have pointed out, Bonneville 

 has been imable to reach agreement with major utilities, including 

 Clark, who have proposed conservation power plant programs to 

 them. 



Finally, even a simple amendment to our current residential 

 weatherization contract, for example, took over 6 months to com- 

 plete. Recently BPA revived the concept of third-party financing for 

 conservation programs. We were very interested in this as a way 

 to finance increased programs and measures for our commercial 

 and industrial customers, and especially as a way to get through 

 our more than 5,000 household waiting hsts for residential weath- 

 erization. 



Then came the kicker. BPA insisted that we sign a master fi- 

 nancing agreement which required their unilateral approval of our 

 bond issue, our financial advisory, our bond coiuisel and our refi- 

 nancing activities. We viewed this as an unnecessarily and un- 

 wanted intrusion into what was supposed to be a locally run pro- 

 gram. 



With regard to the direct use of gas, which was one of your ques- 

 tions and a topic earlier, we beheve Bonneville has ignored the in- 

 creasing gas penetration rates and the potential for fuel switching 

 in the Northwest for far too long. 



In Clark Coimty, almost 68 percent of our new single-family 

 homes are heated with gas, yet many of these homes continue to 

 heat their water, hot water, with electricity. Additionally, we esti- 

 mate that about 20 average megawatts is space heating and 50 av- 

 erage megawatts of water heating load to be cost-effectively 

 switched to natural gas in Clark Coimty. 



However, due to the differences in utilities and local gas avail- 

 abihty, we do believe that fuel choice issues and programs can best 

 be run at the local utility level. We believe that given a new con- 

 tractual arrangement with Bonneville, we could, without further 

 involvement on their part or further financing, implement pro- 

 grams that would achieve new services by gas, as well as fiiel 

 switching at the above levels. 



In 1980 when the Regional Act was passed, the first Regional 

 Council was appointed. What the utility committee envisioned at 

 that time with Bonneville acquiring new resources to serve the 

 ever increasing load of both public and private utiUties, as well as 

 the DSIs, is very different fi*om the situation we have today. 



Additionally, it appears to us that we are continuing to move 

 even fiirther away from the one-utility, one-system planning oper- 

 ation concepts. We believe the Council's role should be more on the 

 planning on a regional scale, but recognize that implementation 

 will probably take place by individual utilities as well as entities, 

 such as ESCO. 



We do believe, though, the Coimcil can play an important part 

 in bringing public and interest group input into our energy deci- 

 sion-making process. 



Finally, it's important for the Council to remember that Bonne- 

 ville must be a competitive provider of electricity, as you talked 

 about earlier this morning, for the future of BPA, the power sup- 

 plier of choice, and for the future of funding of its programs. We 

 beheve that competitiveness is very important. 



