Power Proposal

* Re “Plan Urges State Take Utilities’ Hydro Plants,” Jan. 22:

Today, for the first time in my 55 years as a native Californian, I felt ashamed to be one after reading the proposal by Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg to take the California utilities’ hydro facilities as partial payment for the debt amassed as a result of the state’s failed deregulation plan.

Deregulation was forced upon the utilities--they were willing co-conspirators only because they had no other choice. The state forced the utilities to sell 50% of their power plants--they made the mistake of selling more than they had to--but they were forced to buy back the same power for 30 cents per kwh and only receive 6 cents per kwh from consumers. These policies pushed the utilities beyond what anyone would call a financial precipice, and now the state proposes to take their hydro facilities as partial payment.

Harvey Rosenfield of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights calls this treachery a utility bailout!

Why doesn’t the state simply nationalize the utilities? Wouldn’t that be easier than stealing their assets one at a time?

BARRY C. OLSAN

Ontario

* In public-private transactions, the public always comes up short. Now the Assembly is considering purchasing the hydroelectric plants from Southern California Edison and PG&E.; Here is my suggestion for an equitable solution: Let the state purchase all of the stock of the major California electrical utilities, at today’s market price. Presumably that price is fair and balances the market’s anticipations between the possibilities of bailout and bankruptcy. Then we, the public, will own both the valuable hydroelectric assets and the “stranded” nuclear liabilities. Then we can begin to shift the emphasis from centralized power production to diversified and renewable resources.

MAITLAND B. ALEXANDER

Thousand Oaks

* There’s an old story: Buy a man a fish and he has a meal, but teach him how to fish and he can eat from then on. Spend $5.4 billion for electricity and we’ll have power for 90 days, spend $5.4 billion to condemn and acquire power-generating plants from the robber barons and we can have power from then on. That much money should be enough to buy at least half the power generators for what they paid, plus a reasonable profit for the speculators, say 10%. After all, as they say, they took the risk, so they deserve the result.

SALEM SPITZ

Cerritos

* Back in the days of gaslight some English landlords installed coin-operated valves on lights and gas fireplaces. The idea was to discourage tenants from walking off leaving the gas burning, by connecting the act of consuming with the act of paying. Once we get through the present series of electric regulatory blunders, maybe something like the coin idea could be revived for electricity. It’s very difficult for most people to connect consumption and payment for electricity, which is a highly engineered, expensively manufactured product that is invisible, tasteless, cannot be consumed without first converting it to something else and which vanishes in the very instant that it is created and consumed.

RUSS HAWKES

Los Angeles