Unusual Alliance Asks Bpa Review Bpa Officials Are Pressing For A Limit On Annual Salmon Restoration Costs

Utilities, environmentalists, fishing and consumer groups urged Northwest lawmakers Tuesday to review the “structural and far-reaching problems” at the Bonneville Power Administration.

The unusual alliance, ranging from Seattle City Light to the Oregon Natural Resources Council, said the current “piecemeal approach” to BPA’s problems ignores the interrelationships of its finances, rate proposals and fish responsibilities.

The BPA supplies about half of all the electricity consumed in the Pacific Northwest, most of which is generated at 30 federal dams in the region. The dams are blamed to a large extent for pushing several salmon species to the brink of extinction.

BPA officials are pressing the Clinton administration and Congress to set a limit on annual salmon restoration costs and exempt the power marketing agency from a variety of laws requiring efforts to save the fish.

Last week, Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., former chairman of a congressional task force on the BPA, asked Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary to hold a Northwest summit on the agency and salmon. He too warned that a coordinated review of all of the BPA’s missions was missing.

O’Leary has had no response. But an Energy Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, “Congressman DeFazio has raised some serious concerns. The secretary is taking them very seriously.”

Sen. Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, is among those who advocate capping BPA’s salmon expenses. He has included language in an appropriations bill that would accomplish that, but has left blank the spending limit level.

Critics of the cap say it ignores other factors in the BPA’s financial condition, including a huge debt tied to failed nuclear reactors and subsidies to irrigation farmers, among others.