Draft Sixth Power Plan Comment

I am a former employee of Bonneville Power Administration, Energy Efficiency office, of the Portland branch. I would like to dedicate this testimony, in memory and honor of all victims of Hurricanes Katrina/Rita. I wish to thank the council for their efforts, hard work, and inclusion of the following statement for the record: My name is Martha Perez and I am proud of my previous career with BPA, because I learned a great deal about what it is that we are doing well, but also about the constraints that our government is facing. I discovered that our electrical grid is extremely fragile, and to exert more demand upon it, without first fortifying/upgrading, will lead to disastrous results. Next, our contract process, with respect to how we work with the Public Utility Districts aka "PUD", is far from being a perfect one. We also need to improve our public-input process, which should include time for q & a, as well as written/oral testimony. PGE Boardman, which produces coal, a contentious point of debate, must go through an extensive & exhaustive permitting process and I recommend that their request-for-permit, be challenged at this time. Any permitting process that involves coal, should be. I am testifying, because I am concerned about the fact that we are subsidizing dirty coal efforts, at the expense of clean energy pilot programs, that can make more of a meaningful impact on climate change, air emissions, catastrophic global weather events, energy efficiency and pollution in general. While I wish that we had the luxury of time to employ demonstration-models, the fact is that catastrophic weather change is already here, in full force. Once again, I wish to wholeheartedly thank the council for their attention to this urgent matter.