Rep. Vincent Aldan issued the following statement:
The recent outages at the Commonwealth Utilities Corporation are not isolated incidents. They are warning signs of a deeper operational failure that the public can no longer afford to ignore
At the March 13 Commonwealth Public Utilities Commission meeting, CUC attributed recent blackouts and feeder outages to load miscalculations during switching, an engine overspeed event with no confirmed cause, a transformer fire tied to corrosion and structural failure, and vegetation grounding power lines. Those reported causes point to something larger than bad luck or aging equipment alone. They point to weaknesses in inspection, preventive maintenance, operational discipline, and management accountability
For more than a decade, CUC has already been under federal court oversight in the EPA case. The federal stipulated orders required far more than patchwork fixes. They required reforms to management, operations, maintenance systems, training, planning, asset stewardship, and long-term utility system improvement.
Even in 2025, the parties were still modifying Stipulated Order No. 1 because EPA found multiple deficiencies in CUC’s drinking water system assets, operations, and maintenance. The modified order continued to require training in proper operation and maintenance, preventative maintenance, corrosion protection, and asset management. That history matters because it shows a long-running pattern: serious utility problems were supposed to be corrected years ago, yet core maintenance and operational deficiencies continued to surface.
While the EFA orders were not solely a power-reliability case, the public lesson is clear. If CUC has been under court-supervised pressure for years to strengthen maintenance culture, training, planning, inspections, asset tracking, and operational controls, then the power plant failures and repeated outages now being experienced by ratepayers raise urgent questions about whether those same institutional weaknesses still persist on the power side of the utility.
The people of the CNMI deserve direct answers about the power plants:
What is the actual condition of each generating unit?
What preventive maintenance schedules exist for each power plant and were they followed?
How many forced outages has each unit experienced over the past 10 years?
Are spare parts, technical staffing, SOPs, and root-cause investigations adequate and up to date?
What measurable corrective actions are now being taken to prevent recurrence?
The public should not be asked to normalize avoidable outages. Nor should ratepayers be asked to absorb more costs without first seeing proof of competent management, measurable corrective action, and transparent oversight. Before any major restructuring, sale, privatization push, or further burden on customers is justified, there should be an independent utility-expert review of CUC’s generation fleet, maintenance records, operating procedures, outage history, staffing, and asset condition.
Reliable electricity is not a luxury. It is a basic public necessity. The people of the Commonwealth deserve power plants that are properly maintained, competently operated, and transparently overseen. After more than a decade of court oversight in related utility matters, the public has every right to demand that the power side of CUC finally be examined with the seriousness it requires.
