Legal consequences of dry year

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