Kaiser's should use energy for aluminum

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For many years, the Bonneville Power Administration has provided power to Kaiser Aluminum at greatly reduced rates. This has allowed Kaiser to compete profitably in times when the market for aluminum was poor. The ordinary electrical consumer has subsidized this practice through higher electrical bills.


Recently, Kaiser discovered it to be more profitable to resell this cheap power on the open market rather than using it to produce aluminum. This, of course, resulted in plant shut downs and massive lay-offs, a condition which Kaiser's board of directors was apparently willing to live with.


In an advertisement in the April 26 Spokesman-Review, Kaiser asks us to write our elected representatives to protest the short-sighted actions of the BPA in asking Kaiser to stop profiteering at the expense of the ordinary electrical consumer. We are to urge them to "help save family-wage aluminum jobs." (These, I assume, would be the jobs that went away when Kaiser sold all that power.)


I will write Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and Rep. George Nethercutt. I will also write Gov. Gary Locke. I will urge them to save Northwest jobs. I will urge them to do so by stipulating that every watt of electricity that BPA sells to Kaiser aluminum be used to produce aluminum, not to fatten the wallets of the greedy robber barons who control Kaiser Aluminum.

Donald Larson
Spokane, WA