Critics slam rate request by PNM
PRC hearings open with public opinions
About 75 people lined up to make impassioned appeals against Public Service Company of New Mexico’s latest rate request Monday morning at the Public Regulation Commission in Santa Fe.
The event marked the opening of PRC hearings in the current rate case, expected to last at least a week.
PNM is seeking a 9 percent increase in base rates, most of which to pay for costs related to shutting down the coal-fired San Juan Generating Station near Farmington and investments in the nearby Four Corners Power Plant.
PNM could fully shut down San Juan in 2022 and Four Corners in 2031, when co-ownership and coal contract agreements at those plants expire. But opponents in the rate case would like to see that happen much sooner.
Clean-energy and environmental activists, retired individuals, and people from various professions, including the medical industry, railed against PNM’s continued investments in coal rather than renewable energy during the morning’s public comment period.
“PNM wants to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on aging coal plants that are at the end of their lives when it could instead invest in new jobs in communities through more solar and wind energy projects,” Tom Solomon, co-coordinator of 350.org New Mexico, told hearing examiners.
Pumping money into fossil fuels means less capital available for clean energy, added Jim MacKenzie, another 350.org coordinator.
About $44 million of the $62.3 million in new annual revenue PNM seeks in the rate case would pay for investments at San Juan and Four Corners.
“That’s a significant amount of money,” MacKenzie said. “These decisions have long-
lasting impacts.”
One physician, Dr. Robert Bernstein of La Familia Medical Center in Santa Fe, said the health costs from burning coal significantly raises the stakes in the case. It aggravates respiratory illnesses such as asthma, increases the risks of cardiovascular disease, and endangers neurological development in children, Bernstein told hearing examiners.
One lone speaker, New Mexico Utility Shareholders Alliance Executive Director Carla Sonntag, asked the PRC to support PNM, given that the utility and most other parties in the rate case signed a settlement agreement in May that lowered PNM’s original request for a 14 percent rate hike to 9 percent now.
“An impressive number of parties signed onto the agreement, including several environmental groups,” Sonntag said. “Nobody got everything they wanted, but the parties came together in a compromise.”
A total of 18 parties have intervened in the rate case, 13 of whom signed the settlement, said PRC hearing examiner Ashley Schannauer. Four remain neutral on the agreement, and one, New Energy Economy, opposes it.
Evidentiary hearings with expert testimony by intervening parties were scheduled to continue Monday afternoon and last throughout the week.