The CNMI power crisis: A many-headed monster

Load-shedding. Surges and spikes that damage valuable equipment. Unexpected blackouts that last for hours. August rates at an all-time high (a 235-percent increase over the rates just 10 months ago). A rising debt for our public utility company. The power situation on our islands has become a many-headed monster that threatens the entire Commonwealth.

No individual family in the CNMI is immune to the cost. Businesses, large and small, are experiencing damage from the daily outages which crash valuable equipment and hurt the bottom line. How many residents and businesses will we lose before we tame this beast?

In the rush to find solutions, some island leaders may be responding in ways that further complicate the situation and challenge scarce resources.

A legislative resolution now requests that all federal grant money be channeled into one “kitty” for the CNMI to use to fix the problem. There were suggestions that we stop all ongoing and planned projects for other critical services and channel all funds to resolving the power crisis. The power crisis is a gargantuan problem, but robbing Peter to pay Paul when we have other critical needs is really no cure; it will only create another host of problems that will pile one crisis on top of another on our overburdened plate.

Meanwhile, a few CNMI lawmakers are flying to our nation’s capital to present a legislative resolution in person to Congress, asking the federal government to help us fix our power problem once and for all. If they do this, will that tame the beast faster? With a congressional staff delegation coming to the CNMI next week, would it have been just as effective to have waited until then and presented the resolution to the group here on Saipan?

CUC itself has not shown a complete picture in terms of how it plans to solve this problem once and for all. Besides the ongoing repairs of some engines and the planned rental of power generators from Aggreko, it has yet to present to the public a step-by-step outline complete with timelines of what it will do to solve this crisis. This vacuum in the information chain is creating deep anxiety within the community and adds another layer to the uncertainty that is sweeping the islands.

The Fitial administration, meanwhile, has resurrected plans to privatize CUC, and will explore co-generation with those businesses that may have extra capacity from their own generators, but do they have the needed expertise? The CNMI’s track record in these types of effort is not exactly reassuring. A bid to privatize the utility agency in 2000 stalled and died a natural death due to irregularities in the bid process. During the Babauta administration, the idea was revisited and was quickly dropped after fears that it would boost power rates to unprecedented levels. CUC has had another stab at it about two years ago, but the Office of the Public Auditor shot it down after CUC seemed to turn the process into a fundraising effort.

We have also begun to consider alternative forms of energy—thermal energy, nuclear power, wind power and more. What are the pros and cons of each of these options, how much would it cost to pursue them and bottom line—how long would it be before the community sees some relief?

Given the complexity of the power issue, not to mention the significant “brain drain” going on in the CNMI today, do we really have the needed expertise locally to fix such a difficult technical problem?

The current administration inherited this many-headed monster during the worst fiscal crisis in CNMI history. To be fair, none of our government leaders, past nor present, knew that global fuel costs would rise this fast. Nevertheless, the bottom line is: This monster is killing our community and we must fix the problem fast.

Pointing the finger is not what’s needed to solve this issue. We need to work together now in coming up with a coherent, economically viable, practical solution to tame the beast.