CALIFORNIA COMMENTARY : Beware the Power Behemoth : Merging Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric would create a monster of vast political and regulatory influence.

“Unless you become more watchful in your States and check the spirit of the monopolies and their thirst to exclusive privileges you will, in the end, find that the most important powers of Government have been given or bartered away and the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations.”

--1837 Farewell Address, President Andrew Jackson.

Control over two of this state’s dearest interests, our environment and our energy supply, may soon be given away to a mega-corporation. If the state Public Utilities Commission approves the takeover of San Diego Gas & Electric by Southern California Edison, this and future generations should expect more pollution and higher electric rates.

It is a merger that bodes poorly for the state’s consumers and its energy and environmental policy-makers, who would be stymied by the largest, wealthiest and most politically potent mega-utility company in the United States.

Two state administrative law judges on Friday recommended rejection of the proposed merger, arguing that it would adversely affect competition in the state.

The Public Utilities Commission has before it mountains of exhaustive reports and legal briefs that demand rejection of the planned takeover. The commission’s own staff, fearing higher electric rates, bureaucratic inefficiencies and incalculable monopolistic mischief, urged rejection.

While he was state attorney general, John Van de Kamp echoed the commission staff’s predictions of higher rates and denounced the takeover as anti-competitive and environmentally disastrous. California cities and municipal utilities have cited Edison’s track record of monopolistic manipulation and overcharging. And Edison and SDG&E; employee unions oppose the takeover because of potential hazards.

Even Pacific Gas & Electric, Edison’s northern neighbor, warns that without the competitive pressure from San Diego there is little to keep Edison in check.

At the center of the controversy is Edison’s plan to generate more electricity at its antiquated or mothballed power plants in the Los Angeles and Ventura areas, and less in San Diego or out of state. The reopening of its old plants is one of Edison’s primary justifications for the merger. These timeworn plants will cause the burning of 10 million additional barrels of oil at a time when oil dependence should be reduced.

And the shift to Los Angeles plants would lead to an additional 1,600 tons of nitrogen oxides and 600 tons of sulfur oxides discharged each year into an air basin that is already the nation’s dirtiest.

The PUC has found that the merger would cause an enormous rise in smog and increased fish kills from turbines sucking in more ocean water for cooling. Environmental experts have identified numerous toxic cancer-causing chemicals used in power-plant operation that would inevitably find their way into our air and water.

Utility executives proudly point to deals worked out with local air-pollution control districts in which the districts have withdrawn their opposition to the merger in exchange for broadly worded promises to clean up most of the resulting mess.

These deals have become the focal point for a second major concern about creation of this mega-utility--unbridled political and regulatory influence.

The American Lung Assn. of Southern California, the Coalition for Clean Air and cities in Ventura and Los Angeles counties have condemned the air quality compromise as regulatory capitulation. They point to evidence that the South Coast air pollution authorities were pressured into deals by Edison before the level of toxic threat was even known.

The commission’s staff warns that Edison’s size makes effective regulation difficult; the merger would make the new mega-utility literally uncontrollable. Van de Kamp’s office advised that the commission’s inability to regulate the “new behemoth” is sufficient grounds to reject the merger.

Beyond the near-term impact on rates and the environment is the profound impact that the behemoth will have on future energy and environmental policy. Edison’s documented efforts to discourage greater access to the state’s transmission grid and its plan to concentrate power generation in its own service area flies directly in the face of a decade-long California policy to foster competition in electric generation and transmission.

This state’s energy and environmental interests hang in the balance. The Public Utilities Commission should heed the warnings of its own staff and that of President Andrew Jackson.