BY DAVID REAGOR
Councilor
Los Alamos County

Utility rates from the Los Alamos utilities department- gas, electricity, water, and sewer- have all increased over recent years, and not by small amounts. This year the Los Alamos County Council voted for new increases in natural gas and water rates. We should critically discuss many of these rate increases, but here I will just focus on natural gas rates.

According to the U.S. eia.gov website, New Mexico natural gas prices peaked around 2008, fell for many years through 2020, and then rose to the same peak prices around 2022 and have fluctuated around lower prices for the last few years. Looking over the last few years, or the last two decades, prices are not even trending up.

During the Council hearing in August the DPU presented their current budget. The current margin of our natural gas operation is about 62%. That is 38% of funds the county collects from our natural gas customers are used to pay for the wholesale cost of the natural gas. This is all based on last year, when the winter was very mild. We did not sell very much gas and are short of revenue due to one of our warmest winters. A one-year shortfall is not a justification for a permanent rate increase. We had a very cold winter in 2022, so we can expect colder years that will rebuild our reserves. Alternatively, if these warm winters persist, the remaining 62% must be enough to run the natural gas utility system. The administrative overhead must be scaled to the size of our system. It is a management problem. In either case, steady warming or sporadic cold winters, we do not need to raise rates.

In the same DPU presentation they discuss the rates of local companies for a residential customer with 100 Therms/month of consumption, $77 for New Mexico gas company, $81 for Zia gas company, $94 for our previous rate, and $106 for our new rates. These large increases are well out of step with our local gas providers.

In general, this burden falls hardest on citizens with moderate income. One local citizen, Mellisa Machesky said, “I need another job just to pay my utilities.” If we have another cold winter our citizens will see an enormous increase in their bills. So, we have rate increases that do not make sense and will be difficult for our citizens. Why is this happening?

I suspect that the real reason for the gas rate increase is that they are trying to force us off natural gas by just raising the rates. The utilities survey showed that most our citizens have no intention of transitioning to all electric. This is made worse by the also soaring electricity rates in the county.  They can only keep the Carbon Action Plan alive with massive growth in gas rates, just pushing the public off natural gas.

If we do not change direction in County government, we can all expect more of this in the future. This is my plea, please elect councilors who will actively examine all the utility issues and side with the best interests of the public. Those candidates are Jason Chappel and Eric Stromberg. Please vote for them now.