nuclear fiasco aftermath

Santee Cooper’s fight with Sen. Hugh Leatherman, other legislative leaders and the Department of Administration over the public utility’s “secret negotiations” with two private utilities has come to an end.

Under the threat of a restraining order from the state for violating the legislature’s process for determining its future, the public utility canceled its planned deal.

Unfortunately, we shouldn’t be surprised by this most recent management debacle.

In this space Aug. 1, I warned that San-tee Cooper’s two new managers – hired in for 18 months at $2.5 million – had already bucked legislative leaders. The utility was in a position to “subvert the process” legislators had established for determining the agency’s future. Santee Cooper’s brass proved my concerns to be correct.

In early 2007, Santee Cooper announced plans to build a new coal plant on the Great Pee Dee River at a cost of about $2 billion.

The agency said that it needed the additional electricity because the nuclear plants it was building with SCE&G wouldn’t be finished until 2016 and 2019. Santee Cooper’s then chief executive officer, Lonnie Carter, said that without the new coal plant, the utility would run short of power by 2013.

We know how this story ended.

For 2 years the opponents of the new coal plant – environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth and the SC Small Business Chamber of Commerce – argued that the plant was too expensive, increased energy need could be met with energy conservation, alternative energy and buying excess capacity from in-state private utilities and the plant would contribute to climate change and environmental pollution.

Just as the critics insisted, the utility found a better, less expensive way of meeting its energy needs. However, by then it had spent about $500 million on planning and equipment for the coal plant.

Santee Cooper’s decision to partner with SCE&G to build 2 nuclear plants ended in that project being abandoned but only after Santee Cooper had spent $4 billion in construction costs that must now be paid.

Even after the legislature gave Santee Cooper one more chance to show how it could better serve the ratepayers and taxpayers as a state agency instead of being sold to or managed by a private utility, San-tee Cooper’s management continues to fit the “rogue agency” billing.

The sale of Santee Cooper will guarantee it will have proper oversight by both the PSC, voting shareholders and the public.

The sale of Santee Cooper is the only way to protect its customers from having to pay off the utility’s $4 billion nuclear debt.

The sale of Santee Cooper is the only way to end the public utility’s mismanagement culture that has resulted in one costly decision after another.

Frank Knapp is CEO of the SC Small Business Chamber of Commerce