POWER: Bonneville Prospectus

President Roosevelt last week sent a chit to remind his Congress that one of his New Deal projects would be ready to begin functioning before the end of this year. That was the $45,000,000 Bonneville dam on the Columbia River 30 miles above Portland. He sent a report saying: “Incidental to its major purpose of improving navigation, the project will produce electric energy which will be used in the operation of the dam, locks and fish-ways, and surplus power will be available for distribution to the public.” He urgently advised Congress to pass a bill providing for Bonneville’s administration.

Bonneville dam is really not one dam but two, situated catercorner to each other on opposite sides of Bradford Island which lies in midstream. It has a single-lift lock which will raise vessels 66 ft., higher than any other single lock in the world. Since it is the only dam in the U. S. (except abandoned ‘Quoddy on the opposite side of the U. S.) situated on tidewater, it will enable ocean-going vessels, once channels have been deepened, to go 50 miles farther up the Columbia to The Dalles, and when eight or nine more dams are built (if ever), will open some 600 miles of the Columbia River to navigation. At present one boat with 600-ton capacity is being built and half a dozen 300-ton barges are planned to make use of the 50 miles of new watercourse.

Navigation, however, is not the chief problem involved in the administration of the new dam, nor are the fish problems. Two salmon ladders were built—cascades with steps one foot high and 16 ft. wide. Six salmon “elevators” or fish locks were also provided. These are chambers 20 by 30 ft. into which the salmon may swim; then a gate is closed and a grating, similar to an elevator, rises until the fish can swim out into the reservoir above the dam. These devices have not yet been tested, for salmon are still able to swim between the piers of the unfinished dam. Unfortunately salmon swim blindly into places where the current is strongest, and if the 50,000 salmon a day which pass upstream at spawning time do not like the new conveniences provided for them, it will be just too bad for the $10,000,000-a-year Columbia River salmon industry.*

But last week it appeared that from the beginning the Power tail is to wag the dam dog at Bonneville. Not to ship experts or fish experts but to power experts did Franklin Roosevelt go for advice on Bonneville’s “incidental” problem. The President’s Committee on National Power Policy (created six weeks ago) recommended in its first report that an administrator be appointed for Bonneville to conduct its operations along lines “not incompatible with any national power policy which may ultimately be established.”

The outlines of this ultimate power policy were foreshadowed by the chief recommendations of the committee for Bonneville:

¶To prevent the waste of surplus power, the Bonneville administrator should be empowered to build transmission lines, substations, etc. etc. More than that, he should have a power (which TVA does not have) “to acquire by eminent domain if need be, such real and personal property, franchises, electric transmission lines and facilities as may be necessary”—in short to condemn and take over private facilities.

Until 1939 half the surplus power created at Bonneville should be reserved for public agencies—i.e., States, counties, municipalities, cooperatives, who wish to buy it for distribution. After 1939 such public agencies would have preferred right to buy all the power. ¶The Administrator should sell the surplus power on contracts not exceeding 20 years, specifying the rates at which it should be retailed.

¶ Rates should be as low as possible to encourage the use of electricity provided they pay for the cost of developing the electricity, including amortization not only of the cost of “electric facilities . . . but also such a share of the cost of facilities having joint value for … other purposes as the power development may fairly bear.”

One surplus power problem the report did not consider. Washington and Oregon already have relatively cheap power from private plants (their residential electric rates average 2.7¢ and 3¢ a kilowatt hour) and they lead the U. S. in residential use of electricity. Next year with only-two of its ten generating units functioning, Bonneville will be able to produce about half as much power as the whole Bonneville transmission area is already consuming. When all Bonneville’s production comes in, the area will have to consume three times as much power as at present if some of the Government or private generating plants are not to be largely idle. Unless new industries are attracted, Bonneville’s cheap -power-on-tide-water will be an oversurplus.

*Other problems are to prevent fingerling salmon from being mangled by the power turbines as they swim down to the sea (it is hoped they will not be hurt because the turbine blades will turn only 75 revolutions per minute) and to keep them from swimming into irrigation ditches upstream, to die quietly in orchards and grain fields.