From the by M.D. Fletcher |
March 2009 |
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Those of you sufficiently under-medicated may vaguely recall last month's inspirational message in which I made a fleeting reference to the necessity of an increase in the monthly customer charge imposed by the Cooperative upon our loyal and long-suffering membership. At the time, I suggested the increase would amount to somewhere around three to four bucks. As it turns out, for our regular residential rate we're talking about $2.85. When everything is tallied up, that translates into an overall increase in cost to the membership of 2.11%, which is less than one years' rate of inflation. And our last rate increase was in 1988. Now, aren't you sorry you called me all those bad names? Oh sure, this small an increase means I'll be sipping domestic wine instead of Dom Perignon on the corporate jet, plus I'll probably be scaling back on my annual upper management fact-finding mission to the eastern Caribbean, but hey, we've all got to make sacrifices, right? Even the U.S. Congress has had to tighten their collective trusses to be able to shovel all that money at Fannie and Freddie and AIG, so who am I as a mere grossly overpaid high muckity-muck to not do likewise? I figure it's the least I can do, and believe me, I'm pretty good at doing the least I can do. Ask anybody. Go ahead. I'll wait. But enough about me. We've got bigger fish to fry, which by the way, appears to be all we're going to be eating if the economy doesn't snap out of it pretty darn ricky-tick. Fortunately, most of us in these parts have been so poor for so long that the troubles the rest of the country is experiencing right now are old hat to us. Plus, we've got some downright nifty things in the works like, f'instance, miles and miles of sun-baked high desert just begging for various kinds of solar applications to generate energy. The new administration seems determined (so far at least) to kick alternative energy into high gear. How much all this is going to cost is evidently immaterial (after all, it's just money and the government prints it) so what the heck. |
But if we're all going to be driving electric cars, we're going to need a lot more electricity. Coal generation in this country at this point in time is politically all but out of the question. The latest culprit here is carbon dioxide. Since we are all carbon-based life forms, it remains a mystery to me how our exhaled breath is considered a toxin, unless of course we're talking about the day after the Super Bowl, at which time methane is probably an issue as well. My personal favorite, nuclear generation is enjoying a bit more support these days, but we're still a long way away from alleviating a lot of folk's phobic reaction to the notion of harnessing the same molecular reaction that makes the sun shine. I figure Jane Fonda has a lot to do with this China Syndrome idea that as mortals there are some things we are just not supposed to mess with. Admittedly, that's true with snake charming and time travel, but I'm not sure nuclear power makes the list. Biomass generation is a non-starter because the whole idea is to burn waste to make heat to make steam to spin a turbine to make electricity. And when you burn stuff, whether it's forest slash or pig droppings, you produce - you guessed it - carbon dioxide. So no go with bio. Now, a real possibility is geothermal generation and, as it turns out, we've got a whole bunch of geothermal resources in Hidalgo County. In fact, there's a company developing this resource that is pretty far along in creating the Lightning Dock Geothermal Generating Station. This facility plans to utilize Columbus Electric's sub-transmission system to transmit power to the bulk transmission system for ultimate delivery to the Salt River Project in Arizona. While in operation, the facility will need power from Columbus Electric - lots of it - and that means increased revenue to the Cooperative that you're not going to have to provide. The plan is to bring Lightning Dock on-line in January, 2010. I'll be waiting with bated, carbon-based breath. |
