The Snohomish County PUD’s customers deserve relief from long-term contracts the utility signed under the pressure of the highly suspicious Western "energy crisis" of a year ago.
The PUD was right to go to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently for relief, seeking to end or shorten at least one of the contracts. The good judgment of that filing was underlined Monday by the state of California’s request for somewhat similar FERC intervention.
Pro-industry analysts suggest that complaints may receive little support at the regulatory commission, which has advocated deregulation. Actually, the contracts help give deregulation a thoroughly rotten reputation, which can only be improved by FERC action.
As the PUD notes, part of FERC’s charter calls for it to ensure just and reasonable prices. The long-term contracts signed here and in California are anything but that. They charge prices three times or more the going rate of power — and hold those phony prices in place for years.
In California, Gov. Gray Davis has been relentlessly criticized for entering into the contracts that he now denounces. The same issues are fair game at the PUD. These contracts are outrageous — so, why were they signed by public leaders?
In the FERC filings and in repeated statements, the PUD argues that the utility, like others throughout the region, was faced with a manipulated market that left it few options. And the primary responsibility of any utility is to make sure that the lights don’t go out, especially in the dead of winter. As both California and the PUD suggest, FERC’s own policies encouraged long-term deals. However one judges the actions of utility leaders or even the regulatory commission in hindsight, the ratepayers here and elsewhere in the West shouldn’t be the ones to pay.
If the power marketers are willing to negotiate in good faith, there is no reason for FERC to have to make the final decisions. There ought to be plenty of room for compromises with the PUD. If not, the federal commissioners should move quickly to protect consumers.
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