Inos extends emergency declaration for CUC anew

Due to ongoing financial and technical worker crises at the Commonwealth Utilities Corp., Gov. Eloy S. Inos extended again on Tuesday the declaration of a state of significant emergency at the utilities agency.

This comes just as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is asking the U.S. District Court for the NMI to appoint a receiver for some CUC projects due to the latter’s alleged continued violation of court orders and deadlines and the CNMI government’s continued failure to fund CUC.

The CNMI utilities agency has been under a state of emergency for about the nine years now. Like previous extensions, Inos—and his predecessor Benigno R. Fitial—extended the emergency declaration for the islands’ lone electricity supplier “due to the imminent threat of the inability of the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. to provide critical power generation, water, and wastewater services to the CNMI and considering the harm such conditions would pose to the community, environment, and critical infrastructure of the [NMI].”

The declaration allows the government to “suspend all statutory or regulatory provisions as required; and utilize all available resources of the Commonwealth government and its political subdivisions as reasonably necessary to respond to the emergency.”

Inos’ emergency declaration for CUC states that, without electricity, “the CNMI’s health and safety would immediately be at risk, …the public schools and the Northern Marianas College would close. Other education institutions would close as their backup fuel supplies for emergency generation are exhausted; and water and sewage treatment would soon end.”

The local economy will invariably suffer without the state of emergency declaration since “most economic activity would come to a halt, much refrigeration and air conditioning would end, and the airports and ports would be forced to rely on emergency generation on the limited, expensive oil supply for it,” said Inos.

Financial morass

CUC is owed more than $20 million by the Public School System and the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp., not including millions of dollars more by residential customers.

Inos tacitly admitted that the financial crisis at CUC is the government’s own doing as “although the Commonwealth economy has recently improved, the improvement is only marginal and the economy and the government’s finances are still fragile. The government strains to meet its obligations.”

To exacerbate things, the governor said “CUC often only has days’ worth of purchased fuel to power its systems because it lacks the funds to buy oil from its sole, cash-only supplier. CUC has no credit or other means to buy fuel other than the revenue its collects from its customers.”

Dearth of technical workers

Inos said the CNMI doesn’t have enough U.S. citizens or U.S. resident technical specialists at CUC to perform the power generation work, particularly specialists with experience in the type of engines that CUC uses.

“U.S. citizens with the necessary skills are not readily available in the CNMI and it is costly to recruit from the United States. CUC believes that the vast majority of skills sets, considering its cash restrictions, must come from non-U.S. personnel.”

CUC has tried to hire diesel mechanics in the CNMI, but it has been unsuccessful in finding enough candidates, he said.

Inos said CUC’s renewal of contracts and hiring of foreign expert workers is necessary to sustain the integrity of CUC’s systems. He urged the Legislature to amend “local law to allow CUC to continue employing the services of foreign workers for such technical positions difficult to fill and provide for a reasonable transition period.”

House Public Utilities, Transportation and Communications chair Larry Deleon Guerrero (Ind-Saipan) said the extension of the emergency declaration has been a given the past nine years because CUC is struggling financially and has manpower issues because of the lack of an available U.S. citizen worker pool to man its power plants.

He said the government should continue to have control of CUC despite an April directive that restored the full power of the CUC board of directors.