Power: One Worth Waiting For

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"Decisions on great projects," said Board Chairman Kinsey M. Robinson of the Pacific Northwest Power Co., "are a long time in the making." Take it from one who knows.

For nine years, Robinson and Pacific Northwest, a consortium of four private power firms, have been seeking approval to build a $257 million, 670-ft.-high dam at Mountain Sheep in the middle reaches of the Snake River astride the Oregon-Idaho border. Competing with Pacific Northwest was the Washington Public Power Supply System, a group of 16 public utilities, which offered to build a comparable dam at Mountain Sheep or an even bigger one (800 ft. high and costing $369 million) farther north at Nez Perce. And bucking both was Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, who wanted the Federal Government to do the job itself at Mountain Sheep.

Last week, by a 3-2 decision, the Federal Power Commission finally gave the nod to Pacific Northwest. Robinson was jubilant. It was, he declared, "a great victory for multiple-purpose resource development by private capital."

Actually, it was not that clear-cut a victory. Though the case was the biggest public-v. private-power dispute since the private Idaho Power Co. won the right to build three dams on the Hell's Canyon stretch of the Snake River ten years ago, there were complicating factors, as the FPC, painstakingly pointed out in its three-part decision.

First, the commission ruled out Nez Perce because it would have killed more migrating Chinook salmon and steelhead fish than the High Mountain Sheep Dam. Some 200,000 fishermen and conservationists in the Northwest are already alarmed at the toll that such great dams in the Columbia River Basin as Bonneville and Grand Coulee are exacting on the $12 million-a-year salmon business. Second, the five Kennedy-appointed commissioners unanimously knocked down the Government's dam-building bid on the grounds that Pacific Northwest could do everything the Government proposed to do, and faster. And finally, in the key 3-2 decision, the commission said that Pacific Northwest had priority to develop the High Mountain Sheep Dam by virtue of a preliminary permit it was granted in 1955.

Ultimately, the High Mountain Sheep Dam will minimize flooding along the Snake and will generate 2,000,000 kw. in a booming region whose power needs are growing by 15% a year. Washington public power spokesmen, plainly miffed, claimed that their huge Nez Perce project would generate 3,200,000 kw., and would tame the flood-prone Salmon River as well as the Snake.

With 30 days to appeal for a rehearing, they said that the decision would not be left "unchallenged."