BY ELLEN WALTON
Los Alamos
Los Alamos and LANL are entering a new period of growing regional resentment and distrust with the unveiling of the draft EA for LANL’s Electrical Power Capacity Upgrade Project (EPCU) and the Los Alamos Department of Public Utilities’ (LADPU) plan to purchase at ratepayers’ expense 170 MW of new power. Information can be found at NPR’s February 22, 2024 Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety podcast on the issue. (https://www.npr.org/podcasts/1179630639/c-c-n-s-update)
Regardless of individual views on LANL’s mission, it is clear this under the table collusion could only take place under the auspices of an unregulated public utility governed by a specially classed Home Rule county and a secretive national laboratory allergic to transparency.
The residents of Los Alamos County use about 20% (currently less than 20 MW) of the power purchased by the Power Pool according to numbers gleaned from the NPR podcast and current 2023 draft EA on the LANL EPCU. Current total Power Pool usage is near 90 MW, according to the draft EA, so we all would have to up our usages by 52% to near the predicted demand of 173 MW in just three years. We have not increased overall power usage in more than 20 years, according to past numbers in the LANL Electrical System Power Upgrades EA, Final; March 9, 2000; page 6. This includes a time period in which pit production occurred alongside all other LANL and County activities.
Is LANL planning to leave its doors open and turn all the AC on this summer? I’m not.
My gas bill was inflated by 58% this past month with a gas “recovery” charge due to LADPU’s past failure to secure affordable energy for its constituents. I have reduced usage by efforts of conservation, but to no avail. Many individuals have invested in solar panels for their homes, fed power back into our grid, and lowered the County’s reliance on fossil fuels for home heating and electrical power. Yet our power rates perpetually increase. This is in stark contrast to the decreasing costs at neighboring Kit Carson Electric whose mission includes affordable power for its customers.
The purchase of solar power from San Juan is not intrinsically bad, except that the amount of power to be rubber-stamped by Council tonight does not match our realistic power needs or capacity for transmission. It is not a deal to lower our rates as residential customers. Instead, this deal tells the world that LANL will construct a new power line through the wilderness no matter what the rest of the state and the stakeholders on those lands think. Los Alamos has more money than any of our neighbors, and we can tread on anyone.
For a County that is already viewed as destructive and arrogant by its neighbors, this is a move that will bring its Home Rule status closer to a legislative end. Both locals and their neighbors will ultimately call for the end of Home Rule in Los Alamos County, and LANL will lose political favor to other national labs closer to resources of water, transportation, power, and skilled labor. Los Alamos suffers from an identity crisis and a conflict between those who want to do what is needed, and those who just want to do in order to be wealthy. I am hoping the first group will win out, but am afraid this will be a long and bumpy road.