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Northwest Dragged into Calif. Crisis by Patrick McMahon USA Today, January 26, 2001

SEATTLE -- Frustration is growing in the Pacific Northwest as residents see electricity siphoned off to California while local officials raise power prices and preach conservation at home.

''I think Oregon is being set up to be an energy farm for California,'' U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., warns.

''I deal with phone calls every day from people asking, 'Why should I sit in the dark so that those Californians can use their tanning beds and heat their swimming pools?' '' says David Danner, an aide to Washington Gov. Gary Locke.

While California's power blackouts and botched deregulation of electricity have captured headlines, the reverberations here are also intense.

The Northwest is short of water for its hydroelectric dams, which provide 70% of the region's electricity. As a result, some utilities are paying high prices for electricity on the open market at the same time they are under federal orders to share with California.

''The frustration is that the federal government sees it only as a California problem, and it's a problem for the entire region,'' says Seattle Mayor Paul Schell. ''We're all on the same power grid.''

Washington utilities don't escape the finger-pointing. ''It's really convenient to put all the blame on California,'' says Mark Glyde of the Northwest Energy Coalition, a regional alliance of community organizations. ''But many utilities and officials in Washington state in the mid-1990s stopped building new power plants and halted most efforts to make homes and businesses more efficient. Now we're paying the price.''

And the prices continue to go up. On Thursday, the Bonneville Power Administration, the federal agency that supplies almost half the electricity for the Pacific Northwest, said it expects to raise wholesale power rates 60% in the next five years unless the region cuts costs.

On the short list of complaints in the Northwest:

• Consumers are frustrated that some electric bills are up dramatically in Washington compared with California. While Tacoma put a 43% surcharge on its electric bills, residential rate increases in much of California are currently held to 9%.

• Some residents feel that conservation efforts here will only ''give California more electricity for their hot tubs.'' Locke says his state has cut power consumption by 4% in the last few weeks.

• The power the Northwest is selling to California may be needed here if weather turns severe.

• Talk of potential bankruptcy by California utilities prompts worry that Northwest utilities won't be paid for the power they're supplying their neighbor to the south.

Even with the rate increases, the Northwest still enjoys some of the cheapest electricity in the USA. Residents using 1,000 kilowatt-hours of power a month would pay $64.55 in Tacoma, compared with $125 in San Francisco.

But Smith, a Republican, called on President Bush ''to ensure that your administration, unlike the Clinton administration, does not seek to resolve California's energy crisis at the expense of Oregon and the other Western states.''

''There's frustration on a couple levels,'' says Dick Watson, director of power planning at the Northwest Power Planning Council, a regional agency based in Portland, Ore.

''Gee whiz, a 9% increase in California. That doesn't smack of much in the way of equity'' for the Northwest, he says.

Energy problems for the Northwest aren't due simply to California's deregulation of its electricity market and resulting high prices. A sunny fall and an unusually dry winter have robbed the region's massive hydroelectric dams of the stored water that powers their electricity-producing turbines.

The temperate winter so far has reduced demand for power in the Northwest, Watson says, but there is potential for California-style power shortages ''if we get a Siberian Express cold snap in here in February.''

''There isn't a lot of empathy for California,'' says Bob Royer of Seattle City Light, the city's power company. For years, Californians have been blamed for moving here, increasing congestion and raising home prices.

''We've had a longtime love-hate relationship with California, and this brings out the hate side,'' he says. ''But we also have a big stake in California. . . . It's hard to be jingoistic.''