THE CHALLENGE OF PUBLIC POWER
Neuberger, Richard L.
The Challenge Of Public Power By RICHARD L NEUBERGER Portland, Oreg. I REMEMBER the morning that Franklin D. Roosevelt stood at Bonneville Dam 8 years ago. Dew still clung to the grass along the...
...Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams on the Columbia River have been producing, since the war began, power to make possible approximately one-third of the nation's airplanes...
...It improves navigation...
...Grand Coulee is the biggest edifice ever reared by man...
...The rate for power from Bonneville and Grand Coulee is $17.50 a kilowatt-year...
...It is wise to have projects on a sound budgetary basis...
...The net surplus after payment of all costs, interest on the investment, and all maintenance and operating expenses now totals the sum of $14,500,000...
...They couldn't eat it...
...THE private utilities claim that Federal projects are never really paid for...
...These factories pay taxes into State, Federal, and local treasuries and hire thousands of people...
...The President looked out across the concrete ramparts of the dam, stretching in a battlement from shore to shore...
...Will we learn that dollars and gold are only symbols, but that quinine and crackers and bullets—yes, and oil and coal —are tangible things needed for the...
...It irrigates land...
...Grand Coulee Dam will irrigate 1.200,000 acres of land...
...Will it...
...Since 1940, 15 light metal plants, costing $165,000,000, have established in the Northwest...
...they couldn't melt it into bullets...
...With the President at Bonneville, it was thought the issuance of this report would be highly embarrassing...
...Bonneville and Grand Coulee are approaching this desirable goal...
...A stupendous waste of public funds, these papers inferred...
...And he said that the United States Government would control "for all time" the vast power output about to come into production...
...The investment might not pay off for many years...
...But what about the tons of oil and coal consumed daily to get the fast freights and long passengers of the Southern Pacific, Great Northern, and all the other lines across the Continental Divide and down to the Coast...
...Prior to that time, virtually all aluminum had been manufactured east of the Mississippi River...
...F.D.R...
...Water power never gives out...
...The American soldiers needed quinine, food, and ammunition...
...The nation's coal and oil stocks are limited...
...Fog shrouded the summit of Table Mountain across the Columbia River...
...Let's look at the record...
...Nor is this all...
...This means that one kilowatt of power for 365 days costs $17.50...
...Steam power consumes coal and oil, resources which are definitely exhaustible...
...Is this true...
...It provides lakes for recreation...
...The most conservative industrialists in the region admit that without Grand Coulee and Bonneville, the airplane program on the Pacific Coast would be only a shadow of its present proportions...
...These factories did not build in the regions where power is produced from the supposedly more efficient steam plants...
...Dew still clung to the grass along the Union Pacific right-of-way...
...is dead...
...It wouldn't be sound is another worn-out cliche...
...preservation of society...
...I am reminded of the story of the Bank of Manila gold reserves that were stored on Corregidor Island when American forces made their gallant stand against the Japanese invaders...
...What about electrifying the railroads which twist across the Far West for hundreds of mountain and upland miles ? Oh, it would not be economical, is one answer to this question...
...30,300,000 Flood control...
...The most useless material on the besieged island was the stored-up treasurer...
...Yet Government economists believe thatwithin 50 years this rate will repay the complete cost of the Federal dams...
...The gold was utterly useless...
...These payments will be returned at a charge of $85 per acre for permanent water-rights...
...Approximately $348,000,000 will be repaid to the Federal Government through the sale of power, even at the low rate of $17.50 a kilowatt-year...
...Power from the dams is the foundation for vast new industrial enterprises...
...It was not as valuable as 20 cents worth of quinine, as one shotgun shell, as a box of crackers...
...Supposedly worth millions, it could not hold off the Japanese an extra second...
...The great Federal projects on the Columbia River are paying for themselves...
...Supposing that the electrification of the...
...He spoke of the benefits of hydroelectri-city, improved navigation, and flood control for all the people along the river...
...It is the lowest power rate in the country on a wholesale basis...
...THIS should teach us a lesson...
...Many papers played it up dramatically, implying that the immense Federal projects on the Columbia River were doomed to be failures...
...they couldn't use it to quell malaria...
...1,000,000 These various sub-divisions total up to the whole cost of the undertaking...
...Coal and oil must be conserved ; now is a good time to start...
...Would it not be a national advantage to have these trains moved by hydroelectricity from the Columbia River, a resource that is inexhaustible ? This water will flow across the dams as long as concrete endures and snow melts in the Canadian Rockies...
...They claim there will be no use for the energy...
...They are not white elephants in any sense of the word...
...WELL, the report is ancient history now...
...But more important still, it is in the interest of the U. S. A. to conserve our dwindling resources...
...Who was right that morning so long ago in time and space—Franklin D. Roosevelt or the private power companies...
...113,800,000 River control...
...Here is how construction costs have been allocated on the basis of the particular purposes of the project: Irrigation ..............................................$341,900,000 Commercial power...
...An additional $50,500,000 of the cost will be returned from the sale of power for such irrigation purposes as pumping...
...They moved across the continent to the vicinity of Bonneville and Grand Coulee, for from the water-power projects on the Columbia River comes a flow of electricity which is cheaper, more constant and more abundant than that available from steam...
...They are working pachyderms that produce airplanes, reclaim soil and light farms...
...railroads of the West is not immediately sound from a dollars-and-cents standpoint...
...The late J. D. Ross, first administrator of Bonneville Dam, said that Bonneville and Grand Coulee constituted "an oil well which would never run dry, a coal mine that can never thin out...
...A steam plant turns out only power...
...granted...
...This is fairly technical information, but it all adds up to an important conclusion...
...This will support at least 20,000 fertile farms for returning soldiers...
...In other words, the return from the sales of power will enable the new agricultural pioneers at Grand Coulee to start with such low assessments that their chances of success are greatly improved...
...Spray from the spillway rose like a plume in the mountain air...
...But the Columbia River flows on forever...
...The sum will be paid over a 40-year period with no interest charges...
...Which is the more important—dollar balances or resources that can definitely give out...
...What about the cost of all this...
...It was a mockery...
...Then he dedicated Bonneville to a new empire in the Far West...
...A dam does far more than that...
...This revenue from power means that the farmers buying water will have to pay only $87,500,000...
...It checks floods...
...This has brought in to the Government a total of $62,000,000 in power revenues...
...The cost of the dam itself and the irrigation works will reach the soaring total of $487,-000,000—about the sum required for 5 battleships...
...all geographers and geologists know that...
...It is a resource that will last through eternity...
...Already, the same people who protested the building of the big dams are now contending that after the war the usefulness of the projects will end...
...On the same day that the President spoke, a galaxy of private utility companies in the state of New York chose to issue a report claiming that steam power was far cheaper and more economical than energy generated from falling water...
Vol. 9 • July 1945 • No. 29
