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Mr. Chairman, this extremely wide range of cost estimates illustrates how 

 easily BPA and the Northwest can view salmon recovery as a competitive 

 disadvantage or a business opportunity. In this regard, it is important to 

 note that the PMDAM computer projection showed a net benefit of some 

 $50 million annually across the entire West Coast grid. 



It is also important to note that, if BPA followed the CT Replacement 

 method in the real world, the agency would pursue the ludicrous business 

 strategy of constructing combustion turbines which would operate just 2.5 

 months during the next 50 years -- an average of 1.5 days in each year! 

 Nonetheless, in the draft SOR. Bonneville uses cost estimates from the CT 

 Replacement method. 



Clearly by Bonneville's own reckoning, the agency can -- with some creative 

 cuid astute business strategies such as those identified in the PMDAM -- 

 make salmon recovery workable and affordable for the Pacific Northwest. In 

 this regard. I would praise BPA for seeking and signing seasonal exchange 

 contracts with California utilities over the past four years. And 

 conservationists welcome announcements during recent meetings with BPA 

 Administrator Hardy that the agency is actively considering diurnal and 

 seasonal pricing for electricity. Such llow-based prices just make good 

 business sense for Bonneville and for salmon recovery. 



Turning to overall costs, our Changing the Current report concludes that 

 implementation of a salmon recovery plan similar to the "Strategy for 

 Salmon" adopted by the Northwest Power Planning Council would cost BPA 

 less than $120 million annually, and the average residential consumer of 

 Bonneville electricity less than $2 per month -- hardly the bank-breaking 

 doomsday expense as claimed again in some testimony before this 

 committee today. 1 must emphasize that we did not create the numbers in 

 our report: they come from the multi-agency Columbia River System 

 Operation Review, the System Configuration Study by the US. Army Corps of 

 Engineers, and related agency documents. 



So the Congress should maintain some healthy skepticism and request an 

 explicit statement of the assumptions and justifications going into any and 

 every estimate of salmon recovery costs. In point of fact, BPA by its own 

 ledgers is actually writing checks for fish and wildlife expenses which total 

 less than $100 million annually. 



2.) Other costs are diriving BPA's financial crisis. 



Meanwhile, BPA each and every year is writing several fold larger checks to 

 pay off its debt on WPPSS nuclear power plants that have never generated 

 and will never generate one kilowatt-hour. Fish and wildlife costs compare 

 very favorably indeed to this crushing debt load of $8 billion from WPPSS 

 and other sources. 



WPPSS debt has now become a financial crisis as customers threaten to 

 leave BPA and shirk their repayment responsibilities onto the agency's 

 remaining customers. BPA should close the exit door, or at least charge a 

 fee to cover their fair share of WPPSS debt if and when customers decide to 

 depart from Bonneville service. In addition, BPA should incorporate all its 

 costs, especially debt repayment as well as fish and wildlife, into its 

 transmission rates: wire charges create an insurmountable barrier to 

 abandoning WPPSS debt. 



In a similar vein, some BPA consumers, particularly the Direct Service 

 Industries (DSIs), receive below-cost rates - an expense borne by other 

 customers at great competitive disadvantage to Bonneville. The DSI subsidy 

 runs to $180 million annually. Either the DSIs should pay their fair share in 



