Dear Source:
It is interesting that WAPA should now declare a state of emergency. (St. Croix Source June 29, '08). What a total surprise!! It is a bit like yelling fire after the roof and walls have collapsed. The selfish foot dragging management is now being gored by the bull which it has been raising for over twenty years.
There has always been managmental oposition to alternative methods of power generation. Hess refinery, years ago, offered to supply the electrical power to St. Croix. Oh, no! We'd lose control. An OTEC plan to harvest the energy of the sea water which would have generatred some electricity and lots of potable water with No investment or risk from the government was summarily booted out the door. The coal burning steam plant at the old Martin Marietta plant could easily handle all of St. Croix but is resisted as it might be 'poluting' and we'd (again) lose control.
The statement that because the government hasn't paid its bills is held as one reason for not maintaing or upgrading the system. WAPA purchased gas turbines as a backup method of generating power but uses them frequently even though they are very inefficient fuel wise. WAPA should immediately pull the power from all non paying governmental users until all unpaid bills have been paid. These agencies have standby power generators and could operate on them until their bills were paid and WAPA reconnected them. (You say the standby plants are not working? Whose damn fault is that?) It is time for WAPA to be a distributor of power and water, not a generator of these services. They are obviously technically incompetent to economicaly generate electrical energy.
Merv Baer
St. Croix
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