Letter: Public power is not the answer

Thursday, Oct. 3, 2002 | 9 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan may have taken joy in his Sept. 29 column by deriding me as a "powerful hired gun" whose "lunch was eaten" by Southern Nevada Water Authority Manager Pat Mulroy, but that does little to change the facts or illuminate the debate over whether Nevada Power should be taken over by a public agency.

Refinancing Nevada Power's debt may, in the short term, provide a benefit to customers in Southern Nevada, though there is no guarantee of that. Over the long term, however, all a public power takeover will ensure is that current customers would be mortgaging the futures of their grandchildren by taking on such a large indebtedness without fixing the fundamental problem that got Nevada Power in hot water to begin with -- a shortfall in generating capacity at peak times and weaknesses in the Western transmission system.

Comparing its plan with refinancing a home loan, the water authority claims it would lower rates immediately. A more apt analogy, however, is that the authority plans to buy a new car before the loan on the old car is retired. Lenders will happily roll in the cost of the old loan into the new, but you are still paying for a car you no longer own, in addition to the new vehicle.

The bottom line? You will still be paying for power you have already consumed and power plants that will quickly become obsolete while paying for current power costs. Public power is not the answer for Southern Nevada.

BILL BRIER

Editor's note: The writer is vice president of communications for the Edison Electric Institute, a Washington-based association of shareholder-owned electric companies.