Impact of Power Deregulation on Consumers

Re “Radical Changes in Power Industry Pass Legislature,” Sept. 1:

Maybe the ratepayers will finally get a break instead of being broken by the monopolistic electric utilities that for so long have owned/ruled California. I would like to work with the same investment broker who has handled the accounts of Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric and Pacific Gas & Electric. If I make a bad investment, I have to pay the piper, a sales commission and eat my losses. Not so the utilities, that have passed along a $30-billion debt to the ratepayers.

I strongly believe in energy conservation. That said, this is my first summer residing in Palm Desert, where the temperature has not been below 100 since mid-May. It is not possible to live without air conditioning under these oppressive conditions. A large number of full-time residents of the Coachella Valley, many of whom live on fixed incomes, find their monthly electricity bills at or above $500. People shouldn’t have to choose between eating and taking their medication or maintaining their body temperature one degree short of sizzle. If ratepayers get stuck paying for the negatives, why not have us participate in the form of profit-sharing?

GAIL A. PAPARIAN

Palm Desert

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* Pardon me for not getting too excited by your story about the deregulation of California’s electric utilities and the 10% rate cut promised in 1998. On the same page (Orange County edition) was an article about phone “slamming” [customers having their long-distance service switched without their authorization], a scam brought on and made possible by the deregulation of the phone industry. And, of course, who can forget what deregulation of the cable industry meant to service and bills (a 47% increase in my monthly bill!)? And then there was the deregulation of the savings and loan industry, the bailout of which will cost American taxpayers over $200 billion.

LOU COHAN

Cypress

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* Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric Co. and Pacific Gas & Electric “spent a combined $1.5 million on lobbying” (plus $300,000 in campaign donations) to pass the bill to deregulate the electric utility industry in California (Aug. 31). That should tell consumers where the greatest benefits will accrue and who will end up holding the bag for three decades of misguided investment in nuclear power plants. It’s the ratepayers, folks, who will be paying the $28.5 billion for “various bad investments” made by the big three utilities.

Twenty years ago a group of citizens campaigned vigorously to have the San Onofre plant converted to natural gas. We lost. Now we’re told that the new bill will allow Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric to “continue to collect costs for San Onofre until 2003,” which will “translate into an extra $120 million to $350 million from ratepayers.” That’s on top of the $28.5 billion.

In our system of free enterprise, where investment presumably entails a risk, how much of that $28.5 billion will be absorbed by Wall Street and its utility stock investors? And by the way, will ratepayers also get the bill for the $1.5 million in lobbying handouts?

JEAN BERNSTEIN

South Laguna