Power Marketing Administrations PMAs

The great federal dams of the New Deal produced far more electricity than the government needed, and Congress created agencies to sell it. The Bonneville Power Administration was established by the Bonneville Project Act of August 20, 1937, to market power from dams on the Columbia River. The Southwestern Power Administration followed in 1943, the Southeastern Power Administration in 1950, and the Western Area Power Administration in 1977, when all four were placed in the new Energy Department. Each is led by its own Administrator.

The dams are owned and run by the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation, and the power marketing administrations sell their output at cost-based rates, with preference by law to public power districts, municipal utilities, and rural electric cooperatives. Bonneville and Western also own large high-voltage transmission networks, with Bonneville supplying roughly a quarter of the electricity used in the Pacific Northwest. The agencies are funded from their power sales and repay the Treasury for the federal investment in the projects.

Presidents of both parties have proposed selling some or all of the agencies' transmission lines and assets, arguing that the government should not be in the power business, while lawmakers from the regions they serve have blocked those efforts, citing low rates for rural and public utilities. Drought, salmon recovery on the Columbia, and the growth of regional power markets are reshaping their operations, and in 2025 Bonneville chose to join a new western day-ahead electricity market.