The SC Chamber of Deputies voted Tuesday to re-explore the sale of Santee Cooper, part of a massive proposal that also calls for major changes in distressed government and water utilities.
The legislation passed the state’s lower house 89-26, despite objections from lawmakers who said the state has already wasted time trying to find a suitable buyer for the 86-year-old state agency.
The vote sends the final debate about Santee Cooper’s fate to the SC Senate, which has not yet started substantial discussions about the sale of the utility this year.
The senators were reluctant to sell Santee Cooper. But they are more likely to support parts of the House proposal that call for more state oversight over the energy company, which currently accounts only for its politically appointed board.
The debate over the fate of Santee Cooper has been happening intermittently since the collapse in July 2017 of the concessionaire’s VC summer nuclear station expansion project. The sudden failure of that $ 9 billion decade project with SC Electric and Gas caught customers, regulators, investors and lawmakers off guard.
This left Santee Cooper overwhelmed with $ 4 billion in debt, money that the dealership’s customers will have to pay on their energy bills in the coming decades. It also led to a new scrutiny of Santee Cooper by lawmakers that unearthed other problems at the Moncks Corner-based agency.
Some lawmakers sought a sale as a way to pay off VC’s summer debt. But supporters of Santee Cooper insisted – citing an analysis of the state of previous bids – that a private company would only increase electricity tariffs for the 2 million South Carolinians who obtain energy from the utility.
The debate affects the future electricity bills of millions of South Carolinaians, the jobs of 1,625 Santee Cooper employees and the state’s economic development efforts, which often depend on the ability of a potential company to purchase energy at low cost. Lawmakers have promised that 2021 is the year they will decide how to handle Santee Cooper’s participation in the VC Summer fiasco.
This story is developing and will be updated.
Reach Avery Wilks at 803-374-3115. Follow him on Twitter at @AveryGWilks.