by Andi Atteberry, KUAM News Wednesday, February 02, 2005 E-mail this article Printable version KUAM Toolbar Web Widgets Get RSS headlines

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The push to privatize the Guam Waterworks Authority has hit a roadblock. While the Consolidated Commission on Utilities has spent months in time and effort to craft legislation to form a public/private partnership, new members to the Commission have redirected the move almost entirely.

It seems that just when all of the public input was gathered and the draft legislation submitted to the 28th Guam Legislature, the momentum of the move has slowed to a near halt.

The privatization measure is sitting in the Legislature right now, seemingly marked with a huge question mark. The confusion stems not only from within the Legislature itself, but amongst CCU members, as what seemed like a "full steam ahead" effort to privatize GWA has trickled down to a mere state of confusion for all decision makers involved.

Speaker Mark Forbes uses the words "concerned", "confused", and "mystified" by the curious draft legislation handed over to him that reads 'for information purposes only.' He questioned the motive of the document, telling KUAM News, "Did they send this to us for interesting night reading? Is there a desire to have the body act on this in some way? We don't know, based on the transmittal letter."

Forbes says he feels like the CCU is passing the buck when it comes to making the tough decisions for the utility agency. "Given that the CCU by law is responsible for the operation of those two utilities [the Guam Power Authority being the other agency], it would really be nice to have some sense of what there opinion on this is," he stated.

CCU chair Simon Sanchez agrees with his former legislative colleague, saying the first CCU board had one vision: "We were very committed to having the legislation introduced and passed because they argued that we would improve gwa as a public utility as we have been doing but we would simultaneously get good companies to bid on operating our water system."

But when the current CCU board ("CCU 2") took over, the vision changed. With the signing on of commissioner Tom Ada and Gloria Nelson, the board no longer has the composition needed to take a firm stand on the issue, and the CCU's push to privatize remains in limbo.

Commissioner Ada was one of the sticklers for calling the legislation "information only" and tells KUAM News that GWA is slowly but surely gaining the ground it needs to become a solid, effective government-run agency. With revenues up, good management in place, and an increase in employee training, he says GWA just needs some time to grow, and a chance to raise the $100 million it needs to upgrade the system on its own and some performance standards to follow.

Said Ada, "Then we are going to need to say well, by this time of the year you should be at this time of the year you should be at this point and if we find they aren't we are going to go down a different path now."

Both Ada and Sanchez both agree that some consensus has to be reached, but neither has a timeframe or a solid date as to when they will sit down as a board and determine a definite position. As for Speaker Forbes, he says he's drafting a letter to the Commission to try to get some kind of indication what the CCU wants done with the legislation.