[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 58 (Thursday, May 11, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3906-S3908]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEES IN OREGON

  Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I have come to talk to citizens 
of my State who have a rare privilege in the next few days: The two 
leading candidates for the highest office in our land will be in the 
State of Oregon. Vice President Gore will be there tomorrow, and 
Governor Bush will be

[[Page S3907]]

there on Tuesday. I will have occasion to be with Governor Bush, and my 
friend and colleague, Ron Wyden, will have occasion to be with Vice 
President Gore tomorrow.
  Oregonians need to ask a lot of questions to find out where these men 
are on issues that affect their lives. I came to speak in terms similar 
to those of Senator Gorton, who wants Washingtonians to ask what I want 
Oregonians to ask; that is, Mr. Vice President, where are you on the 
issue of hydroelectric power on the four Snake River dams in the State 
of Washington? I am not sure I know of an issue of greater importance 
to our State's environment and our State's economy. As a background to 
this question, Mr. Gore, where are you on the question of breaching 
these dams?
  I would like to talk a little bit about our energy policy in this 
country. So I say to any Oregonians that may be watching, I want to 
share a memo which I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

 Energy Secretary Richardson Announces Six Short-Term Actions To Help 
                         Prevent Power Outages


 stresses need for institutional change to protect reliability in the 
                               long term

       Energy Secretary Bill Richardson today announced a series 
     of short-term actions that the Department of Energy will take 
     to help ensure the reliability of the nation's power supply 
     in the coming months. Several regions across the country have 
     experienced reliability problems in recent summers and there 
     are concerns about the reliability of the nation's grid this 
     summer.
       These short-term actions by the Department of Energy, while 
     not a cure-all, are designed to help keep the lights on this 
     summer,'' said Secretary Richardson. ``To protect reliability 
     in the long term, we need new policies and passage of federal 
     electricity legislation to keep pace with rapidly changing 
     market developments.
       The Department of Energy will: work with other agencies to 
     identify opportunities to reduce electric consumption at 
     federal water projects during times of peak demand; urge the 
     Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and state utility 
     commissions to solicit and approve tariffs that will help 
     reduce electricity demands during peak time periods. For 
     instance, large industrial consumers could find it to their 
     advantage to sell their power entitlement back to their 
     utility if it would be profitable; explore opportunities for 
     the use of existing backup generators during power supply 
     emergencies to reduce the strain on electric systems and help 
     avoid blackouts; conduct an emergency exercise with state and 
     local governments to help prepare for potential summer power 
     supply emergencies; work closely with the utility industry to 
     gain up-to-date relevant information about potential grid-
     related problems as quickly as possible; and prepare public 
     service announcements to provide tips to help consumers 
     reduce electricity use and lower their bills.
       Secretary Richardson began a series of regional summits 
     this week between federal, state and local government 
     officials, regulators, utilities and consumers to discuss 
     ways to enhance the reliability of our electric system. The 
     first meetings are taking place on April 24 in Hartford, 
     Newark and New Orleans. On April 28, he will co-host a summit 
     in Sacramento.
       After last summer's outages Secretary Richardson formed a 
     Power Outage Study Team to review the events of last year and 
     provide recommendations for making the nation's grid more 
     reliable. The team's final report, issued last month, is 
     available online at http://www.policy.energy.gov.

 Mr. SMITH of Oregon. This is a news release from Department of Energy 
Secretary Richardson announcing six short-term actions to help prevent 
power outages.
  This will blow your mind.
  We are expecting power outages all over the United States this 
summer. The long-term forecast for the Pacific Northwest is for energy 
shortages, as well. If you look at the six proposals for what this 
Government is going to do, there isn't one proposal about producing 
energy. The first one is: Look for opportunities to reduce electric 
consumption at Federal water projects.
  Let me tell the farmers what that means, they are turning off the 
switch and they are turning off the water. That is what that means.
  Second, solicit and approve tariffs that will help reduce electricity 
demands during peak times. Do you know what that means, Mr. President? 
That means the rates are going up. It is like a tax increase. So the 
cost of your energy is going up. We are not going to produce any more, 
Heaven forbid, we are just going to make it more expensive.
  The next actions prescribed: The Energy Department will conduct an 
emergency exercise with State and local governments to help prepare for 
potential summer power supply emergencies. So we essentially will do a 
fire drill to see what happens when a whole city shuts down because 
electricity isn't produced when hitting a switch. Somebody has to turn 
something before we can have lights.
  The next one prescribed: the Government is going to gain up-to-date 
relevant information about potential grid-related problems as quickly 
as possible.
  Great. We don't already have that information?
  Finally, we are going to prepare public service announcements to 
provide tips for how you can conserve electricity.
  Nothing in the news release about producing.
  When Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush are in the State of Oregon, I want 
Oregonians to ask about our power. I want them to ask how are our 
lights going to go on at night? How are we going to stay warm in the 
winter? How are our factories going to continue to operate? How will we 
have jobs?
  This is not a hypothetical situation I am posing. These are real 
potential threats.
  In spite of all of that, the Vice President is talking about shutting 
down any offshore drilling. Fine, but realize that has a cost to the 
environment.
  Talk about not renewing nuclear licenses for energy plants--but that 
has an environmental cost as well. I see Senator Byrd on the floor all 
the time, decrying how the coal fields of West Virginia are being shut 
down because this Administration does not want to produce any more 
coal. I hear the people in the northeastern United States screaming 
about skyrocketing fuel prices in the winter, yet we are becoming more 
dependent upon foreign oil. Now I hear this Administration, in my neck 
of the woods, the Pacific Northwest, saying they are going to tear out 
our hydroelectric power.
  It is not unreasonable, my fellow Americans, to ask how are the 
lights going to go on? Our own Energy Department is admitting we have a 
problem on the horizon. I think the whole country was just reminded 
that gasoline does not come from a filling station. It is $2 a gallon 
and climbing in some cases, falling in others, I hope.
  We need an energy policy.
  I support conservation initiatives. Raise CAFE standards? I am for 
that. I am looking for ways to conserve. But Americans are demanding 
energy and this Administration's policy is to shut down domestic energy 
production and leave America more dependent on foreign oil. This does 
not add up.
  I hope Oregonians understand that it is very important to ask the 
Vice President of the United States what his policy on energy is. Mr. 
Bush has already answered it. He said if he is elected President, the 
dams will stay and you will keep your jobs and the lights will go on at 
night. I like that answer. It is clear.
  He also made the point that we can have our energy and we can have 
our fish as well. Let me tell you a real dirty little secret. As we 
speak, all that can be heard here in Washington is the gloom and doom 
about the fish going away. Do you know that in the Columbia/Snake 
Rivers right now, those rivers are teeming with salmon coming back to 
spawn?
  Let me give some numbers. As of today, at the furthest dam they want 
to take out, called the Lower Granite, 18,000 chinook have passed 
through this season. Some say, ``Oh, but they must be hatchery fish.'' 
To those I say no, they are not. A few of the fish are from hatchery 
stock, but many of them are wild. Do you know how many fish passed 
through this same dam last year? It was 240. This year it was 18,000. 
These numbers have many in the environmental community looking pretty 
ashen-faced.
  The first dam on the Columbia River that the fish pass through is 
called the Bonneville Dam, a dam Franklin Roosevelt dedicated, I 
believe in 1936. As of today, 160,000 spring chinook have passed over 
that dam this season. These are big returns. There are lots of fish 
returning. In fact, there are so many coming back that the Oregon 
Department of Fish and Wildlife is clubbing nearly every fish they can 
find

[[Page S3908]]

that is a hatchery fish. They are killing them so they will not spawn 
because they say that hatchery stock affects the ethnic purity of the 
wild stocks.
  The real secret about hatchery fish is that their eggs come from wild 
fish. But, nevertheless, we have so many fish now, apparently, that we 
have the luxury of clubbing them to death before they can spawn. By the 
way, the hatchery fish in the Atlantic salmon recovery program are 
treated the same as wild fish. But in spite of all this, we're told in 
the Pacific Northwest that we have to take out our dams. We have to 
take them out in order to have a normative river.
  What do we hear from the administration? We hear on the one hand that 
Fish and Wildlife has concluded the dams have to come out. The National 
Marine Fisheries Service says we need to study dam breaching for at 
least 10 years because we do not have a good answer yet. And, by the 
way, the studies they have been producing are all predicated on data 
from 1980 to the current date. However, if you look at data dating back 
to 1960, which is available, you do not come up with extinction 
modeling. But federal agencies just picked the years that had the worst 
ocean conditions to argue that the salmon are going to become extinct 
unless we tear out our dams. I want the fish but I don't want the 
people to be suckers. I think we are being set up to be that.

  I would like to know, also from Mr. Gore, why it is that the Corps of 
Engineers was about to issue their recommendation, which was don't take 
the dams out, and they were ordered by the White House not to make that 
recommendation? Why were they ordered to make no recommendation? What 
that adds up to, I believe, is that this is not about science--this is 
about political science. Political science is not the basis upon which 
this decision should be made, particularly when our rivers are full of 
fish as we speak.
  What are the consequences if they pull the dams out? I have named a 
few already, but I do know it adds 13 cents a bushel to every farmer's 
wheat. I know it means $11 million a year lost in revenue to the 
barging industry. When you take this wheat from the barges and put it 
on a truck, do you know how many trucks it takes to replace those 
barges per day? It takes 2,000 semi trucks a day. You say you care 
about the environment? Are you going to burn that kind of fuel, burn up 
those kinds of miles, cause that kind of congestion in the city of 
Portland and the city of Seattle? Not on my watch you will not.
  What else does tearing out the dams mean? It means a loss of about 
$130 million in property values to farmers. What does that mean to 
property taxes? School support? Roads? All those things are in jeopardy 
if you take those dams down. Dam breaching takes 37,000 acres of wheat 
out of production. What happens to those families? Their land goes back 
to sagebrush.
  It takes at least 5,370 direct jobs in Portland. I actually think it 
is higher than that when you look at the ripple effect. When you take 
out these dams, you lose longshoremen in Portland and the many other 
service-related jobs that depend on them. Not only that, but to take 
these dams out, it would cost $809 million. Some have said that it 
could cost that much for each dam--I don't know whether we can get 
through this body an appropriation to destroy Federal assets that will 
be in the billions of dollars. What are you going to replace the energy 
with? What are you going to burn? This is crazy.
  What else do you lose? You lose 3,033 megawatts of clean 
hydroelectric power. That is the amount it takes to run the city of 
Seattle every day. We are going to take that out in the face of 
projected energy shortages? Not on my watch.
  So I say with the Senator from Washington: No, not on our watch.
  I say to my fellow citizens in Oregon, this is the most important 
question you can ask Al Gore. Governor Bush has answered it. Please, 
Mr. Vice President, tell us what is your position on tearing out 
hydroelectric power in the Pacific Northwest? One of your agencies says 
do it. Another says we don't know enough yet. A third says don't do it. 
And Gore is refusing to answer the question.
  We can have our fish and we can have our power. There are many things 
we can do, short of destroying our energy infrastructure and our clean, 
hydroelectric power. There are many things we can do to save fish short 
of the destruction of this kind of energy. To replace our clean energy 
with any other type, you are going to burn something and Oregonians 
will live in a dirtier place. I do not want them to.
  I ask the Vice President, respectfully, to answer the question. What 
is your policy on dam breaching?

                          ____________________