568 



gation diversions their highest priority. They have a multi-purpose 

 mandate with fish as an equal player. But the tunnel vision of sin- 

 gle-purpose agencies did not transform itself overnight with pas- 

 sage of the Power Act. A complex system of contracts, subsidized 

 rates, agreements such as the PNCA and more informal agree- 

 ments, perpetuates the single-use approach. They also promote the 

 expansion of use and the continual expansion of use, not improve- 

 ments and efficiency. 



I think the region can have plenty of power, water and sustain- 

 able salmon nms, but not if the many pressures to maximize power 

 production and irrigation diversion continue unchanged. Some 

 progress has been made, but the goal of equitable treatment is still 

 far off. 



It is clear the old ways are not working for more than salmon. 

 The Federal Government can no longer afford to subsidize ineffi- 

 cient use and the region cannot afford the shortages, the conflicts 

 and the environmental degradation that comes with it. 



What should the federal agencies do about this? There is a useful 

 model in the energy field and the Chairman of this task force is 

 a knowledgeable and effective advocate of it. It is called least-cost 

 or integrated resource planning. The central tenet of it is to solve 

 supply shortages by encouraging reductions in demand. The same 

 concept has an application to salmon. If there is a conflict between 

 producing energy and saving salmon, why not look for ways to 

 change the demand for energy to better match a flow regime that 

 keeps them healthy. Winterize homes at a faster rate, adopt sea- 

 sonal electrical rates for the aluminum industry, arrange inter-re- 

 gional energy transfers to take advantages of different seasonal 

 load peaks. Measures like this make it cheaper and more attractive 

 to run the river in a way that produces healthy stocks. 



Water management improvements that put water in the stream 

 can also reduce the cost of salmon recovery. One example is the dry 

 year option lease program aimed at reducing the production of sur- 

 plus crops. Surplus crops are grown on about 30 percent of the land 

 irrigated in Id^o with federal water. NRDC studied a hypothetical 

 leasing program that could provide water for fish in dry years by 

 paying farmers to reduce their production of surplus crops. We 

 found that power generated incidentally with those flows was 

 worth twice as much as income lost when planning was cut back. 

 In short, a program like that financed by Bonneville could pay for 

 itself and could make available as much as 2 million acre-feet of 

 water in the upper Snake, or almost that much. To make it pos- 

 sible to move forward on measures like this, we need new programs 

 and/or the removal of obstacles that now discourage transfers from 

 irrigation to fish purposes. 



As you pointed out, Mr. Chairman, the agencies have no choice 

 about implementing the Power Act. They do have a choice about 

 whether to make it hard for themselves, forcing solutions in court, 

 or bet ahead of the curve. Pressure to devote the entire 

 hydrosystem to power will intensify as the region grows. Yet the 

 agencies are now engaged in no systematic effort to identify and 

 pursue changes in energy and water use that make salmon solu- 

 tions cheaper, let alone to coordinate among competing uses. Until 



