Stop Quibbling Over Hydro Plan

The Pacific Northwest’s electricity source is going to change. The only question is whether it will change in a way beneficial to those who live here.

A little-noted but extremely important battle will determine the outcome. It’s being waged before an obscure committee whose discussions center on issues of eye-glazing complexity.

But no one’s eyes will glaze if things go badly and some of the region’s largest industrial employers shut down and move abroad where power is cheaper. No one’s eyes will glaze if fixed-income retirees see their electricity bills soar. No one’s eyes will glaze if salmon runs completely disappear, huge regional debts are refinanced and federal judges or politicians dictate policy for key Northwest industries and natural resources. Those are the stakes.

To avoid a bad result, interest groups that currently are accustomed to sniping and polarization must embrace compromise.

Here’s the deal: The nation’s power industry is moving rapidly to deregulation and free-market competition. Congress is on the verge of writing laws to govern the change.

But a one-size-fits-all federal law wouldn’t fit the Northwest. Our electricity is generated and delivered in significantly different ways. Much of it comes from federally financed hydroelectric dams and is marketed by public rather than private utilities.

Federal hydropower is cheap. But its cost is inflated by two regional obligations: 1.) repaying loans that financed construction of nuclear power plants, some of which were never completed. 2.) restoring salmon runs hurt by the dams. Early in the next century, as the debts are paid off and salmon restoration settles on strategies that work, hydropower should become an incredible bargain.

For now, however, the advent of an open, competitive market tempts the region’s electricity buyers to run from hydropower as well as the nuclear and salmon obligations. They’d rather buy power produced by cheap new natural-gas turbines - until the price for gas rises and hydro prices fall, at which point they’d look to the dams again, if they could. But the nuclear and salmon obligations are inescapable and ought to remain broadly distributed across all power users for whom those obligations were incurred.

A steering committee formed by the region’s four governors has drafted a plan to make sure these obligations are fairly met and to preserve hydropower’s cost advantages. The plan hinges on selling long-term subscriptions to the federal hydropower.

Interest groups - tribes, environmentalists, public utilities, private utilities, industries, consumer advocates - are quibbling because none got everything desired from the compromise.

But here’s what the region as a whole would get: Long-term stabilization of its power supply. A reorganization to facilitate the open market. Commitments to pay off debts, help salmon and invest in energy conservation.

And, as free-market competition develops, the entire system could move toward increasing efficiency and innovation.

But competition will arrive smoothly only if the region lines up behind the governors’ effort to craft a compromise tailored to the region’s unique situation. The compromise can be included in the coming federal law. If it’s not, look out.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board