California's Image Dims as Lights Go Out

By Rene Sanchez Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, January 23, 2001 ; Page A01

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 22 -- Night classes at a California State University near here have an unusual new feature. Professors are passing out flashlights to students, in case the campus suddenly goes dark.

Across the vast agricultural fields of the San Joaquin Valley, dairy farmers losing electricity also are losing their livelihood: They can't process milk.

Gripped by power shortages, manufacturing plants in Orange County have just ordered hundreds of workers to report only for weekend and overnight shifts, when the need to conserve is less extreme.

As it fumbles in the darkness of rolling blackouts, searching for any way out of the nation's most severe energy crisis, California is beginning to damage its formidable economy, bleed its budget and force its 33 million residents to make subtle and significant shifts in their everyday lives.

It is a complex disaster still in the making, and for many here in the nation's richest and most populous state, it is still difficult to believe.

"Here we are supposedly at the pinnacle of high-tech knowledge and experience," said Sarah Weld, a mother of two young children in Oakland, "and we're having blackouts?"

Earthquakes, wildfires, droughts, mudslides -- Californians are accustomed to those predicaments and have learned to grin and bear the hardships they bring. But the havoc its electrical meltdown is causing is altogether new and even surreal, since California is otherwise riding a wave of prosperity.

"Previous generations fought wars, survived depressions, they rescued the survivors of the Holocaust, they built roads, they laid the infrastructure of the digital economy," California Gov. Gray Davis (D) told reporters last week. "We're being asked to keep the lights on. Clearly, we can do that."

But for months to come, in much of the state, that task may not be easy. Utility companies here are in financial shambles and public demand for electricity is regularly exceeding supply. Once again today, the state's power supply fell to dangerously low levels, forcing authorities to declare another public alert to conserve. But blackouts were not imposed.

Braced to lose power again with little warning, as it did twice last week, California is swiftly and reluctantly starting to change the way that it works and plays.

Water rides at the Knott's Berry Farm amusement park in Southern California have been stopped to onserve energy. Some dentists are postponing surgeries because they fear losing power midway through a procedure. Horse-racing tracks are shifting events to the afternoon, when they do not need lights. Schools are closing early.

Lights in the state capitol in Sacramento have been dimmed. A large steel plant in the town of Fontana, idled by power shortages, has temporarily dismissed hundreds of workers. At California State University in Pomona, campus officials are asking faculty and students to unplug coffee pots, limit computer time and delay using photocopy machines in the afternoon, when electrical power demand in the state hits its daily peak.

"This is really forcing us to make a lot of changes and compromises," said Uyen Mai, an administrator.

The campus was scheduled to host a regional competition for hundreds of high school drama students one night last week, but abruptly canceled it. "We didn't want them to be stuck in a blackout," Mai said.

Around the state, residents also are rushing to buy portable generators. Many hardware stores already are sold out of them. Annette Zeldin, 49, came looking for one at a Home Depot in Los Angeles a few days ago in what she called a precautionary move "to keep the TV and the fridge on -- in that order."

Even before last week's round of blackouts, many industries and large institutions in California already had been victimized by the state's growing energy crisis in recent months because of deals they have with utility companies.

In exchange for lower year-round rates, they agree to curtail their power use on a moment's notice when supplies in the state are extremely tight.

About 1,000 large businesses participate in that program with Southern California Edison. Until last summer, when the state's energy problems first struck, the businesses reaped great savings with rare pain. But in the past six months, they have been forced to shut down their power for at least three hours a day nearly three dozen times -- and almost every day for the past two weeks.

"It is beyond imagination what those customers have been through," said Gil Alexander, an Edison spokesman. "The past few months have been extraordinary."

Cal-State at Pomona, one of several universities taking part in program, had to close a few hours early for two weeks in December. This month, it has canceled all classes for its 18,000 students once, but refused to comply when another order to shut off electricity came last week from Edison. Campus officials said the violation would cost them about $85,000 in fines. "We just can't keep closing," Mai said.

So far, hospitals, airports and public safety agencies have been spared from blackouts. Many of the large tech companies in Silicon Valley that are engines of California's robust economy, now the sixth-biggest in the world, also have backup power-generating systems to minimize the effects of sporadic power outages. And in some areas hit by midday blackouts last week, all some residents noticed were blinking traffic lights and dark, empty restaurants.

But in the San Joaquin Valley, the nation's biggest agricultural region, even temporary power losses can ruin perishable goods. California's energy problems are beginning to take a serious toll on many farmers.

"This may be an inconvenience for some, but for farmers it is affecting their incomes," said Bob Krauter, a director of the California Farm Bureau. "It's not a cost that they can pass on."

Dairy farms and processing plants are reeling. Even without electricity to keep their products cool, they have to continue milkingcows every day to keep them healthy. Some dairy plants have had to dump thousands of gallons of milk in the past few weeks just because they lacked electricity.

A Land O' Lakes plant in Tulare, Calif., that is the largest milk processor in the country has had to shut down more than a dozen times since mid-December because of the state's dire power shortages.

Jack Prince, a company vice president, said the recurring problem is plaguing processing and delaying deliveries. "The interruptions back up to the dairy and there are cows that need to be milked," he said.

For many Californians, the road to crisis has been a short, strange trip. Last fall, polls showed that an overwhelming majority of residents believed the state was on the right track. Now, they sound much more worried about the state's future, and deeply suspicious of the causes of the energy problems.

In a new Field Poll, nearly 60 percent of residents accused energy companies of exaggerating the severity of power shortages as part of a ploy to raise their rates. About 60 percent also called California's partial move to deregulate its energy markets, which capped consumer rates but left wholesale power prices vulnerable to wild market swings, "fundamentally flawed."

Public patience with the crisis is dwindling, even though California's vital signs still look strong. The state has a budget surplus of more than $5 billion and record low unemployment. It even lowered its sales tax rate recently. And just days before Davis declared a "state of emergency" about energy, he announced another spending spree on public schools, parks and roads.

But leaders of the state's prime industries are demanding a quick and permanent fix to the energy problem because it poses such a threat to the prosperity that has put California in the vanguard of the nation's new economy.

By some estimates, last week's two-day round of blackouts cost state businesses hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue.Ironically, California's good fortune -- population growth, business expansion -- is also a source of the problem because it is increasing demand for electricity. And no large power plants have built in the state for a decade.

"California is waking up to a terrible headache," said Gary Ackerman of the Western Power Trading Forum, which represents energy suppliers.

As they grope for solutions, state leaders are urging residents to conserve, and there are new signs that energy consumption is dropping. But California already ranks among the most energy-efficient states in the nation, partly because most of its residents live near a coast blessed with moderate weather almost all the time. The state's strict environmental rules also force many industries to be less wasteful.

At this point, no remedy to the power shortages looks easy or cheap. Already, the state has committed more than $400 million to buy power. And across California, residents who are learning to live with the threat and the reality of rolling blackouts sound fearful that the worst may be yet to come.

"I'm waiting to see what the politicians do," Debi Numo, 53, said as she shopped for supplies at a hardware store Los Angeles. "Then I'll get worried."

Special correspondent Jeff Adler contributed to this report.

© 2001 The Washington Post

-- SWissrose (cellier@azstarnet.com), January 23, 2001

Answers

Thanks for this article, Swissrose. It gives a picture of what is happening "at ground level." Another one:

CBC

Tue Jan 23, 7:10 am

Surf City Power Crisis

California's power crisis pushed Huntington Beach officials to declare a state of emergency. At an emergency meeting last night, the City Council voted to spend nearly a quarter of a Million dollars on one generator to power City Hall during emergency alerts. The city has interrupted power eleven times during the past few months at the Central Library and Civic Center, which includes City Hall and the police station, as part of a deal for lower rates with Southern California Edison. Edison has penalized Huntington Beach 835-thousand dollars for using power during so-called "interruptible periods," but city officials say they can't shut down power to the police station and they want to avoid further penalties by stopping the Civic Center power-interruption deal with Edison. The "Orange County Register" reports city officials say they may have to move some City Hall operations to a new location.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), January 23, 2001.