By By SUZANNE CARLSON Daily News Staff
Copyright virginislandsdailynews
A spokesman for Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. on Monday said that the governor intends to keep his pledge to fix WAPA and bring relief to rate payers “come hell or high water.”
At Monday’s press briefing, Government House Communications Director Richard Motta Jr.
responded during a question-and-answer period about whether Bryan would keep his campaign pledge to fix the V.I. Water and Power Authority before leaving office.
“That is still absolutely the goal of the governor,” Motta said.
WAPA, he continued, “has a myriad of challenges, many of which the government of the Virgin Islands has stood by to support the Authority in overcoming. That continues to be the administration’s stance.”
Meanwhile the V.I. Water and Power Authority’s board of directors held a special meeting Monday and conducted all discussion and action in executive session, out of view of the public.
Following the closed-door session board secretary, Juanita Young, reported: “We discussed legal issues and took action on a lease negotiation,” with member Hubert Turnbull abstaining, “and everyone else voted in the affirmative.”
In response to questions from The Daily News, WAPA spokeswoman Shanell Petersen said in an email after the meeting that the board authorized WAPA CEO Karl Knight “to enter into negotiations for a real estate lease.”
Petersen did not respond to other questions about the lease, and did not provide any additional details.
Meanwhile WAPA has been struggling to provide reliable power to customers for weeks.
Bryan’s administration directed $77 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding to WAPA to subsidize fuel costs, but the St. Thomas power plant has been suffering from “reduced generation capacity,” a catch-all term WAPA has been using whenever generating units fail.
Since Sept. 8, customers on St. Thomas and St. John have been living in near-constant uncertainty about if and when grid power will be available, and unannounced, prolonged rolling blackouts have plagued daily life.
The random blackouts continued Friday, knocking out traffic lights at several busy intersections, and V.I. Police have been warning drivers to use caution during power failures.
Petersen provided an update on the status of the plant’s operations in an email Monday.
“Operations across the Authority are running normally as our team continues to manage the realities of an aging infrastructure,” she said.
On St. Thomas, the three Phase I Wartsila units are operating on propane, while the four newest Phase II Wartsilas are operating on diesel. Unit 15 is currently on propane, Unit 27 on diesel, and Unit 23 remains under maintenance, according to Petersen.
“On St. Croix, the recent outages were not generation-related but rather caused by external factors, including vehicular collisions, weather-related impacts to power lines from heavy rains, and damaged hardware on a wooden pole. Our line crews responded quickly in each instance to restore service as safely and efficiently as possible,” Petersen said.
Motta said Monday that fixing WAPA “remains one of the governor’s top priorities. Come hell or high water, that we will bring some relief to the ratepayers and bring the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority out of the financial morass that it seems to have found itself to be in over its history.”
Motta said WAPA is working to diversify its energy production methods beyond fossil fuels.
“We’ve seen the solar farms come online, the acquisition of the VITOL propane terminal,” using $150 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “something that wiped quite a significant number, or hundreds of millions of dollars off the debt books and balance sheet” of WAPA, Motta said.
While local leaders have been working for years to add solar and wind energy production to the territory’s electrical grid, President Donald Trump called renewable energy expensive and ineffective at a recent speech to the United Nations General Assembly.
On Monday, the Trump administration announced that 13 million acres of federal land will be opened to coal mining, and the government will spend $625 million to restore coal-fired power plants.
Motta did not respond to questions from The Daily News about Trump’s call to end the use of renewable energy, and the cancellation of the Solar for All program, which was expected to provide $62 million in federal funding to install rooftop solar systems on approximately 3,000 Virgin Islands homes.
Bryan did not appear at Monday’s briefing, and was out of the territory for the last week. Government House has not responded to questions from The Daily News about where he went, and whether he was on government business or vacation following reports that he had traveled to Costa Rica.
