CUC Executive Director Abe Utu Malae said the group’s will “focus on the application, allocation and possible reallocation of federal funding.”
The group is composed of representatives from CUC and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Malae said he has invited Carl L. Goldstein, Pacific Islands Office senior program manager of EPA Region 9 to join the group.
He said CUC is eager to implement system improvements mandated by the stipulated orders but the utilities agency lacks funding.
Of all utilities on U.S., he added, CUC has ratepayers who are the least able to afford the cost of energy and suffer from low average household incomes and high power and water costs.
“These circumstances combine to leave us scrambling to find funding to comply with deferral mandates, so therefore, we are turning outward in our efforts to help identify and seek additional federal funding for the stipulated order work as well as to investigate renewable energy and operations funding,” Malae told Goldstein in a letter.
Malae said there are “many knowledgeable people in the areas of funding, and CUC is hoping that through collaborative problem solving it can discover untapped or underutilized opportunities to pursue.”
Malae said Goldstein’s participation in the group will likely result in improved grant applications, increased quality and number of grant applications, enhanced coordination of grant dollars to all CNMI grantees, improved rankings in competitive granting, and potential for joint applications and more grant awards to benefit all CNMI stakeholders.
Representatives of the working group are scheduled to have its first meeting by video conference on Sept. 21.
