A call for congressional hearing on NMI power crisis

The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs recently held a field hearing on the issue of sustainable energy in Alaska. The hearing was held in order to determine what energy problems exist in Alaska’s remote villages, and what sort of investment, education, and conservation would alleviate these problems. Testimony at this hearing showed a remarkable parallel between the energy problems plaguing Alaska’s remote native villages, and the energy problems plaguing the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

American Pacific Islanders in the CNMI live in remote islands that are important to us because our culture and our history is here. But, like Alaska’s remote villages, we suffer from staggeringly high fuel prices, along with poor infrastructure, and low incomes. We suffer daily power outages, unaffordable high fuel bills, and a broken power infrastructure.

We need change—we need to find cheaper, environmentally-friendly power sources and we need your help in finding the alternative power sources that will be best for our islands for the long term. We ask you to hold hearings in order to determine which sustainable energy programs would best help our islands find renewable, and affordable, alternative sources of energy.

We in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands live on islands where the median income is more than $30,000 lower than the U.S. median family income. Our fuel prices, meanwhile, are among the highest in the nation—yet while we pay higher rates for our fuel than most other American jurisdiction, the Commonwealth Utilities Corp., our government-run power plant, uses over-25-year-old broken and unfixable generators which must be shut down for no fewer than two hours per day, at times for 12 hours per day, leaving our people—as well as our offices and businesses – without power.

The CNMI’s power crisis will not end until alternative sources of energy—particularly green, renewable energy—are brought into general use and replace the CNMI’s reliance on CUC’s increasingly expensive, increasingly undependable oil-driven engines.

The staggeringly high cost of energy, combined with the daily power outages, has caused tremendous suffering in the Commonwealth. Our people suffer without dependable power at home, in schools and at work—and investors who might otherwise bring business to these islands are unwilling to invest money in a place without affordable, dependable electricity. Additionally, using oil to generate power is hostile to the environment, and causes global warming.

For years, various alternative energy proposals have floated around the island—wind farms, solar power, geothermal energy, nuclear power, to name but a few. These proposals have been discussed and debated and ultimately discarded—chief among the reasons that none has been adopted is the lack of good, solid, dependable information which would help the CNMI decide which of the alternative energy options would provide the Commonwealth with the clean, dependable, affordable energy we need both for our residents and for businesses. Most of the information the Commonwealth has received about alternative energy proposals has come from salespeople—and we cannot base our islands’ power needs, indeed our economy and our environment, on salespeople’s promises.

We need alternative energy. The Commonwealth Utilities Corporation cannot supply the island with dependable, affordable power—and we need dependable, affordable power. Thus the time is right for the CNMI to stop discussing alternative energy sources, and to commit itself to alternative energy sources. To do that in an intelligent way, we need data and we need serious, objective studies which will guide our commitment. We need to know that the alternative energy sources we invest in will provide us the clean, dependable, affordable power that the Commonwealth needs for the long term, lest we find ourselves ensnared in another power crisis soon after this one.

We therefore ask your Subcommittee on Insular Affairs to hold hearings to determine the effects of high fuel prices in the CNMI and to explore sustainable energy solutions that include renewable energy investments, as well as energy efficiency and conservation in the CNMI. We need new power sources, and we need your help in determining which alternative energy sources will be best for our beloved islands.
[B] Gregorio “Kilili” Camacho Sabla[/B]n
[I]Garapan, Saipan[/I]