Panel runs into delay in report
A special committee created by the Commonwealth Utilities Corporation on the water desalination plant on Saipan is expected to come out with a report on the long-delayed project in a board meeting this week, officials said.
CUC Executive Director Timothy P. Villagomez said the report has mapped out a proposal on the critical project based on previous public hearings and a survey among residents on the island.
“(The committee) will be ready to submit their report to the whole body. Once they are done we will know,” he said.
The panel, headed by former CUC board chairman Benjamin A. Sablan, has been drawing up the report on the proposed desalination facility in an effort to seek possible solution to the financial setback that has stalled it over the last two years.
The meeting, scheduled this Friday, will discuss the status of the report to decide whether they need to have more hearings before determining the fate of the project.
Legislators, particularly from perennially-dry areas in central Saipan, have been prodding the government-owned utility firm to push the project to help address the critical water shortage on the island.
Many villagers have frowned on the cost-sharing scheme being proposed by CUC in which they will have to pay 10 times more than their present water bills to finance the desalination facility.
While some lawmakers have pledged to subsidize low-income families to assist them in paying their bills, utility officials have flipped-flopped on the project due to absence of clear support from both its customers and government officials.
The desalination plant, which will process potable water from the surrounding ocean, is being offered as solution to acute water problems facing Garapan, Gualo Rai and China Town, that have been compounded in recent months by the drought sparked by the El Nino weather phenomenon.
CUC is considering a proposal from Earth Tech, a U.S. water technology and engineering firm, to build and operate the plant for an initial cost of $10 million.
In exchange, the utility is obliged to purchase some three millions gallons of water everyday at a cost of $5 million each year for the next 20 years — an amount considered costly by CUC.
