At various times during the recent scramble to cope with the California 
crisis, we found ourselves shaking our heads in disbelief, often saying 
something like:  "can you believe this? two months ago, we had no idea the PX 
would be melted down!"  We have tremendous resilience in responding to sudden 
legal emergencies, but I am wondering if there is any way we can pro-actively 
plan for what is almost certain to be a further extension of this crisis in 
the west.  I have just come out of a Portland floor meeting where a number of 
presentations were made, one of which was by Tim Heizenrader, our 
fundamentals guru, on the hydro situation in the west.  This is the driest 
year in a hundred years. In a few months we are going to have the equivalent 
of all the nuculear plants in the west shutting down on the same day.   

It is hard to not get kind of hysterical about this legally.  Do we just have 
to sit here like the proverbial deer with this bright light shining in our 
eyes, or is there something we can do to prepare?  If we could have seen the 
first phase of the California crisis, what might we have done differently?  
We can clearly see another phase coming at us, but what do do now, while we 
have all this time, is the big quetion.  I honestly think we should give this 
some priority now, while we may have time to do something about it.   

The reason I think we should engage our better minds on this now is, that I 
tested the traders out on this a time or two (not Tim, who usually thinks a 
lot more strategically than others) and the basic answer they give to the 
question:  what are we going to do if BPA can't deliver us our firm power?"  
is:  "Oh, we've sold it as firm, if they don't deliver we have liquidated 
damages,  we'll be kept whole."  This nonchalant answer is, at one level, the 
truth,  but, are we just going to shrug our shoulders and hope the LD's work 
out?   ----cgy