Lawmakers aiming to ease Santee Cooper’s $8 billion debt should look south.

Puerto Rico’s power utility struck a deal with creditors to allow the bankrupt US commonwealth to restructure more than $8 billion of bonds, report online news services Trend and Reuters.

This is a way to write down debt, said Jim Clark-son of Resource Supply Management in Columbia.

A group of Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority bondholders, bond insurer Assured Guaranty Corp., the island’s government and federally created financial oversight board, reached an agreement that will reduce the debt by up to 32.5%.

PREPA had filed for bankruptcy in July 2017 after a previous deal failed.

The agreement requires support from at least 67% of voting bondholders and will shed about $3 billion in debt service payments over the next 10 years.

The deal also requires the approval of a US judge and legislative action.

Under the agreement, investors will exchange their bonds at 67.5 cents on the dollar for Tranche A bonds and 10 cents on the dollar for Tranche B bonds. The latter would be contingent on full payment of Tranche A bonds and future electricity demand on the island.

PREPA will pay off the new bonds through a special charge levied on its customers. The new charge starts at approximately 1 cent a kilowatt hour prior to the deal’s closing, increasing to some 2.768 cents a kilowatt hour on closing and gradually increasing to 4.552 cents a kilowatt hour during the 40-year bonds.

The deal lacks support of other creditors such as bond insurer National Public Finance Guarantee Corp.

National Public Finance objected when a deal was announced, saying that “until very recently” it was excluded from negotiations even though it is PREPA’s largest creditor.

National has also asked the court to appoint a receiver for PREPA.

PREPA’s problems were compounded when Hurricane Maria slammed into the island in 2017, decimating an electric grid already struggling due to poor rate collection, heavy management turnover and lack of maintenance.