September 20, 2007
LC Power Not Quitting UAMPS Completely

By Dave Maxwell

Lincoln County Power will not participate in the lawsuit between the Utah Associated Municipal Power System (UAMPS), Rocky Mountain Power, and their half-partner City of Glendale, CA. but will not quit UAMPS altogether either.

In August, the board had given staff the OK to withdraw from UAMPS if they felt necessary to do so because of potential problems stemming from the failed plan for a third coal-fired power plant in Utah.

Overton Power District, Boulder City, Valley Electric of Pahrump, and Lincoln County Power representatives held a meeting in Salt Lake City on September 4 with UAMPS to talk through the situation.

After hearing the status and likely solution plus options regarding the UAMPS law suit against the California owners of plants 1 and 2, Dave Luttrell and Mick Lloyd from Lincoln County Power, recommended to the Board to issue a letter to UAMPS to cut their involvement with the planned lawsuit. Unfortunately, it will involve the loss of about $258,000 Lincoln County has already paid for the project. Luttrell said that if LC Power remains with UAMPS and participates in the lawsuit as they are now, they will receive a monthly bill for about $6,000.

Luttrell did however, recommend that LC Power remain a member of UAMPS for a $66 a month fee, and join the “Resource Project,” which is a resource planning effort to look for generation and transmission projects that could be somehow aggregated together.” This would be a replacement project to compensate for the loss of the ITT Unit 3 plant.

Luttrell said that remaining with UAMPS would allow LC Power to receive part of any monetary settlement from the UAMPS suit with their California partners, although he thought that to be highly unlikely, and it would also LC Power to see if UAMPS might “start a project somewhere that might have some benefit to us.”

The Resource Project agreement does allow for an entity to get out at any time following a 30-day advanced notice.

Luttrell reported that Overton Power District and Boulder City decided to remain with UAMPS in their suit with the California owners of Unit 3, while Valley Electric decided to stay with the Unit 3 project suit and greatly reduced their participation to only 500 kilowatts if receiving more power from plants 1 and 2 is part of the settlement in the suit from the Unit 3 plant.