Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on a topic that is of critical interest to our industry and the entire Pacific Northwest. I would like to focus my comments today on the role of the federal Caucus in developing salmon recovery efforts in the Northwest.
Protecting and recovering endangered salmon and maintaining the economic viability of the Northwest are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the recovery of salmon is dependent on industries like food processing.
Food processing is the largest manufacturing employer in the state of Idaho and the second largest in the states of Oregon and Washington. Our companies provide the tax revenues and economic stability the region requires to focus on such an enormous task. However, to be successful, the region must have a common vision. A vision that is shared by all parties, including the federal agencies.
The federal caucus does not currently seem to be a part of that shared vision for the Northwest. They continue to send conflicting messages and have failed to coordinate with critical regional initiatives. This uncertainty leads to increased conflict in the region and to decreased effectiveness of the regional process. It is hard to motivate business leaders to participate in a process that, in the end, means nothing because NMFS or one of the other agencies decides to go its own direction. I will give you a couple of examples.
At this time last year, the Northwest Food Processors Association, as a part of a comprehensive coalition of Northwest economic interests, agreed to support and participate in the Northwest Power Planning Council's Framework process. As you know, the purpose of the Framework is to assess a number of potential recovery alternatives for the Columbia/Snake system. We agreed to participate because the Framework was to include all of the affected parties; tribes, economic interests, federal agencies and environmental groups, in a process that would be open, fair and scientifically valid.
The federal caucus supported and encouraged the Framework process. Danny Consenstein, Columbia Basin Coordinator for NMFS, serves as one of the executive management team members for the Framework. However, once the project was funded and well under way, the federal caucus announced that they would be developing a separate vision for recovery, commonly referred to as the 4H paper. This process is happening behind closed doors, with no outside involvement. The agencies are still participating in the Framework, but how can the process have any chance for success when the federal agencies that hold the regulatory hammer are developing their own separate vision for the region?
A second example shows our concern for what appears to be extremely serious coordination issues among the federal agencies.
The Bonneville Power Administration is currently in the middle of a controversial rate case that will have long term impacts on the Pacific Northwest. On September 21, 1998, after nearly a year long public process, Vice President Gore announced a set of "Fish and Wildlife Funding Principles" which would be incorporated into the BPA rate case. These principles were formally incorporated into BPA's Record of Decision for the Power Subscription Strategy issued in December of 1998.
Last month, we learned that three federal bureaucrats, from NMFS, U.S. Fish and Wildlife and EPA, each of whom are members of the federal caucus, had drafted a seventeen page memo titled "Preliminary Cost Estimates for Two Fish and Wildlife Alternatives." This memo, which was circulated to key Administration officials, attempts to make a case for further rate increases for BPA from 10-22% in the 2002-2006 period. This is on top of the excessive reserves BPA already plans to accumulate using its adopted "Fish Funding Principles."
While the contents of the memo are of critical concern to the region's industry, possibly the most shocking part of this incident is that the memo was never shown to officials at the Bonneville Power Administration prior to being circulated among top Clinton administration officials.
If the caucus cannot or will not coordinate such an important initiative, how can we as economic stakeholders hope to work with them? Can we trust their statements and even more concerning, what is coming next?
The future of the Northwest will be shaped by the decisions that are made in the next few years. With so much on the line, we cannot afford to have federal bureaucrats pursuing their personal agendas outside the accountability of the formal regional process.