Ten Dam Nights

From the beginning of his Administration, President Eisenhower has favored a decrease in the huge financial responsibilities taken on by the Federal Government under the New Deal. His theory: U.S. prosperity is better served by local enterprise than by federal expansion. "Partnership" in water-resources development is one facet of the theory. The Administration argues that local power companies (public and private) should share costs and profits, cutting federal investment to costs beyond the reach of local enterprisers. Opponents say major projects should be wholly financed by the Government for "all the people."

Last week in Oregon, where partisanship has veiled the partnership program in obscurity, the issue came to life in a series of ten lively debates up and down the state between Democratic Senator Richard Neuberger and Republican Representative Sam Coon. Proposition: "The John Day* bill (introduced in the House last spring by Coon) is in the public interest."

The bill concerns a Northwest nightmare: a burning need for more and more power at cheap rates. The New Deal spent millions for dams on the Columbia River, made Northwesterners the nation's biggest consumers of hydroelectric power. But the huge Northwest power pool, 58% generated by the Government, brought so much new industry and population that today the Northwest may have a serious power shortage by 1960. Although new dams are badly needed, Congress is now reluctant to grant the whopping sums they would cost.

A Swallow? A debatable solution is Sam Coon's John Day bill, which proposes the most elaborate partnership deal so far. Three local private companies would pay $273 million for the power-producing features of a $310 million dam across the Columbia River, in return get priority on its output for 50 years. The Government would build John Day Dam, own it forever and pay $37 million for navigation and flood-control features, that return no profit. John Day would have a capacity of 1,105,000 kilowatts of power (twice the potential of Bonneville Dam), permit slackwater commercial navigation 328 miles up the Columbia River from the Pacific Ocean to the wheat-growing Inland Empire.

Dick Neuberger, a highly vocal anti-partnership partisan, was spoiling to get a Republican on the debating platform, when Cattleman Sam Coon bravely accepted the challenge to defend his bill in public. Said Coon: "I've never run away from a fight in my life when I've knowed I was right, and I'm right now, so here I am."

In noisy small-town auditoriums, Coon argued that in view of congressional reluctance to pay for John Day, his bill was the only way to get it. Neuberger argued that no matter how long it took to get the dam, private utilities should not get the profits. Said he: "It isn't a partnership when one of the partners is allowed to swallow the other . . . I wouldn't care who owned General Motors if I could just have all the autos that come off the production line for the next 50 years."

A Desert? At Pendleton, Neuberger pointed out that Coon's bill eliminates the "preference clause" in federal-power development, which now gives publicly owned municipal and rural electrification systems priority over private companies in getting federal power. Replied Coon: Oregon gets only 24% of the Northwest output; eliminating public preference would "give Oregon consumers a break." Countered Neuberger: By setting a precedent for eliminating the traditional safeguard, Washington State might conceivably be entitled to 83% of all Northwest power on the basis of its proximity to dam sites.

Then the Senator cited the Bonneville Power Administration's rates as lowest in the U.S. (an average 2.3 mills per kw-h to industrial customers) v. one of the proposed partner's rates (averaging 8.2 mills). "How many industries do you think we could get at 8.2 mills?" he asked. "None. N-O-N-E."

Defended Coon: "I want to see these dams and these payrolls now, not in 12 or 27 years . . . I sometimes think the Senator would rather see Oregon turned into a desert than let one kilowatt of power be generated by a private firm." Insisted Neuberger: The shortage can be solved if the Northwest patiently fights for bigger federal appropriations.

For ten frenetic nights, the debaters brought out the biggest crowds in years. They tended to sympathize with Sam Coon. "Sam's sort of one of them," observed a small-town editor, but he added: "Neuberger easily out-debated him."

Neuberger needled Coon to "tell all these people exactly who wrote the John Day bill," declared that it was drafted by the president of a power company proposed as one of the Government's partners. Coon admitted that he had "expert consultation," but that he was the author.

In Bend, as the debate ended, Neuberger summed up: "Speeches for free enterprise won't bring industry and payrolls to the Pacific Northwest. Low-cost power will." But to Neuberger's reiterated faith in federal enterprise, Sam Coon replied that his opponent favors "socializing the electricity industry . . . He has lost this debate because he has been on the wrong side of the fence." Oregonians, enlightened and titillated at the same time, had learned much about one of the most important (and still unsolved) issues in their lives.

*John Day was a hunter who worked for Fur Baron John Jacob Astor, suffered such hardship while lost for a winter in the Oregon wilderness that he was insane when found in May 1812, and died soon after. In memoriam, Day's name was given to a small Columbia River tributary near The Dalles.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.