Crapo Opposes Bill Capping Salmon Spending Idaho Congressmen Fear Increase In Electric Rates For Irrigators

Rep. Michael Crapo had still not seen all of the language in a proposed bill to cap the Bonneville Power Administration’s costs of restoring salmon when he opened a hearing on the issue in Idaho Falls. But he had seen enough.

“I have expressed my strong opposition to the language I received,” Crapo, R-Idaho said Saturday.

Sens. Larry Craig and Dirk Kempthorne, R-Idaho, who like Crapo previously expressed support for the bill, also said they oppose its current version.

Sen. Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., has written the fish cap amendment and said he would attach it to the 1996 energy appropriations bill, which is scheduled to go to conference committee Wednesday. The bill would limit the spending of Bonneville Power Administration, the federal agency that markets electricity from hydroelectric dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers, to $435 million annually for fish and wildlife programs.

It also included language that would have required any water taken from the Upper Snake River Valley to be purchased from willing sellers under authority of state water law.

Crapo said he opposed Hatfield’s proposal because it did nothing to prevent eastern Idaho farmers from facing a 32 percent increase in electric rates for pumping.

Also at issue was Hatfield’s efforts to exempt BPA from federal environmental laws.

The impetus for the cap is growing competitiveness in electric markets that is allowing private utilities to undercut BPA’s historic advantage in electricity prices. BPA has cut 1,000 jobs and $500 million from its $2 billion budget in an effort to compete in the deregulated marketplace.

But it is saddled with an annual debt load of more than $500 billion from nuclear reactors that were halted before completion in the early 1980s. The salmon recovery plan unveiled earlier this year by the National Marine Fisheries Service would have increased the cost of that program to $565 million.

Complicating matters, several of BPA’s largest customers, aluminum companies, told BPA Wednesday they would buy a third of their power supply or load from private utilities. Randy Hardy, BPA administrator, testified BPA could lose $20 million in revenues if it signs the new contracts with aluminum companies.

But if BPA does not sign, it would lose $120 million in revenue. It might be able to recoup some. But it risks alienating its other customers, raising power rates throughout the region or missing a payment of its debt to the federal treasury.

Hardy will meet Wednesday with Department of Energy deputy secretary Charles Curtis to decide which course to take.