Westinghouse not testifying about canceled S.C. project

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Westinghouse Electric Co. will not be testifying before South Carolina state legislators who are investigating the canceled construction of two AP1000 nuclear power plants near Jenkinsville. At least not yet.

The bankrupt Cranberrybased firm was called to hand over its files on the V.C. Summer project, which was billions of dollars over budget and years overdue, and to appear before a committee tasked with figuring out what went wrong on the project and who should pay for it.

The utilities that commissioned the project in South Carolina had been collecting money from their customers to fund the construction. The state House Utility Ratepayer Protection Committee is now trying to determine if the utilities played a hand in mismanaging the unraveled effort and therefore should not be entitled costs.

In late February, the committee sent Westinghouse a demand “on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of South Carolina ratepayers” to testify at a hearing scheduled for March 21 and produce all documents related to the project by March 14.

“The House reserves its right to punish any failure to appear with all available remedies, including but not limited to, contempt,” the letter said.

That doesn’t appear to be happening.

The two South Carolina lawmakers who penned the letter, Representatives Peter McCoy and Russell Ott, did not respond to numerous attempts for comment.

But Mr. McCoy told The State, to fully recover their