Locke: Real crisis will come this fall

John Stark, The Bellingham Herald

A summer power crisis expected in California may be getting all the attention, but the real crisis for the Pacific Northwest will come next fall and winter, Gov. Gary Locke said Monday in Bellingham.

Seattle Police Department offers job opportunities The Seattle Police Department plans a special civil service exam in Bellingham for displaced Georgia-Pacific West Inc. workers who might want to work for the department.

The department has about 50 openings for civilian jobs and 80 for uniformed positions, said James Ritter, recruiting officer. No date has been set for the exam.

To register: (206) 684-7805. Department details: http://www.seattlepolicejobs.com

The reservoirs that generate much of the Northwest's electricity are near record low levels, he said. Those reservoirs are unlikely to be refilled during the drier summer months, and that could mean trouble late this year when temperatures drop and days grow short, Locke told the Bellingham Rotary Club.

Locke said the problem points out the need for a broad, ongoing conservation effort. He praised Whatcom County Executive Pete Kremen for a successful program that cut courthouse power usage by 25 percent.

But he kept up his criticism of President Bush's administration for refusing to cap the wholesale price of power. While wholesale power costs may have played no more than an indirect role in last week's announced closure of the Georgia-Pacific West Inc. pulp and chemical plant, Locke contended that power prices would be important in efforts to save the 330 jobs that remain at G-P's tissue mill.

Locke said the 420 G-P pulp and chemical workers who lost their jobs will benefit from extra money being provided to the state's technical and community colleges for job retraining. He credited state Rep. Kelli Linville, D-Bellingham, with alerting him to the need and for taking the steps to secure funding that he estimated at $200,000 to $300,000. Without that emergency money, Locke said the colleges might have had trouble accommodating the sudden influx of displaced G-P workers.

While the state will do everything possible to help those workers, Locke said he wants to focus on bringing down power costs before more jobs are lost, at the tissue plant and elsewhere in the state.

Price caps needed

Locke said the Bush administration and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should stop power sellers from exploiting the energy shortage. He called for "short-term and temporary limits to stabilize the market."

"We don't care what you call it or how it's done, but it simply must be done," Locke said.

He elaborated briefly in response to a question after his address.

"There's no justification for these independent power producers to be selling for 100 to 200 times what they normally charge," Locke said. "Our businesses, our homeowners, can't afford those prices. It's tantamount to a blackout. It's an economic blackout."

Locke said his administration is pushing tax incentives to encourage aluminum plants like Alcoa Intalco Works to generate their own power. And he said he will keep pushing the Bush administration and Congress to hold down West Coast power prices until the shortage eases.

He acknowledged there may not be any way to bring Northwest power prices down to the low levels the region's residents and industries enjoyed for decades.

"It will still be much cheaper than other regions, but higher than what we're all used to paying," he said.

Energy myths

The governor said two myths cloud public understanding of the energy crisis:

• Don't save power, because the power Washington saves just gets sold to California. In fact, Locke said, when the Bonneville Power Administration sells power to California during peak-use periods there, California pays back the power two-for-one later in the day. The payback enables BPA to reduce water flow through its turbines, saving the hydropower for later use.

• The state caused the crisis by not approving the construction of power plants. Not true, Locke said: Before the power crisis hit, the state had approved construction of six power plants with a combined capacity of 3,000 megawatts, more than enough power for two Seattles. But the private developers chose not to proceed with construction.

"The state did its part, but it was the companies who chose to take their investment dollars and put them elsewhere," Locke said.

Reach John Stark at jstark@bellingh.gannett.com or call 715-2274.

http://news.bellinghamherald.com/stories/20010403/FrontPage/48060.shtml

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), April 03, 2001