National Reports
FARRAGUT, MAX
NATIONAL REPORTS Giveaway on the Snake River By Max Farragut Another big fight over public vs. private development of natural resources, similar to the recent Hells Canyon struggle, is shaping up...
...If licenses are granted for the private Pleasant Valley and Mountain Sheep dams, it will also be impossible to build at Nez Perce, one of the best dam sites in the United States...
...These two problems, which have been plaguing the region for decades, seemed close to solution until the present administration reversed the trend of Federal development of the Columbia-Snake River system and threw the waterways open to private groups...
...Opposition to the giveaway now under consideration threatens to become equally potent...
...Within the Commission itself, there is a division of opinion on the combine's request: The staff, headed by deputy general counsel John C. Mason, has recommended against giving away these valuable sites...
...Max Farragut, a free-lance writer, makes his home in Portland, Oregon...
...Moreover, the five private dams would store only 1.5 million acre-feet of water—a loss of 6.5 million acre-feet...
...At any rate, feeling in the Pacific Northwest is that this latest episode will prove extremely damaging to the Republicans...
...In its brief, the state said the proposed dams would ''render impossible the realization of known flood-control and hydro-energy resources...
...One of the ironies of the situation is that Secretary of the Interior Fred Seaton is known to be against the private-utility plan, but his arguments were ignored by the White House...
...Following the steps they took in the Hells Canyon case, the various public power associations, allied with the Granges and Farmers Union, are planning to take the issue to the courts...
...Asking the Commission to take whatever steps are necessary to remedy the situation, it observed: "One such step would be the full re-examination of the flood-storage and hydro evidence, and a suspension of final determination of the matter until all evidence necessary to proper solution of the problem may be brought before the Commission...
...In a region crying for additional power and desperately in need of floodwater storage space, these losses are staggering...
...and they would provide only 4 million kilowatts of power— a loss of 1.5 million kilowatts...
...Together they would provide 5.5 million kilowatts of power and store 8 million acre-feet of water—about 40 per cent of all the flood control needed to prevent the kind of flood which in 1948 destroyed an enormous amount of property and took several lives...
...The Army engineers, who have seen their plan scuttled and their careful studies gone for nought, are also against it but must keep mum...
...private development of natural resources, similar to the recent Hells Canyon struggle, is shaping up in the Pacific Northwest...
...Involved are power and flood control...
...the examiner, Edward B. Marsh, has approved their transfer to the private group...
...One veteran Republican Congressman who barely squeaked through in 1956, Hal Holmes of Washington, has already announced that he will not run in 1958...
...Center of the dispute this time is the Pacific Northwest Power Company, a private utility combine which is seeking Federal Power Commission licenses to build dams at Pleasant Valley and Mountain Sheep on the Middle Snake River in Idaho...
...This time, too, the state of Oregon, now controlled by Democrats, has protested to the FPC against the granting of licenses for the private Pleasant Valley and Mountain Sheep programs...
...Among other things, in 1956 it resulted in the Republicans losing three Congressional seats in Oregon and one Senate seat in Idaho...
...Although experts agreed that the Army plan was sound, President Eisenhower's first Secretary of the Interior, Douglas McKay, literally dumped it into the river when he abandoned the Government's claim on the Hells Canyon site...
...In 1948, the Army Corps of Engineers published its famous control plan for the Columbia-Snake River...
...Public-power interests are determined to wage a stalling fight, if necessary...
...It called for the construction of multi-purpose high dams at Hells Canyon and Nez Perce...
...Privately he confessed that he didn't stand a chance of being re-elected...
...They aim to keep the issue alive until 1960, when it is hoped that the Democrats will recapture the Presidency and stop all give aways...
...The latter is equivalent to the entire power capacity of Grand Coulee, the world's largest dam...
...But it is almost certain that the Commission's members will brush aside the staff report and side with Marsh, as they did in the Hells Canyon case...
...The latter has become a cause celebre in the West...
...His action enabled the Idaho Power Company to obtain licenses for three small dams —Brownlee, Oxbow and low Hells Canyon—on that stretch of the river...
Vol. 41 • January 1958 • No. 1
