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Steering Committee Biographies

Chuck Collins, Chair

Since 1981, Collins has been president of the Colsper West Corporation in Seattle, Washington. Prior to that he served as vice president and general manager at Polyform, U.S., Ltd.; transit director at Seattle Metro; and county administrator in King County. From 1981 through 1985 Collins was a member of the Northwest Power Planning Council, serving as chairman from 1984 to 1985. Currently, he is chairman of the State Commission on Student Learning and a board member for the Washington Dental Service, Inc.

Collins earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Gonzaga University in 1965, and a master's in public administration from the University of Washington in 1970.

Alvin Alexanderson

Alexanderson is the vice president for rates and regulatory affairs at Portland General Electric Company. His responsibilities include least-cost planning and demand-side resource evaluation. He received his bachelor of science degree from Hillsdale College and his law degree from the University of Michigan School of Law. He served as assistant attorney general for Oregon from 1972 to 1979, emphasizing economic regulation and antitrust law. He joined PGE in 1979 and has served as deputy general counsel, vice president of finance and president of Portland General Exchange, a power marketing affiliate.

His legal practice and his marketing and rates management experience covers a wide range of retail and wholesale pricing questions. He frequently represents investor-owned utility associations in matters involving wholesale power and transmission pricing. He lives in West Linn, Oregon, with his wife and two children.

Rick Applegate

Applegate is the West Coast conservation director for Trout Unlimited. Prior to that he spent eight years at the Northwest Power Planning Council as director of fish and wildlife. He has also worked for the Montana State Legislature, the Montana Constitutional Convention and the Environmental Quality Council. Applegate served as a minority staff director of a subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Rick has a bachelor of arts degree in political science and history and a master's in environmental policy from the University of Montana.

Ken Canon

Since 1981, Canon has represented Industrial Customers of Northwest Utilities (ICNU) as its executive director. ICNU represents its member's electric energy interests before the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), the Northwest Power Planning Council, with individual utilities and in other forums. In addition, Canon is the managing director of the Association of Public Agency Customers, a subset of ICNU, and participates in BPA rate proceedings.

Prior to 1981, Canon represented industries in legislative and regulatory arenas as the assistant general counsel for Associated Oregon Industries. Canon graduated from Willamette University Law School and is a partner in the Canon & Hutton law firm. His partner, Mary Ann Hutton, represents the Northwest Industrial Gas Users.

Jim Davis

Davis is a commissioner on the boards of the Douglas County Public Utility District in East Wenatchee, Washington. He also is a fourth-generation wheat farmer. He holds a bachelor of arts degree in education from Eastern Washington University.

Bill Drummond

Drummond is the manager of Western Montana Electric Generating and Transmission Co-op, Inc. in Missoula, Montana. The Cooperative provides power planning and conservation services for its seven members: six rural cooperatives and one tribal utility. Prior to joining the Cooperative in 1994, Drummond was the manager of the Public Power Council in Portland, an associ-ation of 115 publicly and cooperatively owned electric utilities in the Northwest. His educational background includes degrees in forestry from the University of Montana and economics from the University of Arizona.

Jason Eisdorfer

Eisdorfer has served as legal counsel and energy program director of the Citizen's Utility Board of Oregon since joining CUB in 1994. He has represented the residential consumer in numerous rate cases before the Oregon Public Utility Commission and in utility integrated resource planning processes.

Prior to joining CUB, Eisdorfer was an attorney with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of the General Counsel, and served an appointment as a special assistant U.S. attorney. Eisdorfer is a graduate of the University of Chicago, and received his law degree from the University of Oregon School of Law.

John Etchart

Etchart is chair of the Northwest Power Planning Council. He has worked for the Burlington Northern Railroad in Fort Worth, Texas, where he was vice president for state government relations, and for communications and public affairs before that. Between 1984 and 1988, he worked for Burlington Northern, Inc., in Montana as vice president for government affairs. He also worked for the Northern Tier Pipeline Company, acquiring siting permits, and for the U.S. Department of Interior, as special assistant in the Bureau of Reclamation acting as liaison with water interests, environmental and development groups. Etchart holds a bachelor's degree in history and English from Carroll College and a master's degree in guidance and school psychology. He has also done graduate work in political science and law.

Bob Gannon

Gannon is president and chief executive officer of the Montana Power Company, where he has worked for more than 20 years. Before joining Montana Power in 1974 as an attorney, he served two years as an assistant attorney general for the State of Montana, and another two and a half years as assistant U.S. attorney for Montana.

Gannon is a native of Butte, Montana. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a bachelor's degree in government. He earned his law degree in 1969 from the University of Montana and completed the Harvard University Advanced Management Program in 1989.

K.C. Golden

Currently an energy consultant based in Seattle, Golden was formerly the policy director and executive director for the Northwest Conservation Act Coalition, a regional alliance of public interest groups, utilities and businesses working for a clean, affordable Northwest energy future. He was a Kennedy Fellow, obtaining a master's in public policy, at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He has also worked at the Tennessee Valley Authority, at Harvard's Energy and Environmental Policy Center, and as a raft and canoe guide in California and New England. He served on the Washington Energy Strategy Committee, the Energy Facility Siting Process Review Committee, the Washington State Building Code Council and the Washington Energy Options Steering Committee. He has a bachelor's from the University of California at Berkeley.Charles Hedemark

Hedemark is executive vice president and chief operating officer for Intermountain Gas Company. He is responsible for the utility's operations. Hedemark has been with the company for 30 years and has served in a number of capacities.

A Boise native, he is a graduate of the College of Idaho and has completed additional graduate work at the University of Utah and the executive program at Stanford.

Hedemark currently is president of the Northwest Gas Association and serves on the board of directors of Home Federal Savings & Loan (headquartered in Nampa), the Boise Chamber of Commerce and Blue Cross of Idaho. He is a past president of the Idaho Falls Chamber of Commerce, past chairman for Idaho Business Week, (a program of private enterprise education for high school students), past chairman of the United Way of Ada County and past president of the Boise School Foundation. He also served on the Idaho State Energy Policy Board.

Roy Hemmingway

Hemmingway is Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber's salmon policy advisor. As such, he is responsible for coordinating state agency efforts to restore salmon and steelhead populations returning to both the Columbia River and to coastal streams. He also advises Governor Kitzhaber on matters relating to energy.

Hemmingway was previously in state government as a member of the Northwest Power Planning Council from 1981 to 1986. Before the Power Council, he helped write the Northwest Power Act. He also held the position of Deputy Public Utility Commissioner. He also has been a consultant working in the electric utility industry.

Hemmingway holds a law degree from Yale and a bachelor's degree from Stanford. He teaches utility law part-time at the Northwestern School of Law at Lewis and Clark College in Portland. He also serves as a board member, currently chairman, of the Riverdale School Board in the Portland area.

Mike Kreidler

Kreidler is a Washington member of the Northwest Power Planning Council. Although an optometrist by profession, he served 16 years in the Washington Legislature -- four terms in the House of Representatives and two in the Senate -- and then was elected to Congress in 1992. He served one term representing the 9th District, which includes parts of King, Pierce and Thurston counties. In Congress, Kreidler served on committees dealing with energy, commerce and veterans affairs, and subcommittees on health, the environment and energy. He worked for 20 years with Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound. Kreidler, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves, holds a doctor of optometry degree from Pacific University and a master's degree in public health from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Todd Maddock

Maddock is an Idaho member of the Northwest Power Planning Council. He worked for 32 years with the Potlatch Corporation in Lewiston, Idaho. From 1976 until the present he was director of public affairs at Potlatch for the Northwest region. His responsibilities included managing government affairs, media relations, employee communications and community relations. He has also been the principal lobbyist for Potlatch at the state level and with the Idaho congressional delegation. He has a bachelor's degree in forestry from Purdue University and has participated in a graduate fellowship for research and study of forest economics at Purdue.

Sharon Nelson

Nelson is chair of the Washington Utilities and Transportation Committee. She was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, received a bachelor's degree from Carlton College, a master's in teaching from the University of Chicago, and a law degree from the University of Washington. She has been a school teacher (1969-1973); staff council of U.S. Senate Commerce Committee (1976-78); legislative counsel to Consumers Union of United States (1978-81); private law practice (1982-83); staff coordinator for Joint Select Committee on Telecommunications of the Washington State Legislature (1983-85); assumed chairmanship of the Utilitiy Commission on February 11, 1985, and her current term ends January 1, 1997.

Walt Pollock

In April 1994, Pollock was appointed group vice president for marketing, conservation and production as part of a major competitiveness and reinvention initiative at the Bonneville Power Administration. He has agency executive responsibility for developing and implementing Bonneville's marketing plan, developing product and pricing policies, establishing rates and establishing policies and strategic direction.

Prior to his current position, he was assistant administrator in the office of power sales; assistant power manager; and, in 1979 when he first started with Bonneville, he served as head of the then newly formed energy conservation section.

Pollock is a native of the Northwest, having grown up in Vancouver, Washington. He attended the University of Washington, earning a degree in chemical engineering.

John Saven

Saven is executive director of Northwest Requirements Utilities, which includes approximately 40 utilities, located in six states, that are full requirements customers of the Bonneville Power Administration. These utilities are primarily small and rural, and may have significant agricultural electrical loads. He also provides executive staff support to two organizations: Northwest Irrigation Utilities and the Non-Generating Public Utilities Group.

As a consultant, Saven focused on financial analysis in the public sector. He served as deputy superintendent of finance and administration for Seattle City Light from 1983 to 1992. Prior to that, he was budget director for the City of Seattle. He obtained a bachelor of science degree from Syracuse University in 1970, and a master's degree in public administration from the University of Washington in 1972.

Rachel Shimshak

Shimshak is the director of the Renewable Northwest Project, a project launched in 1994 by a coalition of environmental groups, energy developers and public interest organizations to focus on the implementation of cost-effective, workable, renewable technologies. Before her move to the Northwest, Shimshak was the policy director for the Massachusetts Division of Energy Resources. Prior to that, she served as legislative director for the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group. She began her advocacy career in 1979 working for Public Citizen's Congress Watch, Ralph Nader's watchdog group on Capitol Hill. She graduated from the University of Oregon.

Brett Wilcox

In 1985, Wilcox founded Northwest Aluminum Company, a 90,000-ton per year primary aluminum smelter, and Northwest Aluminum Specialties, Inc., a state-of-the-art billet and forging stock producer. In addition to being the president and owner of these two companies, he is active in a number of other real estate and business ventures.

Prior to 1985, Wilcox was the executive director of Direct Services Industries, a trade association of 10 large aluminum and other energy intensive companies that purchase electricity directly from the Bonneville Power Administration. He was an attorney in Seattle, concentrating his practice in energy and general business matters.

Wilcox graduated from Princeton University, with a degree in public affairs in 1975. He received his law degree from Stanford Law School in 1978.

Gary Zarker

Since 1994, Zarker has been superintendent of Seattle City Light. Prior to that he served as department director for the Seattle Engineering Department; council member for the Metropolitan Services Department; acting deputy mayor for the Seattle mayor's office in 1986; and held various positions at the Office of Management and Budget between 1979 and 1986. Zarker graduated in 1970 from Grinnell College with a degree in liberal arts, and in 1992 from Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government.

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