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 …
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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.
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