The California Public Utilities Commission must direct utility Southern California Edison to stop collecting ratepayer revenue in the settlement for the early closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, attorneys representing one such ratepayer said in a new filing Monday.
The commission in May 2016 reopened the 2014 settlement, under which ratepayers would pay $3.3 billion of the cost for the plant’s premature shutdown in 2013, after it was found that then-CPUC President Michael Peevey had conducted ex parte communications on the matter with an executive for SONGS’ majority owner Southern California Edison in 2013.
Southern California Edison blames the shutdown on faulty steam generators supplied by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI). The utility and SONGS’ co-owners San Diego Gas & Electric and the city of Riverside in March won a $125 million decision against MHI from the International Chamber of Commerce’s International Court of Arbitration. However, the court found that the steam generators’ producer had not defrauded SONGS’ owners.
“In contrast, the CPUC not only accepted SCE’s fraud victim claim, but also relied on SCE’s ‘multi-billion arbitration claim’ against MHI in its Decision” on the settlement, according to the motion filed Monday with the commission by the watchdog group Citizens Oversight and attorneys Michael Aguirre and Maria Severson, representing ratepayer Ruth Henricks.
“The arbitration decision makes clear that SCE was not defrauded; SCE must own its decisions. Collection based on plant revenue requirement must not continue,” they stated.
The attorneys also called for the California Public Utilities Commission to halt filing or approval of further “advice letters” from Southern California Edison with the intent of recovering additional revenue for SONGS.
Southern California Edison spokeswoman Maureen Brown on Monday said “The motion is a premature attempt to ask the CPUC to invalidate the settlement. The settlement agreement remains in place, and the amounts being collected are consistent with that settlement.”
