BPA market decision will cost ratepayers and salmon

Published 1:30 am Friday, August 1, 2025

Recently, the Bonneville Power Administration stood at a moment of truth. It had to decide whether to follow its mission, vision and value statements or sell out ratepayers and the Columbia Basin ecosystem.

BPA chose the sellout route, as explained in a recent Op-Ed and letters to the editor.

The appalling one-two punch: First, the decision to join a power market based in Arkansas that will be more costly and less resilient than joining the other market, based in California. The second: BPA’s recent recommendation to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program that its salmon recovery goals be eliminated.

If BPA is allowed to take this path, it will ensure higher rates for its customers and the extinction of the Southern Resident orcas, who rely on salmon, especially endangered spring chinook salmon from the Snake River, for food. BPA must not be allowed to nullify its mission statement, which includes: “Mitigation of the impacts on fish and wildlife from the federally owned hydroelectric projects from which BPA markets power.”

This makes about as much sense as BPA’s continued operation of the four Lower Snake River dams, even though they sell the dams’ power for 15 percent of what it costs to produce.

BPA’s bad decisions must stop here. Ratepayers should not pay the price for its obsession with control. Salmon and orcas should not pay the price for its failure to mitigate damage to fish runs, caused significantly by the four Lower Snake River dams.

Marjorie Millner

Vancouver, Wash.