House members led by Palacios met on Friday morning with CUC Executive Director Tony Muna and his new deputy director for utilities systems rehabilitation, Wallon Young.
“We asked them about their plan for Power Plant 1,” said Palacios, R-Saipan, in an interview after the meeting. “We do not have an official update of the rehabilitation progress at Power Plant 1. We will get the full assessment from them. The last thing we want to have are blackouts. That is not acceptable.”
House members have expressed concern about the governor’s monthly extension of a state of emergency for CUC, the lack of a plan and his failure to reply to their requests for a plan.
“That’s why he had this meeting,” the speaker said. “They told us that Young is now doing an assessment and he promised to provide us a rehabilitation plan for the power plant on March 5. It was a good meeting.”
Palacios said House members reminded CUC officials that Aggreko’s generators, which cost the government over $500,000 a month, were supposed to allow the utilities agency to repair its power plant engines.
“That’s the main point of renting those generators — provide temporary power so CUC can do what needs to be done at the power plant,” he said. “We want to see Aggreko demobilized once its contract ends in September.”
Power Plant 1 and its eight engines were supposed to produce up to 81 megawatts, but could only generate 8 megawatts last year due to CUC’s failure to maintain them.
