THE NORTH WEST HAS CLEAN AIR

While pouter shortages are not expected to hit the country until mid winter, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and western Montana are already running 7 to 10% short of the demand for electric power. The reservoirs of the Columbia River Hydroelectric System have insufficient water due to an unusually light snowfall in the Cascades and Rockies last winter. Under normal circumstances, the shortage would be made up by power supplied by fossil fired or nuclear plants, but environmental hysteria keeps nuclear plant construction far behind schedule, and clean air standards keep conventional power plants from burning readily available fuel. The new coal fired plant near Centralia, Wash., for example, has never been able to work at its capacity of l,400 MW, because the costly scrubbers it has installed still do not bring the plant within the standards.

Utility officials say that two winters of extraordinarily heavy precipitation will be needed to bring the reservoirs up to their usual levels; they fear 30% power cuts by March 1974. Hardest hit industry is aluminum smelting. When outside supplies of power from California and British Columbia dwindled, companies had to lay off more than 1,000 men, and production may have to be cut by 25% or more by next February. Washington's legislature has authorized Governor Evans to allocate power and, in an emergency, to relax state imposed emission limits.

Governor McCall of Oregon has already ordered an end to the use of electricity for all decorative and commercial display lighting. The order has an ironic twist: McCall knows he has no such powers, but simply hopes the order will not be challenged in court.

The greatest single help, according to Glen Hall, Vice President of Idaho Power Co., would be to relax air pollution standards enough to enable coal and oil fired plants to work at capacity.