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quirement that was basically a change to Bonneville's legislation. 

 It said Bonneville was supposed to give equitable treatment to fish 

 and wildlife on a par with power. 



We used to joke after the Northwest Power Act was passed that 

 we now had the new Bonneville Power and Fish Administration. 

 We turned out to be too optimistic. And we underestimated the 

 amount of institutional resistance there was to change, even with 

 the new legal mandate. 



Bonneville basically has a fundamental bias favoring power oper- 

 ations, power marketing and its customers, and it is hard to break 

 through that institutional bias. Key policy decisions are still made 

 in consultation primarily with its customers, and fish and wildlife 

 interests are more or less relegated to the Bonneville public in- 

 volvement process, which I can tell you involves mounds of paper 

 and calendars of meetings, but is not necessarily a way to influence 

 the ultimate decisions that get made. 



Like my colleague, Ralph Cavanagh, I have looked at the NAPA 

 report and I am concerned that it suffers from some of these same 

 kinds of problems. Like Mr. Cavanagh, I noticed that the team who 

 prepared the report did not look at the wide range of what I would 

 call the customers of Bonneville, including the fish and wildlife in- 

 terests. 



And it also seems to address environmental issues in this way; 

 that a financially stable Bonneville is good for the environment. 

 Well, I would personally try to flip that over. My view would be 

 that by resolving the environmental conflicts that it deals with 

 today, we would have a more financially stable Bonneville, and 

 that would be good for Bonneville and for the Pacific Northwest. 



So it is against this backdrop that we see where we are today. 

 The Columbia basin is a study in confusion and controversy right 

 now. Fishery agencies. States, Indian tribes, fishing groups and^en- 

 vironmental groups are all in Federal Court as we speak trying to 

 change the operation of the hydro system. 



The most recent addition to this team of litigators is now the 

 Alaska interests who are concerned about the equity of closing fish- 

 eries in Alaska when the dams are allowed to continue an unpro- 

 ductive harvest of these fish. 



This isn't the best way to proceed, to have everyone in court, but 

 it is the only way to proceed right now. There is no negotiating 

 table and there is no alternative forum being provided. The courts 

 are the only place where this conflict is today being played out, and 

 that is not the best way to proceed at this point in time. 



So when we look at this situation from a fisheries point of view, 

 American Rivers cannot support the proposal to restructure Bonne- 

 ville as a government corporation at this time. We think there are 

 many questions that still remain unanswered, and we would like 

 to see Bonneville's equitable treatment responsibilities to fish re- 

 solved or at least gotten to a more stable place before we move 

 ahead with restructuring. 



This isn't an academic concern. It can't be solved by simply say- 

 ing Bonneville is going to comply with its existing legal mandates. 

 We have something more than that going on here. 



The question we have to ask ourselves is. Will Bonneville as a 

 government corporation be more or less likely to follow through on 



