Commentary––

The Electricity Scam Expands

By William A. Collins

Power blackout,

Makes us moan;

If we don’t,

Produce our own.

Electricity these days is a sick puppy. Our residential and commercial rates went up eight percent this summer, with another four percent increase due in January. Our energy conservation fund was looted by the legislature to help pay down the deficit. The big blackout cost the economy billions, and became an excuse to permanently fire up that illegal high-voltage line across Long Island Sound. NRG Corporation may, or may not, escape its contract to supply power to CL&P, potentially throwing Northeast Utilities into the expensive electricity spot market. And there’s more.

As you might expect, knowing Connecticut, all this turmoil over energy has pricked our state leaders into a new spasm of apathy. Having tweaked the deregulation law and slashed the conservation fund, they have now retreated into their burrows like Punxatawney Phil. Thus Nutmeggers grow more vulnerable each day to the schemes of the electricity cartel.

Nationally, the coal and nuclear energy companies use each new crisis to propagandize for the expanded use of their own toxic products. And regionally, the major power suppliers and distributors demand that the public pay for new beefed up infrastructure –– infrastructure that those very companies have let decay. Thus are we now harvesting the bitter fruit of that suicidal deregulation law.

The saddest part is that Connecticut could easily do better. Even having bought a bill of goods from the industry, we still have some valuable weapons left in our quiver. The best of these currently stand idle around the state in the form of the Sooty Six. Those smudgy plants may not be too useful in their current form, but each remains properly zoned, equipped to receive fuel, and hooked up to the grid. Otherwise they just sit, ready to be cranked up in an emergency.

From a consumer standpoint, that emergency is ongoing. Each day brings new threats to our rates and to the reliability of our supply. You’d think the solution would be obvious. With interest rates still at rock bottom, the state clearly should create a public power authority to buy the Six for itself. Bonding would also pay to upgrade the plants to meet the latest environmental standards.

Once online, the state would then have its own potent power source, either to keep rates down at home or to sell to the net at large. Since these plants are located mostly near the shore where demand is strongest, the need to build giant long-distance transmission lines would be greatly reduced. Enron’s wheeler-dealer heirs might not care for this new local self-sufficiency, but you and I would love it. Producing a goodly chunk of our own power would delightfully weaken the grip on us that the power cartel currently enjoys.

And if the state should fail to act, always a likely prospect, each host city could do the deed itself. Norwalk, Bridgeport, New Haven, Milford, Middletown, and Montville could all become cozy homes of cheap, reliable power. That’s how Los Angeles and Sacramento snugly sat out the California debacle. Now their economies have surged from the influx of new industries seeking a safe electrical haven.

The South Norwalk Electric Works, sole survivor of the Great Blackout of the ’60s, is replacing its ancient generators for that very purpose. The Norwalk City Council is also toying with the prospect of acquiring its local member of the Sooty Six. Yes, the state ought to do it, but this is also a great chance for cities to show a little muscle of their own.

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)