Santee Cooper’s Ray Pinson speaks at Goose Creek Council meeting

Santee Cooper –

Good evening Mayor and Members of Council. My name is Ray Pinson, I manage Local Government and Community Relations activities for Santee Cooper – my work address is One Riverwood Drive Moncks Corner, SC. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.

Santee Cooper was recently made aware of the electric city resolution scheduled for vote this evening. The premise of the proposal, as we understand it, is that the City of Goose Creek would form an electric city serving one current Santee Cooper customer, Century Aluminum, with off-system power through existing transmission lines and facilities owned by Santee Cooper. In exchange, the City would be allowed to annex several thousand acres of the Mt. Holly property. We have previously provided the Mayor, Administrator, and each of you numerous reasons why this proposal is untenable in our view and further requested that tonight’s vote be postponed until we could work together to identify the substantial impediments that exist. The most compelling of these is South Carolina case law already establishing that, “When an area is incorporated into a new municipality or annexed into an existing one, the municipality may not oust or evict a utility provider which previously has lawfully served the area. South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. v. Town of Awendaw (2004)”.

With respect to the resolution and referendum question that you will vote on this evening, we believe that the following very important questions must be addressed by this Council, at a minimum:

1.) will the citizens of Goose Creek be adequately informed of the significant liabilities and obligations associated with becoming an electric provider;

2.) will the citizens be informed that they cannot receive any power from their new electric city due to current law governing existing electric service areas;

3.) will they be informed that the City’s proposal to serve only one existing Santee Cooper customer – Century Aluminum, is currently unlawful;

4.) will the citizens be informed that their new electric city will be totally dependent on out of state generation sources, transmission lines, and distribution facilities that the City does not own;

5.) will the citizens be informed of the consequences and damages associated with power supply interruption at Century Aluminum – regardless of contract indemnification;

6.) will the citizens be informed that the new electric city will continue to be obligated for any transmission system agreements or reservations – even if Century Aluminum were to shut down;

7.) will the citizens be informed that even if the new electric city can overcome the legal hurdles of supplying power to Century Aluminum, their ultimate power rates may go up because Century Aluminum will have used up a large portion of the finite transmission capacity that Santee Cooper currently uses to create savings for all of our customers – which includes Berkeley Coop customers.

Becoming an electric utility is not a prospect to be taken lightly. It comes with great liability to your citizens in terms of reporting penalties, regional transmission constraints, lack of your own generation sources, lack of your own transmission facilities, and a host of other legal complications that have been relayed to you already. On behalf of Santee Cooper, we respectfully request that you table this matter in favor of discussions that should have already taken place between our organizations and Century or that you simply vote “no” to the proposed referendum.