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“POWER AND POLITICS” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Energy was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H8283-H8284 on Sept. 27, 2000.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
POWER AND POLITICS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from California (Mr. Ose) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. OSE. Mr. Speaker, I have come to the floor today to share with my colleagues some of the information we dug out last week in a series of hearings in the Committee on Government Reform focusing on the energy challenges we face as a country. I would like to specifically address the issue of electricity and how it is generated and distributed throughout the country, particularly the Southwest of which California is a certain portion.
In our hearings last week, we had the various investor-owned utilities come and testify with us, a couple of environmental groups, we had the Department of Energy, we had the administrator for the EPA and we had one of the representatives of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission come and visit with us.
What became apparent is that the mix of electricity in this country is quite complex. There are different generators of different sizes and utilities that contribute to us having electricity throughout our country. Interestingly enough, two of the largest electric generators in the country are the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers. I would like to specifically focus my comments today on those two entities.
In the West, the Bureau of Reclamation is a huge power generator. The Army Corps of Engineers more so in the Northwest at Bonneville but the Bureau, along the Colorado River and elsewhere, generates huge amounts of electricity. If you look at our electric markets and you consider different end users, California in fact is a huge end user of this electricity.
Now, the challenge we face is how do we plan for the delivery of electricity to the end users in a manner timely enough to make it possible for our economy to continue to thrive and for people to be cool in their homes in the summer and warm in the winter. If you look at the Bureau of Reclamation Web site, you will see on their map, they have four different regions in the West.
The two that I would like to specifically address today are the Sierra Nevada region and the Desert Southwest region. In particular, the Desert Southwest region focuses along the Colorado River and in fact includes southern California as part of its delivery market.
If you examine the facilities that the Bureau runs in the Desert Southwest region, you will see the Hoover Dam; and you will see a number of other facilities, one of which is the Glen Canyon Dam. In the midst of power shortages this summer in June, July and August, the interesting thing that you will see in this information is that the Bureau of Reclamation was running most of their facilities flat out, all the way to the red line, but the Glen Canyon Dam was running at a rate 50 percent of what it was running at last year. In other words, the Bureau had reduced generation by 300,000 megawatts in the face of severe energy shortages.
Now, that manifested itself in San Diego and elsewhere, because electricity is very fluid. It comes from somewhere, it goes somewhere, and when one is down, another might be up in terms of generating capacity. The consequence, the reality is that Glen Canyon's generating capacity was reduced, for what? For what purpose? If you track back the legislation or the historical data, you will see that in 1992, the 104th Session of this Congress, legislation was passed that allowed the Bureau, working with the Fish and Wildlife Service to try and experiment with the water flow from Glen Canyon that is used to generate electricity in the turbines. The legislation is very clear. It says, you will test this low flow regime along the Colorado River to see its environmental benefit. But the legislation also includes a waiver provision that says in a period of huge or unexpected power disruptions, the Bureau is authorized to run the turbines flat out. In other words, abandon the low flow regime.
In June, July, and August, the Bureau chose, they elected, they made a conscious decision to keep generation low. What that did was it hammered areas like San Diego and Silicon Valley and others who rely on this electricity to power industry and provide jobs and to cool houses and the like. It is interesting. Last Monday, the Bureau issued a waiver and they ran those turbines up to respond to a peak demand for electricity in the Desert Southwest region. But that was the first time this summer they have done that.
Mr. Speaker, the very clear message here is that this administration chose to run Glen Canyon over the summer at 50 percent of capacity and the consequence in San Diego and elsewhere in California were brownouts, blackouts and seniors having to choose between maintaining a low temperature in their house, for instance, and being able to buy food or prescription drugs. That is a reality. It is as much a reality as any other comparison we have. The administration is at fault. I have yet to hear a rational explanation of why this had to occur.
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