The high cost of oil may soon show up on the bills of V.I. Water and Power Autority customers. According to a WAPA release, the "levelized energy adjustment clause" on customers’ bills will likely go up by $14 in April, because of recent increases in the cost of oil.
The adjustment clause, which sets the level of fuel costs for six months, was approved by the V.I. Public Services Commission in 1981 to stabilize monthly changes in the cost of fuel passed on to WAPA customers.
"In general," the WAPA release states, "the LEAC is based on projected fuel costs and is to be adjusted for any prior period for the over- or under-payment of actual fuel costs."
The utility applied for a LEAC increase with the PSC in January but it hasn’t yet been applied to bills. For the past year WAPA has not passed on increased fuel costs, according to the release. Because of the undercollecting, the utility said it has eaten almost $12 million.
"The increase in fuel costs as a result of rising oil prices is not unique to WAPA or the Virgin Islands," the release states. "This is a global problem which can be seen in the almost $2 per gallon price at the gas pumps in the Virgin Islands and in the surcharges for fuel that have recently been added to the cost of airfares."
And, starting next month, to the bills of WAPA customers. According to the utility, the net effect of the increased fuel charge will be about $14 for residential customers who use an average of 474 kilowatt hours per month.
Commercial customers using an average of 1,283 kilowatt hours a month should see a $39 increase, while large power consumers using 23,908 kilowatt hours per month will see a $719 hike.
The adjustment will also show up on potable-water bills, in the form of a $6 increase for the average residential user.

Starting in April, the high cost of oil may show up on the bills of V.I. Water and Power Autority customers to the tune of $14 a month.
According to a WAPA release, the Levelized Energy Adjustment Clause on customers’ bills will go up because of recent spikes in the cost of oil.
The LEAC, which sets the level of fuel costs for six months, was approved by the V.I. Public Services Commission in 1981 to stabilize the monthly changes in the cost of fuel passed on to WAPA customers.
"In general," the WAPA release states, "the LEAC is based on projected fuel costs and is to be adjusted for any prior period for the over- or underpayment of actual fuel costs."
The utility applied for a LEAC increase with the PSC in January but it hasn’t been applied to customers’ bills. For the past year WAPA hasn’t passed on the increased fuel cost to customers. Because of the under-collecting the utility has eaten almost $12 million, according to the release.
"The increase in fuel costs as a result of rising oil prices is not unique to WAPA or the Virgin Islands," the release states. "This is a global problem which can be seen in the almost $2 per gallon price at the gas pumps in the Virgin Islands and in the surcharges for fuel that have recently been added to the cost of airfares."
According to WAPA, the net affect of the increased fuel charge will be about $14 for residential customers who use an average of 474 kilowatt hours per month.
Commercial customers using an average of 1,283 kilowatt hours a month should see a $39 increase, while large power consumers using 23,908 kilowatt hours per month will see a $719 hike.
The increased LEAC will also show up on potable water bills in the form of a $6 increase for the average residential user.

Because of rising fuel costs, Water And Power Authority residential customers will see an increase averaging about $14 per month in their electricity bills beginning in April.
And because of the increased fuel surcharge that will cause the increase, they will also see an average hike of $6 a month in their potable water bills.
According to a WAPA release, the Levelized Energy Adjustment Clause on customers’ bills will likely go up because of recent increases in the cost of oil. The clause, which sets the fuel cost level for six months at a time, has appeared on bills since it was approved by the Public Services Commission in 1981 to stabilize monthly changes in the cost of fuel passed on to WAPA customers.
In general, the WAPA release states, the level "is based on projected fuel costs and is to be adjusted for any prior period for the over- or under-payment of actual fuel costs."
The utility applied to the PSC for a level increase in January. For the past year, the release says, WAPA hasn’t passed increased fuel costs on to customers, and as a result has absorbed almost $12 million in losses.
"The increase in fuel costs as a result of rising oil prices is not unique to WAPA or the Virgin Islands," the release states. "This is a global problem which can be seen in the almost $2-per-gallon price at the gas pumps in the Virgin Islands and in the surcharges for fuel that have recently been added to the cost of airfares."
According to the utility, the increased fuel charge will mean an average increase of about $14 a month for residential electricity customers, based on average use of 474 kilowatt hours of electricity per month.
For commercial electricity customers, the release says, the average increase will be about $39 a month. Large power consumers could see an average increase of $719.

The second of three performances of "Jankombum," a musical drama by Eddie Donoghue set in the Danish West Indies, will be presented by St. John's Carabana Ensemble Theater Company at the Reichhold Center for the Arts.
The play depicts life, love, jealousy and betrayal in the slave society, focusing on an educated free black who seeks to foment revolt among the slaves, and a mulatto teacher who marries a white missionary, bringing on the legal wrath of church authorities.
Tickets are $25, with all seating in the covered section. For outlets and reservations, call 693-1559.

The world premiere of "Jankombum," a musical drama by Eddie Donoghue set in the Danish West Indies, will be presented by St. John's Carabana Ensemble Theater Company at the Reichhold Center for the Arts.
The play depicts life, love, jealousy and betrayal in the slave society, focusing on an educated free black who seeks to foment revolt among the slaves, and a mulatto teacher who marries a white missionary, bringing on the legal wrath of church authorities.
Tickets are $25, with all seating in the covered section. For outlets and reservations, call 693-1559.

"Isn't It Romantic?" — a cabaret evening of music from the Golden Era of Song, the '20s, '30s and '40s — will be performed by vocalist Mary Cleere Haran and her accompanist, Richard Rodney
Bennett, at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, March 13, in Tillet Gardens. The show will feature music by George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Johnny Mercer and Rodgers and Hart. Tickets are $25. Call 775-1929 or e-mail tillett@islands.vi.

This weekend's "Cinema Sundays" film — the next-to-last picture scheduled for the Reichhold Center for the Arts program's first year (although that could change) — is Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones.
Note that it's Lives, plural. The promotional material coming out of the Reichhold had it Life, whereas a major emphasis of the 1990 documentary is that Jones is a man of many lives, most of them very successfully lived: instrumentalist, composer, arranger, conductor, publisher and producer of recordings, television programing and films. He has received more Grammy nominations than anyone else — 76 — and has composed the scores for more than 50 major motion pictures and television programs. He produced and conducted the singing for "We Are the World" (1985), the best-selling single in recording history, which helped raise more than $100 million for famine relief in Africa, and Michael Jackson' "Thriller"(1982), the best-selling album ever.
Born in Chicago in 1933, Jones studied trumpet as a child and was playing and arranging music professionally while still in his teens. His gained recognition as a trumpeter in the Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie bands, then moved to Paris, to work for a record company, study classical music composition and lead a jazz band. In 1962, he became one of the first black senior executives of a major American recording company, a vice president with Mercury Records. In 1982, he formed his own record company, Qwest Records, and eight years later he started Qwest Broadcasting, a minority-owned company.
The breadth of his musical influence can be seen in the roster of celebrities whose comments are crammed into the nearly two-hour-long film: Richard Brooks, Ray Charles, Miles Davis, El DeBarge, Kool Moe Dee, Sheila E., Billy Eckstine, Ella Fitzgerald, Flavor Flav, Dizzy Gillespie, Alex Haley, Lionel Hampton, Herbie Hancock, Ice-T, Jesse Jackson, Michael Jackson, Big Daddy Kane, Sidney Lumet, Bobby McFerrin, Melle Mel, Frank Sinatra, Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, Oprah Winfrey.
Jones has been recognized not only as a musician and music impresario, but also as a social activist. Just last month, he received the World Economic Forum's Crystal Award for promoting "global unity through cultural diversity." At the request of United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and U2 singer Bono, he campaigned for the eradication of debts owed by developing nations to major industrial countries. His efforts "helped persuade the International Monetary Fund to cancel $27 billion in debt," the Associated Press reported.
One critic hailed his Grammy-winning 1989 album "Back on the Block" as "a virtual crash course in black popular music of the 20th Century." His 1995 CD, "Q's Jook Joint," put the spotlight on the roadhouses that cropped up on the outskirts of Southern U.S. towns from the time of slavery, giving birth to many of those musical styles. "The jook joint was the anvil on which so much music was forged — boogie-woogie, barrelhouse, ragtime, stride, fast and slow blues, and jazz," Jones says. And a lot of it was synthesized into rock 'n' roll.
The man's lives are, without question, worthy of documentary attention. Whether the documentary Listen Up, directed by Ellen Weissbrod, who was also the screenwriter, is worthy of the man may be another question. As it's a decade old, reviews are hard to come by on the Internet. A search turned up only three, none of them by "name" critics. (Roger Ebert reviewed it, but his web page was out of circulation this week.)
A CheckOut video site editor described the film as an "offbeat, free-form documentary tribute" to Jones. "With little regard for formal timelines and traditional documentary biography methods," the reviewer wrote, "the film is an amazing patchwork of personal insights featuring a constellation of music stars." Hollywood.com's movie reviewer Leonard Maltin pronounced it "not so much a documentary as a visual and musical collage." While "sometimes effective," he said, it "too often plays like a music video."
Deseret News critic Chris Hicks had more to say, and not much of it was positive: The many cameo guests, he wrote, get "to say a few words in a beautifully lit studio with shadows on their faces and the camera moving in and out to get shots of the interviewee from every angle (except for Michael Jackson, who insisted on giving his interview in the dark)." But the testimonials, Hicks said, add up to "a smoke screen for a movie that is at best frustrating and at worst irritating." With five editors, he said, the result "is more about what you can do in the editing room than it's about Quincy Jones."
Despite interview segments with Jones and his daughter, Jolie, and the impression conveyed that Jones "has sacrificed his personal life for his career," Hicks said, "everything that approaches any real information is merely hinted at. . . What's missing is a cohesive sense of Jones' life, much less [any] probing insights into the man and his incredible musical talent." And most frustrating of all, he said, "is the refusal by the filmmakers to finish a single song until we get to the closing credits."
That doesn't mean don't go see it, especially if you are a Quincy Jones fan. But keep your expectations in tow.
Listen Up is the third in a series of four pictures having to do with accomplished musicians that the Reichhold scheduled for "Cinema Sundays" in observance of March as Music Education Month. The first was Spike Lee's jazz-format Mo' Better Blues; last week's was The Buena Vista Social Club, documenting the resurgence of old-time son musicians in Cuba; and next week's is Thelonius Monk: Straight, No Chaser. Show time is 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $5 general admission and $2.50 for students. The gates open at 7. Popcorn, candy and cold drinks are available.

This weekend's "Cinema Sundays" film — the next-to-last picture scheduled for the Reichhold Center for the Arts program's first year (although that could change) — is Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones.
Note that it's Lives, plural. The promotional material coming out of the Reichhold had it Life, whereas a major emphasis of the 1990 documentary is that Jones is a man of many lives, most of them very successfully lived: instrumentalist, composer, arranger, conductor, publisher and producer of recordings, television programing and films. He has received more Grammy nominations than anyone else — 76 — and has composed the scores for more than 50 major motion pictures and television programs. He produced and conducted the singing for "We Are the World" (1985), the best-selling single in recording history, which helped raise more than $100 million for famine relief in Africa, and Michael Jackson' "Thriller"(1982), the best-selling album ever.
Born in Chicago in 1933, Jones studied trumpet as a child and was playing and arranging music professionally while still in his teens. His gained recognition as a trumpeter in the Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie bands, then moved to Paris, to work for a record company, study classical music composition and lead a jazz band. In 1962, he became one of the first black senior executives of a major American recording company, a vice president with Mercury Records. In 1982, he formed his own record company, Qwest Records, and eight years later he started Qwest Broadcasting, a minority-owned company.
The breadth of his musical influence can be seen in the roster of celebrities whose comments are crammed into the nearly two-hour-long film: Richard Brooks, Ray Charles, Miles Davis, El DeBarge, Kool Moe Dee, Sheila E., Billy Eckstine, Ella Fitzgerald, Flavor Flav, Dizzy Gillespie, Alex Haley, Lionel Hampton, Herbie Hancock, Ice-T, Jesse Jackson, Michael Jackson, Big Daddy Kane, Sidney Lumet, Bobby McFerrin, Melle Mel, Frank Sinatra, Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, Oprah Winfrey.
Jones has been recognized not only as a musician and music impresario, but also as a social activist. Just last month, he received the World Economic Forum's Crystal Award for promoting "global unity through cultural diversity." At the request of United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and U2 singer Bono, he campaigned for the eradication of debts owed by developing nations to major industrial countries. His efforts "helped persuade the International Monetary Fund to cancel $27 billion in debt," the Associated Press reported.
One critic hailed his Grammy-winning 1989 album "Back on the Block" as "a virtual crash course in black popular music of the 20th Century." His 1995 CD, "Q's Jook Joint," put the spotlight on the roadhouses that cropped up on the outskirts of Southern U.S. towns from the time of slavery, giving birth to many of those musical styles. "The jook joint was the anvil on which so much music was forged — boogie-woogie, barrelhouse, ragtime, stride, fast and slow blues, and jazz," Jones says. And a lot of it was synthesized into rock 'n' roll.
The man's lives are, without question, worthy of documentary attention. Whether the documentary Listen Up, directed by Ellen Weissbrod, who was also the screenwriter, is worthy of the man may be another question. As it's a decade old, reviews are hard to come by on the Internet. A search turned up only three, none of them by "name" critics. (Roger Ebert reviewed it, but his web page was out of circulation this week.)
A CheckOut video site editor described the film as an "offbeat, free-form documentary tribute" to Jones. "With little regard for formal timelines and traditional documentary biography methods," the reviewer wrote, "the film is an amazing patchwork of personal insights featuring a constellation of music stars." Hollywood.com's movie reviewer Leonard Maltin pronounced it "not so much a documentary as a visual and musical collage." While "sometimes effective," he said, it "too often plays like a music video."
Deseret News critic Chris Hicks had more to say, and not much of it was positive: The many cameo guests, he wrote, get "to say a few words in a beautifully lit studio with shadows on their faces and the camera moving in and out to get shots of the interviewee from every angle (except for Michael Jackson, who insisted on giving his interview in the dark)." But the testimonials, Hicks said, add up to "a smoke screen for a movie that is at best frustrating and at worst irritating." With five editors, he said, the result "is more about what you can do in the editing room than it's about Quincy Jones."
Despite interview segments with Jones and his daughter, Jolie, and the impression conveyed that Jones "has sacrificed his personal life for his career," Hicks said, "everything that approaches any real information is merely hinted at. . . What's missing is a cohesive sense of Jones' life, much less [any] probing insights into the man and his incredible musical talent." And most frustrating of all, he said, "is the refusal by the filmmakers to finish a single song until we get to the closing credits."
That doesn't mean don't go see it, especially if you are a Quincy Jones fan. But keep your expectations in tow.
Listen Up is the third in a series of four pictures having to do with accomplished musicians that the Reichhold scheduled for "Cinema Sundays" in observance of March as Music Education Month. The first was Spike Lee's jazz-format Mo' Better Blues; last week's was The Buena Vista Social Club, documenting the resurgence of old-time son musicians in Cuba; and next week's is Thelonius Monk: Straight, No Chaser. Show time is 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $5 general admission and $2.50 for students. The gates open at 7. Popcorn, candy and cold drinks are available.

St. John's Carabana Ensemble Theater Company presents the world premiere of the musical drama "Jankombum," by Eddie Donoghue, at the Reichhold Center for the Arts on St. Thomas. There will also be performances on Friday and Saturday, March 24 and 25. Tickets are $25, with seating in the covered section only. Call 693-1559 for outlets or reservations.
The play depicts life, love, jealousy and betrayal in Danish West Indian slave society, focusing on a free black who seeks to foment revolt and a mulatto woman who marries a white missionary, triggering legal backlash from church authorities. Clarence Cuthbertson, Carabana artistic director, is directing the production.

Most Virgin Islanders agree they don't need 15 senators to represent the 100,000 men, women and children of these islands.
Fifteen senators cost taxpayers close to $1 million apiece to maintain, including central staff. From rabbit warren offices in the overcrowded Legislature Building on St. Thomas, they spend much of their time running for re-election. They like their $65,000 salaries and the perks that tag along. Truth of the matter is, most of them don't accomplish that much. The Senate is not an admirable institution as presently constituted.
There now is a good chance all that will change, possibly as early as 2002.
That persistent proponent of a smaller legislature, Sen. Adlah "Foncie" Donastorg, succeeded early this month in attaching to an appropriation bill an amendment calling for a referendum on the subject. The bill was passed.
If Gov. Charles W. Turnbull signs it — and there’s no reason he won't, inasmuch as he wants the appropriation — the referendum will be carried out in conjunction with the general election next November.
Voters will be asked whether they are in favor of reducing the Legislature and, if so, whether they favor a senate of 11 or 9 members. The only question in our mind is not whether they'll vote for reduction but whether they will opt for 11 or 9 senators.
The legislature then must, under the terms of Donastorg's amendment, petition Congress once again to amend the Organic Act, the closest thing to a constitution the Virgin Islands has, to give the Virgin Islands the authority to reduce the size of its Senate.
Congressional approval is not a certainty. It will be up to Delegate Donna Christian-Christensen and the governor to steer the legislation through Congress and convince the new president to sign it.
If Christensen and Turnbull can manage that next year, Virgin Islanders could be voting for only 11 or 9 senators in November of 2002. If they have to wait until 2002 for Congress to vote, implementation might not be until 2004.
Donastorg's amendment doesn't propose to change the way Virgin Islanders elect their senators. There would still be one at-large senator, and either four or five each representing the St. Thomas/St. John and St. Croix Districts.
However, word from Donastorg's office this week was that the senator had asked that another piece of legislation be drafted which would provide for 100 percent at-large voting for the Senate members. Say the Senate had 11 members. They would include one resident of St. John, five residents of St. Croix and five residents of the St. Thomas/St. John District. But all eligible Virgin Islands voters would be able to vote for all 11, whereas now you vote only for those in your own district plus the at-large senator.
All of this is going to excite local political observers. What would happen under such a system to such hardy Senate perennials as Lorraine Berry, Adelbert Bryan and Chucky Hansen? If Chucky is too much for you to take in a 15-member senate, consider her as one of 11 members or, heaven forfend, as one of only 9.
Notwithstanding, reduction is good. Four-year terms would be even better, but that hasn't made it even to the drawing board yet.
Before departing the subject of the Senate, we take note that last week members of that august body discovered they could no longer make off-island telephone calls from their offices. Seems the Senate hadn't paid its long-distance bill, and the provider cut off service.
Serves 'em right.
Frank J. Jordan is a local radio commentator and a former UVI journalism professor.