Today marks the beginning of Protect Northwest Power, a new campaign by the Northwest Progressive Institute to ensure that the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) — one of our region’s greatest and most important assets — remains publicly owned and operated.
BPA’s roots date back to 1937, when Congress created it to market electricity generated by the Bonneville Dam (now one of many dams that together form the Columbia River System) and build the infrastructure needed to deliver that power to customers, chiefly utility districts and private power companies. Its marketing authority was later extended to encompass all federally-owned hydroprojects in the Pacific Northwest. BPA will celebrate its centennial in 2037.
For decades, our region’s congressional delegation has successfully fought on a bipartisan basis to defeat schemes to privatize or sell off BPA. But with Donald Trump in the White House, BPA’s future as a well-run public service is arguably more in danger than it’s ever been.
That’s why we’ve created this campaign.
Donald Trump and his Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry, are proposing to loot and plunder this essential, well managed public service by selling it off and privatizing its infrastructure. We cannot allow that to happen. Like our publicly-owned ports, BPA is a vital economic engine that our entire region depends on. BPA is worth fighting to protect… now and forever.
This website will serve as the online hub of our Protect Northwest Power campaign. Check back here to learn what your Northwest elected representatives and organizations like NPI are doing to ensure that BPA remains a public service in public ownership, and for opportunities to lobby the executive branch and other members of Congress in support of that objective.
