[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 167 (Thursday, October 26, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2047-E2048]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          REMARKS ON H.R. 2491

                                 ______


                            HON. KEN CALVERT

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, October 26, 1995

  Mr. CALVERT. Mr. Speaker, the House leadership recently removed from 
the budget reconciliation legislation a provision to auction the 
Southeastern Power Administration [SEPA]. I applaud this action as the 
measure would have increased SEPA customer power rates and established 
a poor precedent for other Federal power marketing administrations 
[PMA's].
  SEPA ratepayers would be adversely affected by a sale as had been 
proposed in the original resources package. Simply put, that type of 
auction sale of SEPA would have almost certainly meant rate increases 
to consumers, and the larger the sale price, the larger the rate 
increase. If the facilities were sold to a private power company, the 
CBO estimates that consumer-owned electric utilities could pay as much 
as $75 million more for PMA power; costs that would have been passed on 
to electric consumers.
  Though I am not from the SEPA region, I am concerned about the 
precedent at PMA sale would create for other regions of the country. 
Millions of customers throughout the Nation are served by PMA's. As a 
Representative from Riverside, I am worried that the electric customers 
in southern California who receive their power from the Western Area 
Power Administration [WAPA] would see their electric payments increase 
if Western were sold. Costs for water delivered by the metropolitan 
water district would almost certainly go up, since power from Hoover 
Dam and Parker Dam is used to pump that water.
  The reconciliation package does include language that will institute 
a study of SEPA, WAPA, and Southwestern Power Administration [SWPA] to 
evaluate possible sale structures and the effects of such sales. I 
support this language, and suspect it will bear out that WAPA is not a 
good candidate for auction and that any sale of WAPA should take into 
account a number of factors which would not be addressed in an auction 
sale.
  While I do support the defederalization of PMA's, I believe there is 
a better solution than the one proposed by the Resources Committee--a 
solution that is fair to those entities that made substantial 
investments in the projects 

[[Page E2048]]
and facilities that comprise WAPA and the other regions' PMA's while at 
the same time, protects the customers who receive PMA power. I am in 
the process of reviewing a number of proposals that achieve these 
goals. I look forward to seeing that these views are fairly represented 
in the study called for in the reconciliation package.

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