367 



failure to raise rates to even keep pace with inflation - let alone costs - for almost a decade, and 

 egregious customer subsidies that would make an eastem Europe bureaucrat blush. 



--BPUNCC has done to Northwest Indian tribes what Buffalo Bill and his cohorts did to the Great 

 Plains tribes. BPNUCC didn't discriminate; they also destroyed the basic resource that sustained 

 many thousands of non-Indian citizens as well. 



In sum, what Congress called "an emergency" in 1980 has deteriorated into a man-made 

 environmental and economic disaster unparalleled in the modem history of the Republic. 



What's wrong with this picture? 



Notwithstanding BPNUCC's claims to the contrary, the facts are clear and indisputable by 

 thoughtful, principled men and women who respect the salmon protection intent of Congress and 

 will of the people of the Northwest and Nation: The cost of doing what Congress intended, in 

 treating with NW tribes, in originally authorizing the federal dams, in passing the NW Power Aa, is 

 relatively modest, is exceeded by the economic benefits, will not tip over the pork barrel, will have 

 relatively minor effect on long-term Northwest electrical energy rates, is the right thing to do, and is 

 not discretionary. 



All of the wasted public resources, all the environmental havoc, all the attendant human suffering, 

 the corruption of the democratic process, are the product of an entrenched Politburo of myopic 

 ideologues at BonnevUle and their pork barrel constituents. The same basic cast of characters and 

 mind set that created the WWPSS nuclear power plant debacle and nation's largest municipal bond 

 default. That got Bonneville $15 billion in debt while simuhaneously nearly wiping out the world's 

 largest chinook and steelhead runs at a cost of even more billions. 



This same Politburo of entrenched interests seeks at any public cost to buUd a Maginot Line against 

 change; to attempt to buy a few more years at the public trough for BPA's pork barrel constituents 

 and shield them from the rigors of free enterprise; to attempt to buy BPA political absolution for its 

 misdeeds. 



' It is distressing to hear Administrator Hardy mouthing the canard that Bonneville has spent one, or is it now two, 

 billion dollars implementing the Council's Program? This is false. Ask him how much of that was real money and 

 how much was "opportunity cost of energy revenue foregone." The latter is slight of hand accounting that would get a 

 private citizen arrested if he or she tried it on the IRS. It rests on Bonneville's false claim that it owns the Columbia 

 River and that any drop of water not devoted to energy production can be claimed as an "expenditure." Nice trick if 

 you can pull it off. Why stop at water used for fish? Why not claim an opportunity cost for energy revenue forgone to 

 irrigation streamflow depletions? For flood control. For livestock watering. For water consumed by chukars and trees. 

 The possibilities are endless. Unfortunately for Bonneville and its creative accountants, Bonneville does not own the 

 Columbia River, does not have the legal "opportunity" to use all its water, and therefore, has no legitimate opportunity 

 cost for water used to meet other legally authorized uses of the river. Like fish passage, for example. 



