OCR Text |
Show Fewer battle heats up , UP&L's new plants, UP&L wants the consumer-owned systems who took the gample on hydroelectric power 20 years ago to give up their rights to that power. In its application to Western of last April, UP&L threatened to bring a lawsuit claiming constitutional rights violations if Western refuses to sell it power. CREDA has responded to this charge in a detailed legal brief prepared by the Washington, B.C. law firm of Duncan, Allen and Mitchell, which refutes UP&L's constitutional claims. The legal analysis also argues that Western is required by federal law to allocate power to municipalities and cooperatives before selling any of it to private companies like UP&L. UP&L wants these laws overturned so that it can obtain an allocation 0f n, RW- and n' i) successful, October f! hrnidredsofco V affected by 1 marketing CRsp 'V appearing JJ JM - ? Herman or ' Intermountain (? J ' Association, ! it Another salvo in the "aval war over federal power generated on the Colorado River was fired this week. Consumer-owned electric systems which presently purchase the power from the Western Area Power Company's request for the power. Western, an arm of the Department of Energy, is presently considering proposals for the marketing of power from the Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP) when current contracts expire in 1989. The consumer-owned systems, members of the Colorado River Energy Distributors Association (CREDA), countered UP&L's claim tli at its electric rates will decrease by as much as 25 percent in 1989 if UP&L. is permitted to purchase power from the CRSP with an engineering report showing that UP&L's rates would more likely decrease by only 5 percent, while CREDA's members' rates would increase by up to 150 percent. For example, the report shows Provo's rates increasing by 118 percent at a cost of nearly $12 million per year and Dixie Escalante Coop's rates rising 152 percent for a cost of $3.2 million per year. Together the consumer-owned systems would face additional costs of $100 million per year. In a letter accompanying the engineering and legal analyses of UP&L's application, CREDA President Stanley K. Bazant charged that UP&L was like a "johnny-come-lately" home buyer who wants to avoid 1980 housing prices by evicting owners from homes they built and financed at 1960 prices. The consumer-owned utilities have been repaying the federal government for its investment in the CRSP since the 1960's, foregoing the option at that time to build their own, less expensive power plants. Now that power can be obtained from the CRSP more cheaply than from |