{"id":231165,"date":"2016-06-30T06:00:36","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T20:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=231165"},"modified":"2016-06-30T06:00:36","modified_gmt":"2016-06-29T20:00:36","slug":"torres-tells-cuc-fix-leaks-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/torres-tells-cuc-fix-leaks-first\/","title":{"rendered":"Torres tells CUC: Fix leaks first"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_231176\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-231176\" style=\"width: 267px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Ralph-Deleon-Guerrero-Torres-2010-267x300.jpg\" alt=\"Torres\" width=\"267\" height=\"300\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-231176\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-231176\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Torres<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Gov. Ralph DLG Torres reiterated on Tuesday that the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. has \u201cgot to fix the leaks first,\u201d or its problem with its unaccounted 70 percent in water distribution losses, before moving forward on a proposed reverse-osmosis system.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut if there is a whole plan to fix the leaks and then the RO, then my answer is yes,\u201d Torres told Saipan Tribune on Tinian Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>He was sought for comment on the issue a day after some House lawmakers and members of the CUC board butted heads over the RO proposal, projected to cost $160 million and financed through taking on debt, during a House utilities committee meeting Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Board members cautioned though that this was only a \u201cpossible solution\u201d to their problems and pleaded with lawmakers to help them address the central government\u2019s outstanding debt.<\/p>\n<p>Also on Monday, a report from legislative fiscal analyst David Demapan surfaced on CUC\u2019s dire financial status and million-of-dollars in fines they faced from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for continued negligence in addressing vacant management positions.<\/p>\n<p>The report, addressed to Rep. Francis Taimano (Ind-Saipan), chair of the House utilities committee, says that CUC\u2019s negative unrestricted cash had not been approved since fired former chief financial officer Matt Yaquinto gave a report to the CUC board signaling CUC\u2019s dire financial status.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVendor payments are being \u2018delayed\u2019 in order to preserve cash, but eventually CUC will not have money to buy fuel to run the plant 24\/7, unless a significant influx of cash comes in soon. Many utilities have an average of 23 weeks of cash on hand at all times. In other words, the rule of thumb for CUC is to have a working capital reserves (unrestricted cash) of $40 million to cover a period of 5.4 months in advance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>CUC, he said, is also being penalized by the U.S. Coast Guard in the neighborhood of $6.8 million related to \u201cclean up.\u201d Demapan did not elaborate.<\/p>\n<p>Demapan also disclosed that CUC has responded to the earlier May 25 letter from EPA on vacant management positions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCUC responded to this letter and sent three candidates that were all rejected for the executive director position,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEPA was not happy as none of the candidates were even close to matching the requirements and one didn\u2019t even have a degree,\u201d Demapan added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gov. Ralph DLG Torres reiterated on Tuesday that the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. has \u201cgot to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":231176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[260,49,352,65],"class_list":["post-231165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-commonwealth-utilities-corp","tag-cuc","tag-epa","tag-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231165","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\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}