WSP10052

• File Number: 8220.111
• Description: Central Utah Participating Project
• State: UT
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Date: 1/1/1987
• Title: Western Resources Wrap-up: 1987 & 1992
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: News Article/Press Release

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page 3 WRW washn x x x WRW

His water district has the responsibility for bringing water
into the Salt Lake City area, he said. "That is our top priority. We
aren't going to be distracted from it. And I'm not going to be
pushed around," Christiansen vowed.
PPDC was incorporated here in Washington in June 1986 to
provide non-federal funding to construct generating facilities at
federal dams. It is a non-profit corporation headed by Holum, an
Assistant Secretary of Interior from 1961-69 in the Kennedy-Johnson
Administrations who later founded and headed Western Fuels Assn.
prior to his retirement in 1985. After PPDC was formed, Holum said
PPDC had identified three sites within the Colorado River storage
project as its first possible ventures. He listed them as Diamond
Fork in CUP, Ridgway dam in the Dallas Creek project and Dolores dam
in the Dolores project, both in Colorado. In his letter to stennis,
Holum listed hydro sites in the Central Arizona Project (CAP) as
"worthy projects." When WRW talked to Holum on April 27, he added
the unbuilt hydro features of the controversial Auburn project in
California were also possibilities.
Holum told WRW he was disappointed that CUWCD has deferred
PPDC's proposal on Bonneville unit hydro. He said the PPDC Board of
Directors would meet on April 30, and he will recommend to the
Board that it ask the Colorado River Energy Distributors Association
(CREDA) to establish an advisory committee to try to "sell" PPDC's
proposal to Utah local interests. "We hope they will change their
mind," Holum said.
PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE POWER BATTLE
WRW asked Christiansen whether he was concerned about getting
CUWCD into the middle of a public vs. private power battle between
Utah Power and Light Co. (UP&L), an investor-owned utility
headquartered in Salt Lake City widely known for its opposition to
public power, and PPDC, which is made up of strong advocates of
rural electric cooperatives and public power. Holum, 71, has been a
giant in the rural electric cooperative movement in the Midwest and
the West for years. "We have tried to stay out of power battles, but
that wasn't a major consideration," Christiansen told WRW.
UP&L bested Holum while he was Assistant Secretary of Interior
in the early 1960's in a battle over the CRSP power transmission
system. Holum was an all-out advocate for an all-federal CRSP
transmission system. But Stewart L. Udall, then Secretary of
Interior, allowed UP&L build the lines in Utah upon UP&L's offer to
wheel power for the preference customers of federal power--ie.,
municipal public power systems and rural electric cooperatives.
PPDC has been embroiled in controversy in recent weeks. A
portion of a report of the House Interior Committee to the House
Budget Committee in March expressed concern about WAPA and PPDC
negotiating a cost-sharing agreement that would give "an unfair
competitive advantage to a privileged corporation financed by the
U.S. taxpayer." Holum complained to Chairman Morris K. Udall,
D-Ariz., of House Interio.r that this was untrue. Udall disavowed
that portion of the report in a letter to Chairman william H. Gray,
III, D-Pa., of the House BUdget Committee on March 20. HCM (more)

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