Mary Baenen from Northern Idaho has filed a complaint with the Idaho Public Utilities Commission against the Avista Corporation, an electric utility located in Spokane Washington but with generation and service territory in Idaho. She is requesting that as many people as possible comment on the issues in her complaint. The comment period ends on February 23, 2018 so there isn’t much time.
Information on how to comment is at the bottom.
Below is an overview of the issues in Mary’s complaint.
Prohibit the management of Avista from selling the utility business including six hydroelectric facilities on the Spokane and Clark rivers to Hydro One, a Canadian utility company under the authority provided by Idaho Code 61-328b which requires that the sale be in the public interest. The service territory of Hydro One is Ontario, Canada and their headquarters is located in Toronto.
Hydro One Service Territory
Avista Service Territory
In the Schedule 14A Sec Filing, it includes sections describing the benefits to Hydro One from the purchase.
Order Avista to establish an opt-out for the smart meter program without additional cost to customers upon request. The reason for this request is the growing body of evidence as to the negative health effects of electromagnetic radiation emitted from the smart meters. Mary has a website where she’s documented a lot of the health information concerning smart meters.
Deny rate increases requested by Avista Corporation due to Idaho Code 61-328 (b) which says:
(3) Before authorizing the transaction, the public utilities commission shall find:
(b) That the cost of and rates for supplying service will not be increased by reason of such transaction; and
It’s difficult to see how the Idaho Public Utilities Commission can find that it’s in the public interest to sell an American utility company to a Canadian utility company that is over 2,000 miles away and Hydro One has the highest utility rates in all of Canada.
It looks more to this writer that the decision to sell Avista to Hydro One is a political decision and not a business decision. Considering the lines of business that Avista is involved in – and the location of those lines of business it’s not a stretch to consider Avista to be a trojan horse company created expressly for that political purpose. Consider the following:
In the Schedule 14 SEC filing, it said that the acquisition of Avista is contingent upon the approval of the Public Utilities Commissions in Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Alaska and Canada. They have apparently also filed a request for a CFIUS review.
Go back up and look at Avista’s lines of business and the locations of those lines of business along with the number of Public Utilities Regulatory bodies that are involved in the sale as well as Hydro One’s location.
And consider the background of Scott Morris, the Chairman and CEO of Avista relative to the job of running a small utility company in the Pacific Northwest.
The political purpose of this transaction appears to this writer to be to create the justification for a sovereignty cannibalizing North American Regulatory structure. In fact, that North American Regulatory structure would be something exactly like the North American Electric Reliability Corporation.
A couple of years ago following my experience with Idaho Power, the Idaho Public Utilities Commission, and the smart meters, I did some further investigation on the regulatory structure for utilities in the United States. See Chapters 3 and 9. At the time I thought that FERC was ceding power (no pun intended) to NERC, but now it appears that FERC is trying to go global.
It’s very important to have as many people as possible comment on the sale of Avista to Hydro One. This deal needs to be stopped and the internationalization of our utilities and the regulatory system needs to be stopped as well.
Obviously, the electric grid and our electric utilities are essential to the security of the nation. It would be the height of insanity to allow the regulation of them to escape our borders and the laws of our country.
Also, the last Canadian energy company – to buy an American Energy Company, sold their assets to Russia. Prosecutors ask FBI agents for info on Uranium One Deal
Please submit your comments to the Idaho Public Utilities Commission. Remember this is a formal legal process:
http://www.puc.idaho.gov/forms/casecomment.aspx
Required information:
Case Number: AVU-E-17-11
Utility Company: Avista Corporation
Articles Added After Original Post
This is from an article about Hydro One posted on Global Research – one of the best research websites I know:
The Deregulation and Privatization of Hydro-Electric Power: Ontario’s Hydro ‘Mistake’
Hydro in Ontario is a mess and rates are skyrocketing. The high number of people who have trouble paying or can’t pay their Hydro bills is growing by the day. Businesses are leaving the province and/or refusing to locate here because of high Hydro rates. A group that is especially being ignored is small and medium business including farmers (that’s from a former union activist!).
On 19 November 2016, Premier Kathleen Wynne said she made a “mistake on Hydro” and took “responsibility for it.” But it wasn’t just an accident that Hydro rates skyrocketed. Rates shot through the roof because they were structured that way through Provincial Government legislation. In actual fact, all three Provincial parties bear responsibility for the Hydro “mistake.
Continue reading the article HERE
Ontario Electricity Regulation Crisis Report Part 125 Guest Post: Stonewalled by Guardians
What follows is a guest post presented by two former Toronto Hydro employees, Paul Kahnert and David Grant. They document their unsuccessful efforts on behalf of a larger group of retirees with intimate knowledge of the utility to engage the City’s Ombudsman, the City’s Auditor General, and the Ontario Energy Board in investigating malpractice at Toronto Hydro. The post and its attachments document how these concerned experts were lead on, then stonewalled or simply shut down from the start by three separate agencies mandated to protect the public interest.
Continue reading HERE
4 Comments
Jeanne Arnzen
Please do not let the sale of Avista go through to Hydro One. It would certainly be bad for Idaho. It is not in our best interest. Our rates are high now. Hydro One has the highest rates in Canada.
Please cancel this sale.
Vicky Davis
I hope you file that comment with the Idaho Public Utilities Commission as well. They are the ones who will make the decision. At the bottom of the article is a link where you can make that comment.
Kristin
“sovereignty cannibalizing North American Regulatory structure” This is the major issue here! America is THE greatest country on Earth. Our food: top quality. Buildings: safety regulations, code enforcement, earthquake/hurricane proofing in areas subject to those disasters- fire exits, smoke alarms. Our escalators and elevators are subject to inspection and don’t eat people and limbs like the ones in China do regularly.
Streets: designed for traffic flow- our police force is one of, if not the least corrupt in the globe. Our autos are designed with safety in mind.
Our Public Utilities have the citizens rights in mind. Our privacy laws, and laws that protect us we’ve come to know and accept as de riguer (sp?). When the global corporations come in, they don’t just BUY the company- it will be altered from the inside out- PERMANENTLY. This buy is designed to ALTER the PUC and our utilities completely, from within.
What if our USDA were purchased by China? Don’t you think our food quality and laws protecting us would suffer under the consequences?? This is just the same. This isn’t about patriotism, it’s about changing our COUNTRY by it’s laws and very structures.
Yes Vicky I WILL pass this on to as many as I can.
PS- Ive told you, & it’s off topic to this article- but may be useful to readers-
How to have your Smart Meter removed as I did- quickly and nicely:
Write or email your utility- tell them the meter “interferes with licensed equipment” that is the wording you must use. Smart meters communicate using NON-licensed ((non-licensed is not unethical or illegal, it’s just a legal term the FCC uses- your kid’s walkie talkies use unlicensed bands) frequencies: Part 15 & Part 19 of the FCC’s regulations. Part 15, and/or Part 19 transmitters can *not* interfere with licensed equipment- i.e., amateur radio, any licensed radio/transmitter/receiver. You’ll see this same wording on the backs of telephones, any type of radio equipment, you can also just search online or visit FCC.gov. You might need not supply the utility with the license number of the equipment you claim is getting interference. I didn’t. I still have the email communications from when I first requested my local utility remove /replace the offending meter. They came and replaced it within 24 hours after receiving my request. In fact I haven’t had them remove the smart meter I have at my new address, and I need contact them ASAP, it’s a spying tool is what it is, and I don’t like the method used to switch power on and off using the Smart technology.
Thank you Vicky and thank you for the email alerts to your articles as well. I really appreciate them.
Vicky Davis
And the bad news is that I think the USDA has been bought by China (or some other country).
This is the link I meant to give you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1YfKFJJ_-M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN7uA4_m998
That’s an excellent idea Kristin. We need to find out what equipment operates at the same frequency as the meters – and buy whatever it is and then complain 🙂