Priest Rapids Pact

In a Wall Street office last week, two shirtsleeved Washington State wheat farmers tackled a heroic task in a historic cause. As commissioners of Grant County's tiny (12,805 customers) Public Utility District No. 2, the farmers started signing their names 166,000 times on revenue bonds that will set in motion the nation's third biggest hydroelectric development (after Grand Coulee and Hoover Dams). It will be the first to be built under President Eisenhower's policy of power partnership between private and public utilities. The project: Columbia River dams and power plants at Priest Rapids and Wanapum, 200 miles downstream from Grand Coulee. When the $383.7 million complex is completed in 1963, it will generate 1,231,000 kw., almost twice the capacity needed by Seattle.

Last week's $166 million bond-signing marathon, to finance the first 631,000-kw. unit at Priest Rapids, climaxed a four-year tug-of-war over the quiet Columbia River valley. In 1950 Congress authorized 100% federal financing, for Priest Rapids, as recommended by the Army Corps of Engineers. But in 1952 P.U.D. Manager Glenn Smothers, Attorney Nat Washington Jr. and fellow Grant County inhabitants, who were convinced that the power project could and should be locally financed, battled public-power advocates in Congress to win legislation withdrawing Priest Rapids from the federal projects list. In rapid succession, Grant County P.U.D. fought court skirmishes with Washington's State Power Commission, which wanted to develop Priest Rapids itself, and with a local contractor who objected to the district's plan for power distribution.

Fortnight ago, the dogged utility district tasted victory: the first Grant County bond issue was sold by a nationwide investment banking syndicate headed by Halsey, Stuart & Co. The transaction marked one of the biggest private investments ever made in hydroelectric power. Grant County's financing plan also was unusual: to help shoulder the costs, twelve public and private utility companies in three states have signed 50-year contracts for 63 1/2% of Priest Rapids power output, guaranteed repayment of the debt.

Few Northwesterners doubt that the investment will pay rich dividends. Grand Coulee irrigation water has already turned hundreds of square miles of sagebrush desert into lush cropland, boomed Grant County population 67% (to 40,000) in six years. The once-barren hills have sprouted new farming towns and fertilizer plants, railroad yards and huge sugar-beet refineries. When the $200 million Wanapum Dam follows Priest Rapids into production, Grant County citizens will at last have the cheap, abundant power to balance their boom with industry.

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