Aug. 10--The state's utility customer advocate said he will withdraw from a settlement agreement with Southern California Edison over the shuttered San Onofre nuclear plant and request the case be reopened.
Joe Como, director of the Office of Ratepayer Advocates, said Monday that he was "very disappointed" by a judge's ruling Wednesday that Edison failed to report communication with regulators about a settlement. Como added that the judge did not go far enough and wrote an opinion that still gives too much latitude for utilities to communicate with regulators outside of public view.
"We will pull out of the settlement," Como said. "We will file papers to that effect as quickly as possible. This cannot stand."
Como's office joins the Utility Reform Network, which also has pulled out of the settlement.
The ratepayer advocates office was the lead consumer representative in the settlement agreement. The agreement settled how the $4.7 billion in costs for shutting down San Onofre would be divided, with Edison and plant co-owner San Diego Gas Electric bearing $1.4 billion of the cost and the utilities' customers paying the rest.
Since the agreement was announced, backroom negotiations over the settlement between Edison and former California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey during a meeting at a hotel in Warsaw came to light. And the U.S. attorney, the state attorney general and the commission itself opened investigations.
On Wednesday, PUC Administrative Law Judge Melanie Darling ruled that Edison, its officers, agents or attorneys engaged in 10 unreported communications with one or more commissioners or their personal advisors. The communications, Darling said, related to the payment of costs connected to the January 2012 shutdown of the San Onofre plant.
Edison shut down the plant after a small amount of radiation leaked in one of two replacement steam generators. Subsequent investigation found that the generators, installed in 2010 and 2011, were faulty.
The utility permanently closed San Onofre in 2013.
Como said Darling's findings and opinion suggest that it is acceptable for utilities and regulators to meet. And he said the opinion indicates some types of discussions about pending matters do not have to be reported, if the communication is only a one-way talk and not full, back-and-forth discussion.
"That leaves holes that you can drive a truck through," Como said. "It's like she's saying, 'You can game the system, and that's OK.'"
Como said he believes all meetings and talks need to be reported.
