Open letter to Interior’s Domenech

Dear Mr. Domenech:

I am the Family Court judge in the Superior Court of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands. I am writing to you about some serious things happening to families in Saipan Tinian and Rota because of high price of electricity.

Picture, if you can, a flat roof, three bedroom solid concrete house. People here use concrete for typhoon protection. Now picture that house with absolutely no power or water and an extended family of 10-12 living in it with a couple of infants wearing Pampers. It is a living condition many share here. Every day it’s hot, humid, mosquitoes, noisy and smelly. Can these kinds of living conditions lead to domestic violence and neglected children, many of whom are sick? The answer, woefully so, is yes. It’s going to get worse.

A great many people here are living as if a Category 5 hurricane roared through the islands, leaving them homeless with no power, no water, no refrigeration, no air conditioning, unsanitary and unhealthy. Unfortunately, we did not have a Cat 5 storm so there is no help in sight for people living like this. They cannot afford electricity. Plain and simple. All this is happening under the United States flag.

A lot of families have abandoned their homestead and moved in with relatives to share the cost of electricity. Some people have given up using clothes dryers, hot water heaters, ovens and more than one air conditioner at a time—they are the rich. The poor have nothing unless they stretch an extension cord to a neighbor’s house who will either give them or sell them electricity. We have been told that we must pay for what we use and the rates are set by an organization that seems to be unaware of the grief it has caused in this community.

As the Family Court judge, I see problems unfolding before me every day involving families living without power and water. I have made child custody decisions based on which party has power. In addition to an upsurge in domestic violence, I am approving guardianships every week in which indigenous children are leaving our islands to live with relatives in the states. Parents are doing this because they can’t support these children and many have no electricity. They are doing this because they want their children to have better times than they are experiencing now.

The departure of indigenous people coupled with the desire of a great many foreigners to make the CNMI their permanent home ultimately spells death of the indigenous people in their own islands. Not being able to afford electricity, even if you are working, and having to move elsewhere because of it, is not the American dream.

One of the main reasons that the people of the Northern Marianas Islands District of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands voted for the commonwealth in association with the United States was to have a better quality of life than “outer island Micronesians.” That included electricity, air conditioning, refrigeration and other modern stuff. Instead, 30 years later they are living worse off than they did before commonwealth because they have assumed the American lifestyle and an ever increasing number of people cannot afford to pay for electricity because of the price of oil and the price of repairs because of incompetence and neglect at CUC.

Consider this: A great many local people have lived in the United States in small towns, large cities and everywhere in between. They have seen the power stay on for what must appear to be years at time. They have turned on the tap water, drank it and used it for 24 hours a day, each and every day. These are less than dreams in the CNMI. No one can drink water from the tap. Most have less than an hour a day of water. Some have no water at all. All if this under the United States flag. Shameful.

We need the President of the United States to declare the CNMI a disaster area and have new utilities built for us. The U.S. owes it to the CNMI. When the CNMI became a commonwealth there were less than 20,000 people here and not adequate power, water and sewage treatment. Instead of bringing the utilities up to U.S. standards, the federal government told the Commonwealth to grow and invite everyone in. And we did. We were unable to supply adequate power and water and sewage treatment for 15,000 people and we were certainly unable to do it for badly. All of this under the U.S. flag. Shameful, utterly shameful.

The slogan for the United States of America should now be “Getting Off Of Oil, One Community at a Time”. Let’s start with us. Our transmission facilities are wonderful. We test them all the time by turning feeders on and off four or five times a day. The only thing that remains to be done is to put the lines underground.

Our way of power generation is what needs to be changed. First and foremost is getting off of oil. I suggest we start with clean coal-generated turbines. After that, we should develop solar thermal energy where the sun will boil water to produce steam and the steam will turn the turbines. The goal should be to produce residential power at no more than six cents a kilowatt hour and commercial power not much higher.

Then we need 24 hours of drinkable water per day. As I said, it’s a dream. Much work needs to be done and we don’t have any plans. So please come in and do it for us. Then we need to be able to treat every bit of sewage and make sure that not one drop goes into our lagoon. We’re not good at that either so, once again, you are going to have to do it for us. These are major undertakings which have never been of high importance here.

I propose that CUC be federalized and the federal government run it for the next 25 years and achieve these goals, along with showing us how to run a utility without waste, nepotism and corruption. Show us how to do it—we can’t seem to get the hang of it. We simply can’t. You must help because we are Americans and Americans help other Americans, especially the ones who lack the capacity to help themselves.

After 25 years, give CUC back to us but monitor it for us. If we slip and fall back into old practices, take it over for another 25 years and keep doing it this way until we can do it right. Perhaps it will take 200 years. We are slow learners. In the meantime, Americans here cannot be allowed to suffer the way they are now, even at the hand of their own people. Rest assured that Americans (and all others) will continue to suffer if the Commonwealth continues to operate CUC. Pricewise, people still won’t be able to afford air conditioning a year from now. Air conditioning, especially for businesses and governmental facilities, is a necessity here just like it is in Miami, Atlanta and Honolulu.

Some have mentioned privatizing CUC. What will happen is that a private company will take over only power generation and invest in generators. It will inherit the transmission facilities and the people will have to pay the debts that have already been incurred. The price won’t go down and the CNMI will continue to have rich and poor divided on who can afford electricity and who cannot. The water and sewage treatment situation won’t change.

The federalization of immigration is the best thing that’s happened to the CNMI in 25 years. The next best thing would be the federalization of CUC for 25 years. President Bush wants to be remembered for a Marine Monument around three uninhabited islands in the northern part of our chain. In the meantime, the human monument to America in the southern part of the chain is crumbling at its foundation—the family. Please tell him to pay attention.