You hear a lot about how SCANA raised its electric rates $2.2 billion.

What you hear less about is how Santee Cooper also raised rates on a nuclear project it failed to finish with SCANA as its partner.

Customers affected were Mid-Carolina Electric Cooperative members in Lexington County.

Santee Cooper’s residential rates in Lexington County and to residents elsewhere increased 15.2% from 2012 to 2017.

This is among key findings of a SC Small Business Chamber of Commerce research document on taxpayer owned Santee Cooper’s:

• Abuse of Mid-Carolina Electric members and other statewide customers.

• Failures as a utility the state created to serve rural customers with electricity.

The full report can be read at https://scsbc.org/ santee-cooper-no-longer-anasset/ .

Among other findings;.

• Performance leaves SC lawmakers with reasons to sell it to a responsible utility

“This document is intended to be all inclusive of the publicly-recorded problems with Santee Cooper,” said SCSBC CEO Frank Knapp, an author of the 23-page paper with references.

According to the document, Santee Cooper has agreed not to raise rates for 4 years but it will have to raise rates for at least 38 years to pay off more than $8 billion in debt.

Among the findings: Those were 5 of the years the nuclear reactors were being built by since bankrupt Westinghouse Electric.

• Santee Cooper executives – all state employees – have looted the company treasury to enrich themselves at customers’ expense.

• Former CEO Lonnie Carter’s salary jumped 34% ($404,756 to $540,929) from 2009-2016 at the time the nuclear plant and a Pee Dee coal plant were under construction.

Neither was completed.

• Santee Cooper paid $5.6 million in executive bonuses from 2009-2016 during the Great Recession and the nuclear project scandal.

• After Carter resigned with an $800,000 golden parachute, Mark Bonsall was named CEO with a $1.1 million per year contract, 149.5% more than Carter.

• The utility’s board brought in consultants to hire Bonsall and dictate his $1.1 million annual salary.