57 



Mr. DeFazio. Well, thank you, Mr. Sherrill. Welcome to Wash- 

 ington. You are seeing the more rational part of the operation here. 

 Don't look around too much. 



Ms. Bodi. 



STATEMENT OF LORRAINE BODI 



Ms. BODI. Thank you very much. 



Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the task force. My 

 name is Lorraine Bodi and I am co-director of the Northwest Office 

 of American Rivers. American Rivers is a national nonprofit con- 

 servation organization. We work on protection and restoration of 

 America's rivers. In the Pacific Northwest, we focus on the prob- 

 lems of endangered salmon runs. I have personally been working 

 on salmon issues in the Pacific Northwest and the Columbia River 

 basin for 15 years. 



American Rivers appreciates this opportunity to comment and 

 will be focusing on the issue of restructuring Bonneville as a gov- 

 ernment corporation. Like many of the other folks here today, we 

 have not read the documents. We have seen the little four-page 

 summary and nothing more. And so we are interested in what the 

 details are going to be. But in general, I think we can say this is 

 an issue that has important consequences not only for the future 

 of Bonneville, but also for the future of the salmon of the Columbia 

 basin. 



Bonneville is not just an electric utility. Its customers are not 

 just aluminum companies and utility corporations. It is not just a 

 business. It is a steward of a huge natural resource, the Columbia 

 River basin, and that needs to be taken into account as we move 

 down the government corporation path. 



The Columbia basin has been home to salmon for thousands of 

 years, and the decline of Columbia River salmon coincides with the 

 construction of the federal dams that Bonneville markets the power 

 from. Even today, with fish mitigation programs in place, these 

 dams are responsible for about 80 percent of the human-caused 

 mortality to these fish. 



Last year, for example, with fish mitigation programs provided 

 under the Endangered Species Act, almost all of the juvenile fish 

 that were migrating to the ocean through the dams were killed 

 going through the system, and a third or more of the adult fish 

 were killed migrating upstream to their spawning grounds. These 

 are National Marine Fishery Service estimates from its biological 

 opinion. 



Literally for decades there has been a regional debate over how 

 to incorporate fish protection into the operation of the Columbia 

 River dams. And before that time, the dam operators have resisted 

 change. They have resisted the change from viewing Bonneville pri- 

 marily as an electric utility operation to being more of an agency 

 in charge of multiple uses of the river. 



Thirteen years ago the Northwest Power Act was supposed to 

 solve this problem for us by giving us new legal authority, by say- 

 ing to Bonneville not just that it had to take the Council's program 

 into account, which is part of the Northwest Power Act. Actually, 

 the language is that Bonneville must act consistent with the fish 

 and wildlife program, but also imposing a substantive legal re- 



