511 



Presentation to 



the Bonneville Power Administration Task Force 



of the Committee on Natural Resources 



at Boise, Idaho 



on September 24, 1993 



by Joe Stegner 



My name is Joe Stegner and I'm from Lewiston, Idaho. I work for a 

 family owned grain elevator business with locations in northern Idaho and 

 eastern Washington. Our company stores and merchandises locally 

 produced grains and dried peas and we ship those products on river barges 

 to domestic and export buyers throughout the world. 



The issue of drawing down the lower Snake river to increase water 

 flow as a major salmon survival effort has numerous negative 

 disadvantages to my area and as the only representative at this hearing 

 from the Lewiston, Idaho, /Clarkston, Washington, area I would like to use 

 my allotted time to express my regions perceptions concerning drawdowns. 



We perceive the drawdown theory to be a politically motivated, 

 poorly researched, quick fix to the salmon survival effort which sacrifices 

 our region's economic, recreational, and power generation opportunities in 

 an attempt to preserve those same features for other areas. 



We perceive that the state of Idaho, in championing the drawdown 

 theory as die lead point of the "Idaho Plan", is purposefully attempting to 

 sacrifice the lower Snake river slack water system, which runs entirely in 

 the state of Washington, in a calculated attempt to limit southern Idaho's 

 contribution of water flow for salmon survival efforts. 



We perceive that the drawdown theory was concocted as a 

 inexpensive, quickly implementable, cure all solution for salmon recovery 

 when in fact: 



...drawdowns will be hugely expensive costing billions of dollars; 



. . .drawdowns cannot be put in practice for many years because of 

 the need for significant research and extensive dam modifications; 



