Gov. Juan N. Babauta is inclined to issue an executive order to effect the separation of sewer and water divisions from the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. if the needed legislative amendment is delayed. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe way to separate it is through legislation, but if it\u2019s going to take a long time, I\u2019d issue an executive order. That\u2019s being contemplated,\u201d said Babauta in an interview.<\/p>\n
Babauta, who flew to Hawaii Wednesday for a two-day trip, said he met with the engineers and officials of the State of Hawaii Water and Sewer Department to consult them on the separation of services.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to learn from them,\u201d said the governor.<\/p>\n
Right now, he said, his administration sees the separation of both services as \u201cthe way to go.\u201d <\/p>\n
Earlier, the CUC board of directors adopted a resolution urging the Babauta administration to propose to the Legislature an amendment to the CUC Act to remove the water and sewer operations from the utility firm\u2019s responsibility.<\/p>\n
This leaves the CUC with the management of only one area\u2014power generation and distribution\u2014which is the only money-making branch of the corporation.<\/p>\n
The CUC board said that getting rid of the sewer and water services would promote efficiency in the delivery of these programs.<\/p>\n
CUC said that the Legislature may create a separate entity\u2014which may be called the \u201cCNMI Waterworks Authority\u201d\u2014to manage the operation of water and sewer services.<\/p>\n
The proposed authority would be placed under the CNMI central government, while the CUC would continue to be an autonomous agency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Juan N. Babauta is inclined to issue an executive order to effect the separation of sewer and water divisions from the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. if the needed legislative amendment is delayed. <\/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-86559","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\/86559","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=86559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}