Utilities’ Power Swap to Cut Smog, Aid Fish

Two big Western power companies will swap electricity in a novel plan to lower Southern California air pollution and save baby salmon on the Columbia River in the Northwest.

Southern California Edison and the Bonneville Power Administration, which produces hydroelectric power on the Columbia River, will send each other electricity during different seasons of the year.

The plan calls for Bonneville to send excess power south during spring and early summer, allowing Edison to reduce production from its fossil-fuel generating plants when smog levels are on the rise.

This excess production will allow Bonneville to release more water from dams on the Columbia River in Oregon and Washington--helping to flush smolts, or baby salmon, down the river to the Pacific Ocean, encouraging their reproductive cycle.

Edison will return the “borrowed” power in winter when it is less smog-producing to generate. If the utility buys the replacement power outside California, that would only add to the net reduction in smog.

Northwest environmentalists have long complained that salmon runs on the Columbia are threatened by low water levels during migrations. Petitions to determine whether five salmon runs should be listed as endangered are before the National Marine Fisheries Service. The arrangement with Edison could help Bonneville avoid falling under federal orders to raise water levels on the river.

For its part, Edison, under the South Coast Air Quality Management Plan, must reduce nitrogen-oxide emissions over the next decade. The swap would eliminate at least 12 tons of emissions annually.

The swap is modest--200 megawatts, enough to service about 100,000 households--contrasted with the 16,000 megawatts typically used in Southern California on a hot summer day.

But Edison officials consider the plan--the result of a get-together between Bonneville Administrator Jim Jura and new Edison Chairman and Chief Executive John E. Bryson--to be only the first of what could be a number of moves motivated by environmental, not just financial, considerations.