Rota — With barely two more weeks to go before a mandated deadline, the Commonwealth Utilities Corporation yesterday postponed discussion on the much-delayed power project on Saipan until May 25 where it expects to award the contract to one of the bidders.<\/p>\n
“A decision will be made during that time,” CUC Board Chair Jesus T. Guerrero told in an interview after a board meeting held at the Rota Health Center cafeteria.<\/p>\n
Although he declined to give details on what will happen at next week’s meeting, he said they will have to come up with a selection soon as the law stipulating installation of the 80-megawatt plant has given them 60 days to do so.<\/p>\n
Signed by the governor in April 3, Public Law 12-1 reinstates the original plan on the controversial project and retains the result of the independent evaluation conducted by the private engineering firm Burns & McDonnell.<\/p>\n
However, it provides the 60-day deadline for CUC to complete review of its findings and award the $120 million contract to the best bidder. This means that they have to come up with a firm plan no later than June 3, according to the chairman.<\/p>\n
Enron, the Tomen Consortium and SPP\/HEI received the highest scores in the nine-month evaluation that ended last October, but was nearly thrown out by the government-owned utility firm when it collapsed the 80-MW project in January 1999.<\/p>\n
CUC officials are still trying to get a private legal counsel to help them implement the intent of the law. A search for a new lawyer to represent the corporation that began last April 27 has yielded only one prospect.<\/p>\n
Mr. Guerrero refused to name the law firm that submitted the sole proposal under an emergency procurement approved by the board. He disclosed, however, that it is “under consideration.”<\/p>\n
A copy of the proposal was given to each board member to “digest” it. This was one of the three items, which included a new line extension policy and the power project, that will be tackled during the May 25 meeting.<\/p>\n
Because of the lukewarm response to its search, CUC may be forced to ask the Attorney General’s Office to provide them one of its legal staff to replace their long-time legal counsel, Bill Ohle who is scheduled to leave his post on June 15. It also ruled out the possibility of extending the emergency procurement.<\/p>\n
“We don’t see any problem [in pushing through with the power project],” said Mr. Guerrero. “There are so many ways of looking at the situation.”<\/p>\n
The legal counsel will be needed in the negotiation process for an agreement between CUC and the contractor on the power plant which is to be installed through the build-operate-scheme under a 25-year deal — the largest ever in CNMI’s history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rota — With barely two more weeks to go before a mandated deadline, the Commonwealth Utilities Corporation yesterday postponed discussion on the much-delayed power project on Saipan until May 25 where it expects to award the contract to one of the bidders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51625","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51625\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}