Community deserves facts on power utility | LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Published 10:35 am Saturday, August 13, 2016

To the editor:

In recent letters to the editor about public power, Norm Davis asserts that Phil Rockefeller and I are putting out “misstatements and falsehoods.” He is likely unaware that Rockefeller is perhaps the most experienced energy policy expert on the island and that I was for 23 years a public power executive.

The real facts that PSE, its foreign owner Macquarie Capital, and its supporters want to avoid (in Bainbridge’s case by trying to block the city’s professionally done feasibility study) make an overwhelming case for public power.

More than 60 public power utilities in Washington deliver power that is 97 percent carbon free and average more than 25 percent lower rates than PSE, while serving the majority of the state’s citizens.

PSE says it won’t make any difference who we buy our power from, but it will. If every community served by PSE’s 59 percent dirty power insisted on buying clean power from BPA, the company’s carbon-based plants would go out of business.

None of the nonprofit utilities, which took over from PSE in the past, have ever considered selling back out to private power. And why would they?  Just this past year’s PSE 11 percent rate increase will take an additional $2.2 million off the island per year, and PSE has filed for another increase this January.

Staying with PSE may seem safer, but as we go into the future, it is the far riskier choice.  Let’s get real facts from experts; see island-power.org.

STEVE JOHNSON

Bainbridge Island