San
Pedro Daily  |
Thursday, July 16,
2009 Belize's Only Daily |
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PUC Says "Maybe"
To Rolling Blackouts
Will there be extended rolling power
outages? Tonight, the
best the Public utilities Commission can say is, “maybe.” It’s
described as a fluid situation. And that’s because there are two things
that military strategists might call, “known unknowns.” The first one
is the power supply from CFE in Mexico. That company has major machine
problems and earlier this month, it informed BEL that it will have to
cut it off. And then there’s the diesel generator at Westlake Park,
mile 8 on the western Highway. That’s out of commission and being
repaired.
Take those two out of the picture and Belize loses one third of its power supply. That means of the 74 megawatts Belize uses at its peak, only about 55 is secure – the other 18 to 20 is tied up between CFE and Westlake. But Westlake is being repaired; the parts arrive tomorrow, and government has interceded to implore CFE for assistance. That company has revised its position and has agreed to provide a minimum amount of power to keep the system going. Chairman of the PUC John Avery discussed that development and the overall situation at a press conference today. John Avery, PUC Chairman “BEL was informed by CFE that they would be using all their resources to try to supply BEL with at least the minimum amount of power that they require in order to keep all system up and running. However they still have not ruled out the event that they would have to ask BEL at times to come off their system completely and by that I mean not being separated from the Mexican grid but by not taking any power from Mexico in which case as long as that gas turbine remains down, we will have a shortfall of supply capacity in Belize and will have to go to rotating blackouts. However like I said the situation remains fluid. We don’t know from one hour to one hour, day to day what exactly will happen with CFE. We expect that if CFE informs us for certain that there will be periods that they cannot supply us with power, then BEL if it is an extended period would likely be putting out notices telling customers of any schedule for the areas that they live in. In the meantime, what we would like to ask of consumers of electricity that we can get through this period. First if there is anyway to conserve power, lessen the demand on the system, like I said right now the demand is 74 megawatts roughly. If there is anyway to lessen that then that could have a direct impact on BEL having to rotate blackouts or at least it could minimize the areas that would need to be cut off the system at anytime. It is something that again everything is fluid. It really depends on what we hear from CFE. If we only lose power say for 15 minutes to half hour then really it will be no different than having a line problem or some scheduled maintenance. But if you’re going to lose the entire supply from Mexico, that is when you have to get into scheduling so that you don’t inconvenience any one group more than the other. But certainly it will be something that would have to rotated as fairly as possible.” The other significant development is that the Minister of public utilities who is also the NEMO Minister has used his emergency power to hammer out an agreement for BEL to purchase an additional 8 megawatts of power from Belize Aquaculture Limited in southern Belize. BAL presently provides 10 megawatts. Emergency powers were required because the law states that all power purchase agreements must be the product of competitive bidding, but with the present state of crisis, that was waived. And why was the Chairman of the PUC hosting a press conference about ensuring –as best as possible – a continuous power supply? Isn’t providing power BEL’s business. Well, seems that after taking a public relations banging on all public media, that company is playing a speak-no-evil, hear-no-evil type game and Avery said he felt he needed to step in and clear the air about the outages, stressing that there is no sinister corporate strategy behind it. John Avery, “Thing is like I said, there seems to be this mistrust but I don’t think we can operate the regulator and the utility with this air of mistrust and so we decided we have to have this press conference because I was looking at the talk show last night and that seems to be the sentiment that this is some conspiracy and so we felt it was in everyone’s best interest to let people know that we’ve assessed the situation and we have confirmed that yes it is not conspiracy.” As regards national energy security – that is, the ability to generate all the power Belize needs within its own borders, thus eliminating the reliance on Mexico, Avery said that with the development of the VACA Dam and the BELCOGEN generating facility Belize should have an additional 30 megawatts of power which will make it reliant solely on locally produced power. But because of low costs, Mexico will always be an accessible alternative.CH7 The Sport Fishing
Hold-Up
In April, we told you about the bogus award
that the Tourism
Board had given to three individuals for “getting the catch &
release legislation passed for the protection of bonefish, permit, and
tarpon in Belize.” Don’t get us wrong, the three recipients deserved
recognition – they’d worked on draft legislation for 12 years – but
government was just sitting on the legislation – and the news tonight,
is that, it still is! At a press conference last week we spoke to CEO
in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries Gabino Canto asking him
when the long delayed catch and release legislation would be passed and
what really is the hold-up.
Gabino Canto, CEO – MAF “Yes we did pass the SI for the sport fishing regulation early this year. What happened is that the SI had some flaws in it and so we reviewed it and we are re-submitting it again because there were some concerns expressed by a few people in the BTIA, the tourism industry.” Jules Vasquez, “Now a part of the problem as I understand it from an outsider perspective is the administrative issue with it, who will administrate it. Who will issue the licenses, who will get the revenue from the licenses, and what will that revenue be used to do.” Gabino Canto, “The current situation is that sports fishing comes under Coastal Zone Management Authority and Institute and it is not under Fisheries Department so we will keep it that way because the monitoring compliance and so on, the regulations will be done by Fisheries Department. The issuing of the licenses will be done by Coastal Zone Management Institute.” Jules Vasquez, “Shouldn’t the revenue from the issuance of licenses go into enforcement? In fact it is going into the Coastal Zone to it seems to prop up an institution that lacks self-sufficiency.” Gabino Canto, “Not necessarily. What happen is the Coastal Zone Management Institute, the authority is under them, we will continue with that, but the revenue will be given to Fisheries Dept. for them to be able to monitor. It is not Coastal Zone Management, Coastal Zone Management will get some of it, maybe 30%, 70% goes to Fisheries.” Jules Vasquez, Audubon's Plan for
Blue Hole & Half Moon Caye 
Every year as many as ten thousand people
visit the Half Moon
Caye and Blue Hole Natural Monuments. Both sites are co-managed by the
Belize Audubon Society which is why two years ago they commissioned a
public resource and use plan for half moon and the blue hole. That plan
has been compiled and today it was launched. The Audubon’s Advocacy
Programme Manager Amanda Acosta told us what’s in the plan.
Amanda Acosta, Advocacy Programme Manager “What ended up looking at is in regards to diving, some basic guidelines for activities when we looked at kayaking; where kayaking should be occurring, where are some of the better sites, nice calmer sites for kayaking. And in regards to the island, we talk about basic rules for how to proceed on the island. The plan looks at making the experience better in terms of picnic tables, we now have compost toilets out there and so what we need for the usage to sustain the activities and how to improve the experience.” Keith Swift, “Was the volume of visitors a concern?” Amanda Acosta, “Intialy one of our interests was to do a limits of acceptable change which was performed by a graduate student from Costa Rica and what we have come up with is pretty much what we have in terms of visitation is sustainable but we do need to look at management of their activities where they are putting these footprints as we tend to call them.” The report was today presented to the Forestry Department.CH7 DFC TO RESUME LENDING PROGRAM
WITH STUDENT LOANS The
Development Finance Corporation suspended its lending program in 2005.
Following restructuring of the organization and a Commission of
Inquiry, the DFC will officially resume its lending program. Love News
spoke with General Manager of the DFC Natalie Goff.
Natalie Goff; General Manager, DFC “Ever since the government announced its intention last year to resume operations at the DFC, the Board of Directors, management and staff have been involved in the restructuring activities of the corporation to prepare it for lending. The old act has been repealed and a new act, the DFC act number 1 of 2009, is now in place. GOB was also able to access $20 million of funding from the CDB and so tomorrow July 16 the DFC will be officially launching the resumption of its lending programme starting off immediately with student loans. This will facilitate those students that may need funding for the new school year starting in August. This will be followed immediately by the mortgage financing programme in August and developmental lending by the last quarter of 2009. The resumption of lending is being phased to provide for adequate staffing and training of credit staff and support staff for credit operation.” An official ceremony and an open day will be held at the DFC’s headquarters in Belmopan tomorrow. Natalie Goff; General Manager, DFC “To commemorate the launch of its lending activity DFC will be hosting an open day in all our offices countrywide. This is to provide information on all the DFC lending programmes. The public is hereby invited to visit the DFC offices in Belmopan, Belize City, Orange Walk and San Pedro to find out more about our lending porgrammes and the new operational practices of the DFC. We will also be having an official ceremony at the DFC hear quarters in Belmopan to observe this very important milestone in the continued development of our country. The guest speaker will be Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Dean Barrow. The official ceremony is by invitation only but the public is invited for the open day.” LoveFM LETTERS
TO THE EDITOR
Planned Power
Outages
July 18, 2009 will be Feeder 1 which is all of Barrier Reef Dr. This will commence at 6:00 am until 12:00 Noon July 19, 2009 will be Feeder 4 which is all of Angel Coral Dr from Hol Chan Office, Coconut Dr., to the end of the line @ Boca Ciega. This will commence at 6:00 am until 12:00 Noon *****
Recycle your aluminium cans.For the next several months Wil Lala needs your uncrushed bright colored or silver aluminium cans for an art project. Call Wil at 226 2716 or email lala2@btl.net and Wil will come pick them up.
THOUGHT
OF THE DAY
When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred Thomas Jefferson
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© SAN PEDRO DAILY, PO Box 45, San Pedro Town, Belize. Inquiries to editor@sanpedrodaily.com |
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