River Of No Return Cost Of Salmon Small Part Of Your Utility Bill

The Bonneville Power Administration says its fish and wildlife recovery program is the most expensive in the world. The utility complains loud and often about the cost.

Saving the salmon is very expensive. But those costs have to be considered in context.

The fish and wildlife program paid for by Bonneville ratepayers will cost an average of $252 million a year through 2001.

That’s about $1 on an average monthly residential electric bill of $50.

Spilling water and other changes in hydropower operations intended to help salmon push the annual tab to $435 million on average through the next five years.

That brings the average fish and wildlife tab to $3.50 on a $50 residential bill.

By comparison, Bonneville customers pay $6 on an average $50 bill for debt on the region’s dead nuclear power plants.

About 25 percent of Bonneville’s budget pays for debt service, operations and mothballing for failed nuclear plants in the Washington Public Power Supply System.

Bonneville also absorbs other costs that date back decades.

Irrigators withdraw water from the Columbia that would be worth $98 million a year if it went through hydroelectric turbines to generate electricity.

Bonneville only counts the cost of so-called foregone revenue when water is released for fish. The utility will spend an average of $183 million a year on foregone revenue for fish through 2001.

The utility also eats the cost of cut-rate power for irrigators theoretically worth $32 million at market rates.

Even with the nuclear plant debacle, fish and wildlife recovery costs, and other expenses the region has come to take for granted, Bonneville’s power remains the cheapest in the country.

It costs about half as much for electricity in Washington and Idaho as anywhere else. Bonneville’s hydropower system is one of the largest in the world. It provides electricity to a range of users, from aluminum plants to public and private utilities throughout the Northwest.

, DataTimes