kitzspeech.html
Governor John Kitzhaber
September 17, 1999
It is a great honor to speak to you today about an issue of enormous regional significance: the challenge of maintaining for future generations two invaluable and interrelated assets of the Pacific Northwest both associated with the Columbia River. The first is the health of our shared ecosystem the heart of the natural wonder that helps define those of us fortunate enough to live in this region. The second is the reliable, low-cost supply of power produced for the Northwest by federal dams on the Columbia River.
If there is one thing I want you to take away from my talk today, it is this: that we are at grave risk of losing these assets; that the one cannot be saved without saving the other; and that neither can be saved without bold, decisive action taken by the region as a whole. Let me touch on each of these issues in turn.
The most visible sign of our ecosystems decline is the plight of Northwest salmon. We have an almost mythic connection with salmon. They represent the power of history, the power of identity, the power of the pasts promise to the future. But beyond that, if salmon runs are not healthy, then our watersheds are not healthy and if our watersheds are not healthy, we have truly mortgaged the future.
Yet, today, we find 11 populations of Columbia Basin salmon, steelhead and bull trout listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. For some of these species, it is too late. For others, their depressed numbers point to a very uncertain future.
The reasons for this decline are many, but primary among them are past harvest practices, hatchery policies, habitat degradation and the impact of the Columbia hydropower system on water quantity, water quality and fish passage. Harvest, hatcheries, habitat and hydro these are the 4-Hs of recovery, all of which must be addressed if we are to both save our salmon and maintain the integrity of the Columbia Basin ecosystem.
Yet our record to date has been disappointing. In the last 16 years, we have spent more than $3 billion dollars on an effort that now employs 2,000 people. And while we may have kept some populations from slipping over the brink of extinction, no runs in the basin are clearly on their way to recovery. This effort, started with high hopes, has foundered on a fundamental lack of agreement:
A lack of agreement on the objective of the recovery effort, lack of agreement on sound science, lack of agreement on a common plan of action and a lack of agreement on who is accountable for expenditures.
It is not difficult to see how that lack of agreement arose. The Columbia River is our own answer to the Balkans. It is controlled by two nations, four states and 13 sovereign tribes. There are seven major federal agencies that have jurisdiction in the basin. They have different statutory missions with virtually no requirement for coordinated action and no way to resolve conflicts between themselves.
A case in point. Today, water quality standards established under the Clean Water Act are routinely violated in the Columbia and Snake Rivers. Data developed by the federal government itself demonstrates that federal dams are contributing to this problem.
Last spring, a lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Portland to bring the federal dams into compliance with the Clean Water Act. At issue is whether the actions of the agencies of the federal government are subject to the same federal laws and standards under which states must abide. In this case, whether the Army Corps of Engineers must operate the federal dams in compliance with the standards of the Clean Water Act.
I believe the federal government must play by the same rules as everyone else.
For this reason, Oregon will file an amicus brief in this legal action to ensure that the federal government shoulder its share of the responsibility for cleaning up the Columbia River.
But even if the federal government could speak with one clear voice in the basin, the state and tribal governments in the region have their own separate objectives and policies that also impact the esthetic and economic benefits of the Columbia.
And even if we had agreement on how to proceed and good science to guide our decisions, we have no effective regional body through which we can act collectively.
Until recently, there was not even a regional forum at which all these governmental entities were represented. Membership on the Northwest Power Planning Council our only existing regional governmental entity is restricted to the four states. There is no formal representation for the Columbia River tribes or for the federal government, nor can the Council compel coordinated action by federal agencies. For that reason, the Power Planning Council as it is currently structured will never be the body that can forge and execute a regional agreement on what is to be done on the Columbia.
And although all these entities are represented on the recently created Columbia Basin Forum which I strongly support and which can contribute to the consensus we seek the Forum, like the Power Council, lacks the statutory authority to actually implement a plan.
This fragmentation of decision-making authority and the resulting loss of accountability is one of the major obstacles to meaningful action.
On the power side, the federal dams of the Columbia and Snake rivers are a tremendous asset, blessing the region with abundant, low-cost power. Half of the Northwests electric power comes from this source and at a price that is much lower than in any other area of the country.
And as time goes on, the prices we pay for federal power in the Northwest will become even cheaper. Once the debt from the Washington Public Power Supply System is paid off in less than 20 years and the dam construction debt to the U.S. Treasury is paid off 10 years after that the cost of providing hydropower could be half of what it is today.
In short, this is an increasingly valuable resource our region cannot afford to lose yet like the salmon, its future too is uncertain. People outside the region are increasingly voicing the belief that power generated by the federal dams in the Columbia Basin is a national resource that should benefit all citizens. To be blunt, they view the current situation as the U.S. taxpayers subsidizing Northwest electricity rates.
This notion is not new. It surfaced in the early 1980s during the Reagan administration, when Budget Director David Stockman proposed to sell all the federal dams outright to the highest bidders, and use the proceeds to help balance the federal budget.
Over the past 15 years, other proposals to lay claim to the federal power have come before Congress. To date, our Northwest delegation has always been in the position to successfully fend off those efforts. But that may not always be the case and let me tell you how fast it can happen.
When Oregon lost Senators Bob Packwood and Mark Hatfield in the space of one year, we went from having 56 years of senatorial experience to having none from number one in Senate seniority among the states to number 50.
This year there are again bills before Congress that would require BPA to sell federal power at a rate competitive with other wholesalers in the Northwest power market. That would mean our rates would go up and the resulting windfall would go to the federal government.
Senator Moynihan of New York, a sponsor of one of the bills, has stated the discounted rates provided by public power are a benefit which goes to a relatively few recipients at a tremendous expense to the American taxpayer. Moynihans bill is supported by a formal coalition of 114 representatives and 36 senators from the Northeast and Midwest.
Although no bills are likely to pass this session of Congress, momentum is building. The chance of some bill passing in Congress continues to grow.
And it will continue to grow in part because the electricity industry is moving from a heavily regulated market towards one that is open and competitive. Some question why the government is selling electricity and, in effect, locking out private competitors.
There are also questions of fairness. Why should some businesses have an edge over others solely because of their access to federal power?
As power markets become more competitive, the Bonneville Power Administration as a federally subsidized, cost-based system will stick out more and more. And the only way we are going to fend off those who want to sell the dams or force the BPA to sell power at market rates is to build a regional consensus.
We ignore this problem at our own peril. The stakes are huge. Pricing federal power at market would amount to at least a half billion dollar annual loss to our region. Our loss is the federal governments gain. Pricing federal power at market rates would bring the U.S. Treasury a considerable amount of money year after year.
Our defense of the Columbia River hydrosystem is further weakened because too many people in the Northwest are indifferent to whether we lose this source of low-cost power. The reason is simple: they do not have access to it. In fact, 60 percent of Northwesterners have no priority access to the power sold by the Bonneville Power Administration, because they are served by investor-owned electric companies.
This disparity will grow. A region where most of the customers get no federal power or only what BPA chooses to allocate is not one that can defend itself against powerful outside interests.
So, not only does the Northwest face the loss of our salmon runs and the further degradation of our regional ecosystem, the low cost power that has benefited our region for decades is also at risk.
These two challenges and their solutions are inseparably linked.
Changing the operation of federal dams to help fish or mitigate water quality problems affects the amount and cost of power produced as well as other economic stakeholders in the basin, from barging to agriculture. Furthermore, the sale of power from the federal system provides the main source of funding for fish and wildlife recovery in the basin.
If the Northwest does not propose a regional solution for fish and power, these issues will be decided for us. They will be decided by a Congress that is more interested in the value of our power than in the health of our environment. Further, if we do not present a four-state united front in Congress, the Bonneville Power Administration is also at significant risk.
To arrive at a unified regional position will require two important steps neither of them easy, both of them crucial.
First, we need a new regional governance structure for the Columbia Basin to replace the Northwest Power Planning Council. This new entity must have the proper mission, representation and authority to develop and implement a comprehensive plan that addresses not only fish and wildlife recovery and regional power needs, but also the trade-offs between the two.
I have been working closely with Governor Racicot of Montana to develop a set of principles to guide the creation of such a structure. The proposal envisions a regional entity that includes appropriate representation for the state and tribal governments of the Columbia Basin, for the federal government, and for Canada.
The comprehensive plan developed by this new body would specifically address hydropower operations, as well as habitat, hatchery and harvest practices, as they relate to fish and wildlife restoration.
The plan would be required to meet the requirements of the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and other state and federal environmental statutes, state water rights, and Indian treaty and trust obligations.
The plan, and all work undertaken by the new body, would also be required to be scientifically-based, economically sound, and appropriately sensitive to culture and history.
The plan would meet these standards with a composition of strategies and measures that reflect and build upon the regions values and preferences.
If the regions comprehensive plan meets all the relevant standards, then the federal agencies whose activities affect the basins fish and wildlife would be required to implement the plan by tailoring their activities to be consistent with it.
Second in addition to the establishment of a new Columbia Basin governance structure we must also a present a regional consensus on how to recast the BPA in light of a competitive power market.
This consensus must addresses at least three issues.
First, how BPA will sell its power in a competitive marketplace that is in keeping with the fact that it is a federal agency, not a private competitor. Bonneville cannot expect to act as an entrepreneur making profits at the expense of risk-taking, tax-paying private entities.
Second, how to prevent BPA from using its transmission system monopoly to keep competitors out of the Northwest power market. There are simply too many opportunities for BPA to take advantage of its transmission monopoly.
Third, how to achieve greater regional control over, and accountability for, the actions of BPA.
I am intrigued by proposals that have surfaced recently for the Northwest to buy the BPA, essentially to ensure that the benefits of the power systems accrue to our region into the future. In fact, your governor, Gary Locke, has argued that such an idea should be seriously considered by the four northwest states and by the electricity industry, both private and public. I agree.
Proposals of this magnitude on both fish and power will be controversial. Both Gov. Locke and Gov. Kempthorne of Idaho who have been active participants in these discussions have raised legitimate questions about the new Columbia Basin governance proposal that Gov. Racicot and I have developed.
And while these questions merit serious examination, I believe that without changes of this kind, we will cede control of the destiny of the Pacific Northwest to interests outside the region. That is simply not acceptable to me.
If we are to build the kind of regional consensus needed to move forward on both fish and power and, thus, to protect our common long term interests we must exert leadership within the Northwest to change what is essentially a parochial mind-set.
There are two things we can do to further this objective and to create a climate more conducive to united action.
First, we must act as not just as economic interests but as common residents of a remarkable region: the great Pacific Northwest that possesses qualities that are worth fighting for. And we can only do that together.
Certainly, all of us have economic interests and the sheer number of those interests affected by changes in the management of the Columbia River Basin is stunning: agriculture, recreation, aluminum smelters, barge companies, ports, utilities (both public and private) and the residential customers who depend on them. In other words, all of us.
Clearly, we must address the concerns of the economic stakeholders in any proposed plan and the costs of doing so must be clearly identified and incorporated as a part of implementation. But there is no reason that we cannot do this together. And if we do not do it together, we will all lose in the long run.
The current political posturing over dam breaching is a case in point. Some in Congress and in the region have stated unequivocally that dam breaching is off the table. By implication, then, the burden of fish and wildlife recovery must be shouldered by someone else. Yet those who have taken this position do not say whether that somebody is the timber industry, the aluminum industry, sportsfishing or some other economic stakeholder.
Similarly, on the power side, access to low-cost federal power pits state against state, customer against customer, and utility against utility.
If we allow this kind of politics to continue politics driven solely by subsets of the economic interests in the region, with little consideration for the larger regional interest we will sacrifice our ability to secure the environmental integrity of the Columbia Basin for this and future generations.
These fights will worsen over time unless we look for solutions that unite the region, rather than divide it.
Such solutions may seem beyond our grasp today, but they are not entirely beyond our vision. We have but to commit ourselves to finding them. As Robert Browning wrote in 1855: A mans reach should exceed his grasp, or whats a heaven for?
In that vein, I propose the following:
First, that the four Northwest Governors convene, as soon as possible, to build on the dialog we have already begun, with the objective of developing a proposal for a new regional governance structure for the Columbia Basin including consideration of acquiring the BPA and its assets.
Second, that this new governance entity be vested with the proper mission, representation and authority to develop and implement a comprehensive plan that addresses not only fish and wildlife recovery and regional power needs, but also the trade-offs between the two.
And, third, that this proposal be taken before the end of the year to the Northwest delegation for consideration by the United States Congress.
I recognize that meeting this challenge will be difficult riddled with many opportunities to take the easy, but not the right path. Our success will depend, in large part, on our willingness to move beyond parochial concerns to a broader appreciation of regional interest. I believe that we are up to the task.
Let me conclude by saying again that we are faced with a two-pronged challenge of enormous regional significance and implication. We cannot resolve the fish and wildlife issues without resolving the power issues. We cannot resolve the power issues without resolving the fish and wildlife issues. And, we cannot resolve either unless we can score a victory for regionalism over parochialism.
At stake is our future. As turn of the century essayist G.K. Chesterton pointed out, the future is a matter of choice, not a matter of chance. I believe that. Our choice is whether we will be victims of someone elses future or whether we will be masters of our own destiny.
The choice is ours.