Roll On, Columbia

Electricity is the lifeblood of the Pacific Northwest. Although mighty dams--Grand Coulee, Bonneville, Hungry Horse, McNary--make the Columbia the greatest power producing river in the world, they cannot generate electricity fast enough to satisfy the demands of Oregon and Washington.

Almost all privately-owned utilities of the Northwest opposed constructing the Bonneville Dam and Grand Coulee projects, contending they would be enormous "white elephants." But the Army engineers built the dam anyway. Industries took root in the Columbia Basin that could not have existed without the new power. Aluminum companies constructed plants in Washington, each ton of their metal requiring electricity enough to burn a sixty-watt light bulb for thirty-eight years. A tremendous lumber industry developed which also gulped large quantities of power.

When they saw the new markets for power, private power companies wanted to build some "white elephants" themselves. But after the private utilities had constructed a number of dams on the Columbia's tributaries, the superiority of Government projects became apparent. Dams operated by one administration instead of a number of private companies produce fifteen to twenty per cent more electricity, each. The citizens of the Northwest, eager for multi-purpose projects, realized that no private power company was going to operate its dams to aid irrigation, flood control, navigation, or recreation.

Shared Power

Although the privately-owned Idaho Power Company is still trying to stir up public opinion against "socialism" so that private companies can build the Hell's Canyon project, most companies are content to use power from government dams.

Although the Bonneville Power Administration, in distributing government power, enforces the lowest power rates in the country, private companies still make a good profit.

Competition between public and private utilities is usually just smoldering, but occasional incidents fire up ill will. A few years ago, when a Washington private utility wanted to sell out to the community, the nation's crop of private utilities attacked the proposal as "creeping socialism" and by unearthing legal complications, prevented the sale.

The Northwest's private utilities are uneasy because the "preference clause" in federal power law specifies that publicly-owned companies can purchase all the power they need before private utilities get any. The Bonneville Power Administration did make short-term contacts with private companies during the war, but the private utilities realize that if the power shortage continues, their rights to government power will be whittled away. The private companies want the "preference clause" repealed, and hope that the economy-minded Congress will halt construction of new power cables. This would mean that the electricity would be available only to those large utilities which could build expensive transmission lines. Most small co-operative companies would not be able to claim their share of the power.

The Northwest's eyes will focus on Douglas McKay, the new Secretary of the Interior. An ardent states-rights governor of Oregon for the past two years, he told the Senate Committee of the Interior that "public power was getting most of the breaks in the Northwest." This may mean that McKay will not object if Congress fails to appropriate money for new transmission lines; it might even mean that McKay will want to let the private companies build the new projects on the Columbia. In any event, private utilities all over the country will eagerly watch developments in the Northwest to gain strength in their fight against "creeping socialism."