[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 95 (Tuesday, July 10, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H3829-H3830]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ELECTRICITY CRISIS IN CALIFORNIA
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from California (Mr. Filner) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. FILNER. Mr. Speaker, the electricity crisis continues 1 year
later in San Diego, in California and the West. Scores of businesses in
my hometown of San Diego have gone out of business. People on fixed
incomes are suffering because they have to make choices between buying
food and prescription drugs and air conditioning. This should not be
happening in America.
Now, we have called for price controls, we have called for a refund
of the overcharges, and people from my State on the other side of the
aisle have said, Let the free market work. Price controls don't work. I
say to my colleagues, there is no free market. The system is completely
out of whack. There is an energy cartel which dominates our lives in
California.
I want to give you a specific example, Mr. Speaker, of how the market
in California is being manipulated by this energy cartel and what we in
San Diego hope to do about it.
There is a 700 megawatt power plant in my district. We call it the
South Bay Power Plant. It is operated by the Duke Energy Corporation.
It looks like in the last year, Mr. Speaker, Duke Energy has made close
to $800 million off
[[Page H3830]]
that plant while 65 percent of the businesses in our area face
bankruptcy. They paid for the operation of that plant in 3 months for
what they thought would take 5 years or more to pay off.
Now recently, five former employees of Duke Energy, five former
employees of the South Bay Energy Plant, testified under oath,
testified with 100 years of experience in that plant, Mr. Speaker, and
what they said should be taken very seriously by anybody studying this
crisis. They said that the generators were turned up and down not
because of the need of the people of San Diego or of California but
because of the price at a given moment that the market was bringing. In
fact, a 250 megawatt generator was turned off at a time when we had
blackouts in San Diego, at a time when people were sent home from their
jobs and not getting paychecks, at a time when there were near-
fatalities at a traffic intersection because the lights were off, at a
time when elevators had people stuck in them. Yet the biggest generator
in our county was turned off.
These employees further said that they were told to throw away spare
parts so maintenance would take a lot longer, supply could be withheld
and the prices increased. They talked about how the trading floor where
the prices were set for electricity was in direct contact with the
generating floor; and so the generators were ramped up and down, as I
said, not by the need of California or of San Diego, but by the price
that could be gotten. So Duke Energy has stolen $800 million from the
citizens of San Diego and of California. They have charged up to $4,000
a megawatt hour for something that cost $30 only a year ago. That, Mr.
Speaker, is not the free enterprise system at work; that is stealing
from people who could not afford the cost.
Now, to add insult to injury, Mr. Speaker, that theft took place from
a power plant which the citizens of San Diego own. Yes, Mr. Speaker, we
own that plant through the San Diego Unified Port District, a public
agency; and that public agency, at very, very good terms for the
lessee, leased the plant to this Duke Energy Corporation to operate, as
the lease says, in the public interest. Well, that lease has not been
operated in the public interest. That lease has allowed Duke Energy
Corporation to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from the people of
San Diego.
Mr. Speaker, since the public owns the South Bay Power Plant, I call
upon the San Diego Unified Port District to take back that plant and to
operate the lease in the public interest.
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