Energy Crisis Is Making People Feel Powerless
As California’s energy crisis threatens to boil over, Orange County consumers facing the likely prospect of higher electricity bills are steaming.
About 11 million customers in Southern California and millions more around the state could be hit with rate hikes of at least 10% next year. That would happen if the state Public Utilities Commission lifted the freeze on electricity prices to bail out utilities that are struggling to cover rising power costs.
People across the region are watching the energy emergency with resentment, anger and glum resignation, many concerned that higher bills will squeeze their family finances.
“I don’t believe their story that they’re losing money,” said Cassandra Mason, 38, of Huntington Beach. “They’re just looking for a way to raise rates. I think we already pay too much.”
A stay-at-home mother of two children, Mason said a 10% hike in her $100-a-month power bill will have her turning off lights and televisions.
“We’re just going to have to pay it. What else are you going to do?” she asked. “We’ll spend less on other things.”
Like others, Mason doesn’t fully understand the intricacies of the 1996 law that brought about deregulation in the power industry. Nor does she know which politicians are responsible for its passage. She places the blame for the crisis squarely at the feet of Southern California Edison and other utilities.
“It’s poor management, poor planning,” she said. “It’s not like they’re new to this business.”
Underlying many consumers’ budget calculations is resentment: Why do we have to bail out this mess?
“You get skeptical,” said Eric Johnson, 34, of Huntington Beach. “You don’t know whether it’s an opportunistic thing or whether it’s something that’s really needed.”
“To me, it was all planned,” said George Kindstrand, 67, of Santa Ana. “They knew what they were doing with this deregulation. When they say it was a big surprise how it worked out, don’t believe them. They know. It’s their job to know.”
Kindstrand, who is retired and living on a pension, said he’ll handle a rate hike by making sure lights and appliances are turned off when they aren’t needed.
“Somebody’s going to make a big profit on this,” he said. “Somebody’s going to make some real money. But it’s not going to be the poor guy paying his electricity bill.”
Amid the growing consumer frustration, the agency that operates the state’s electricity grid remained on alert Saturday. The California Independent System Operator declared a Stage 2 emergency, the 36th of the year, because of congestion on the main transmission path that delivers power from Southland plants to Northern California.
Consumer-rights activists warned that while the public may not have tuned in as California’s energy problems escalated during the last year, the possibility of getting hit in their own pocketbooks will spark a “ratepayer rebellion.”
“They are correctly outraged,” said Harvey Rosenfield, president of the Santa Monica-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights. Calling deregulation a “scheme” that has gone bad, he said the utilities unfairly want the public to pay.
Rosenfield added that his group was inundated with telephone calls and e-mail Friday after consumers began hearing that the state PUC will consider lifting the current rate freeze on Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Southern California Edison at a meeting Jan. 4.
“The question being asked by the average Californian--especially senior citizens and low-income people--is ‘Who’s going to bail us out?’ ” he said.
Wall Street analysts have warned that the state’s two largest power companies face bankruptcy unless they can cover the skyrocketing costs of wholesale power. But 1996’s deregulation of the industry froze the rates the utilities can charge for electricity. The cap is supposed to remain in place until March 2002.
The utilities argue that they have been covering the rising costs of wholesale energy by borrowing money.
“Edison and PG&E; have, for months now, in effect financed the costs that customers pay for electricity,” said Tom Boyd, a spokesman for Southern California Edison. “We can only do that for so long.”
Gov. Gray Davis has indicated support for a 10% rate hike, while the utilities have lobbied for at least 17%. The rate increases would not affect customers of Los Angeles’ Department of Water and Power and other municipally owned firms, such as Anaheim’s, that were exempted from deregulation.
For some, a rate hike could be dire.
Torrance resident Tammie Meyers, 30, said she’s going to have to reduce cooking in her apartment’s electric oven to keep down her family’s bill, which is about $70 a month.
“Why don’t they cut back the CEOs’ salaries?” she asked.
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Times staff writers Maggie Barnett, Ana Cholo, Jason Song and Thuy-Doan Le and correspondent Jenifer Ragland contributed to this report.
