“This situation has turned out to be a nightmare for CUC, the Water Task Force as well as the customers of CUC,” Abe Utu Malae, CUC executive director, said.
As of February, there were 1,043 remaining unmetered customers on island.
During Tuesday’s hearing in federal court, Judge James Carter urged CUC to complete the metering of all water customers “as soon as possible.”
Malae said CUC is working with the Water Task Force in pursuing the vendors of the Smart Meters that have failed by the thousands since they were installed in 2004.
The vendor is making it more difficult and costly for CUC to prove that the meters have failed for warranty acceptable reason, Malae said.
CUC has redirected resources to the metering effort, he said, adding that new meter readers were hired and four were trained to install meters.
Carter told CUC that he was not interested in receiving lengthy reports at the next hearing; rather, he would like to be informed of results.
But according to CUC, Carter was satisfied with the report on the availability of chlorine on island.
The Environmental Protection Agency wants CUC to always have 96 cylinders of chlorine in storage and 48 in use.
At present there are 64 in storage, 64 on Guam ready for shipment to Saipan and 45 in use, CUC said.
Carter advised CUC to stock up ahead of the typhoon season.
Carter also expressed concern about the lack of funding for the oil pipeline in Lower Base.
“The pipeline is ready to construct but is $1.8 million short. CUC is pursuing several sources of funding but the U.S. Energy Department turned our application down because the project is ineligible,” CUC said.
Malae said CUC’s rate consultant Economist.com indicated that it is inadvisable to increase the base rates in order to raise $10 million to construct the pipeline and to complete other stipulated order 2 requirements.
Borrowing the money or otherwise incurring debt would still call for a rate increase, CUC said.
“They say that with the increases in fuel costs, any increase in the base rate could not be sustained by the economy and would result in hardship,” Malae said.
He said their best hope for financing some of the stipulated order 2 projects, including the oil pipeline, is the $3.864 million grant application that CUC resubmitted to the Office of Insular Affairs.
The grant application was first submitted in the mid-2010.
The top two priorities in stipulated order, about which Department of Justice attorney Bradley O’Brien is concerned, are the oil pipeline project and cleaning up Power Plants 1 and 2, Malae said.
A follow-up status meeting was scheduled for 9:30 a.m. on March 8 in federal court.
The federal stipulated orders require CUC to bring into federal compliance its wastewater plants and collection systems, public drinking water systems, five power plants and oil transfer pipeline.
