Unprecedented

For sheer obfuscation. nothing quite matches the sloganeering of public v.

private power partisans in the Pacific Northwest. Pro-public advocates cry that the slightest evidence of private enterprise is a "giveaway" of the natural resources bequeathed "the people'' by the Almighty. Pro-private advocates shrill that an inch of dam-building aid from any government source amounts to a mile of "creeping socialism" and a rape of the "American Way." Under such a bombardment of absolutes, the electorate often loses the real problem: how to get cheaper electric power under specific conditions in specific places by means public, or private, or in any combination thereof.

Washington's Stevens County is one Pacific Northwest community where the issue was presented in specific terms. Last week, after nearly 20 years of both public and private power. Stevens County citizens voted overwhelmingly for private power. Reason: public power rates had become far more expensive than private, and no longer fitted their needs.

Second Look. Not until 1937, when the Federal Government built 1.200 miles of low-cost rural lines, did most of sparsely settled Stevens County (pop. 19,500) get any electricity at all. The privately owned Washington Water Power Co., which served a few Stevens County towns, had been unable during the Depression to finance the job. To get even cheaper rates, once the tax-paid lines were built. Stevens County formed a Public Utilities District --one of 23 county government electrification systems in the State of Washington's 39 counties.

With authority under state law. the P.U.D. tried to buy up both federal and private systems. After absorbing the federal lines, it took out a capital-raising loan on them which added $51.000 a year in interest alone to the taxpayers' debt--and helped erase the P.U.D.'s competitive edge. By 1954. when Washington Water Power's 2.983 predominantly municipal customers were paying only 1.35-c- per kwh, the P.U.D.'s 2.300 predominantly rural customers were paying a rate of 2.72-c-.

In 1953 the P.U.D. began legal condemnation proceedings against the private company's facilities, and many Stevens County citizens took a second look at their ostensibly "cheap"' public power system. Washington Water Power (whose 4OO-mile Stevens County lines amount to only 2% of its statewide holdings) saw a rare chance to dramatize its side of the public v. private issue. It offered to buy the P.U.D. Brushed aside, its case was re-bolstered by a citizens' petition to put the problem to a popular vote--the first such power election in Northwest history.

Heavy Vote. The question on the ballot: "Shall P.U.D. No. i sell all its electrical transmission, distribution and associated properties to the Washington Water Power Co. for $2,905.000?" Both sides agreed that if the Washington Water Power Co. failed to muster 60% of the voters, it would sell its Stevens County holdings to the P.U.D. for $3,100,000.

On election day 74.2% of Stevens County voters went to the polls (v. 60% in the 1952 presidential election). Result: 5.009 in favor of the company, 2,028 against. Although Northwesterners for the first time in the memory of man had voted solidly for private power against public in an open contest, the real significance was deeper. If "cheap" public power had really been cheaper than private, the election would have gone the other way. The real significance lay in the fact that Stevens County ignored sloganeering and chose the power system that fits Stevens County today.

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