The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. is being asked for \u201ca couple of million dollars\u201d it apparently owes the U.S. Coast Guard for various cleanup activities done in the past years.<\/p>\n
CUC legal counsel James Sirok first brought the matter to the board of directors\u2019 meeting last March saying that it was he discussed it with the representatives of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe incurred from U.S. Coast Guard clean up expenses way back since 2008,\u201d Sirok said. <\/p>\n
\u201cNow we\u2019ve been approached again by EPA, their attorneys, to deal with these Coast Guard costs,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
According to Sirok, the assessment of cleanup costs and expenses were basically from 2010 to 2012 and some from 2014 to 2015 and were related to oil contamination on Saipan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose cleanup expenses, which are in the millions of dollars, have been sort of moved on through the years based on waiver we got from the Coast Guard, based on representation that we don\u2019t have the ability to pay for those,\u201d Sirok said. <\/p>\n
The board wasn\u2019t aware of such liability and board chair Adelina Roberto said it was the first time she heard it again since last year, which dealt with EPA assessments.<\/p>\n
Roberto and the other members raised the question of how much exactly do they need to pay and whether the liability was ever recorded because it was not on their books.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it\u2019s not on the books then we don\u2019t know anything,\u201d director Joe Torres said.<\/p>\n
Sirok responded that CUC received and official assessment letter for the costs incurred.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been assessed to us. The assessments were made before I came on board. Last time we dealt with this in 2013 to request to the Coast Guard that we don\u2019t have to pay for this because we don\u2019t have the money,\u201d Sirok said. <\/p>\n
Sirok said they were allowed to \u201cforego payment\u201d before board members came on board.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to deal with this issue again,\u201d Sirok said, adding that they will look into asking the Coast Guard \u201cto again defer payment.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we end up having to pay this, it will have to go to the rates,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. is being asked for \u201ca couple of million dollars\u201d it apparently…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[328,49,352,719],"class_list":["post-225330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-coast-guard","tag-cuc","tag-epa","tag-uscg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}