The V.I. Water and Power Authority’s governing board approved renewal of the employee health insurance policy with Cigna during a teleconference meeting at its St. Thomas and St. Croix offices Monday,
Private health insurance giant Cigna Health Care, which insures V.I. Government employees under a separate plan, offered the utility the same coverage as last year for a 15.2 percent increase over last year. After some negotiating, WAPA and Cigna arrived at a new policy with some higher deductibles and co-payments that would cost 5.6 percent more than last year. The new policy costs $4 million, a $200,000 increase from 2008.
WAPA was turned down when it first submitted an application to use $2.5 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus funds through the Energy Efficiency Conservation Block Grant Program to reconfigure some major circuits to cut back on line losses, but after hearing from Karl Knight, assistant policy advisor to Gov. John deJongh Jr. and from Adam Warren from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory that the project appears on its face to be eligible, the board voted to have WAPA resubmit for the money.
"Of the … allowable uses, one is improving the efficiency of the energy transmission system," said WAPA Executive Director Hugo Hodge Jr. "I think if we craft the application in the right direction, it qualifies. It seems the nature of the project is in direct line with what the Department of Energy wants us to do."
Warren, who is visiting WAPA in relation to its recent selection of a company to generate power from solid waste and other efforts to begin using renewable sources of energy, said he would follow up with the Energy Department on why the application was held up. Knight agreed the project appeared on its face to qualify for these particular stimulus funds.
"I have to assume the proposal didn’t have the right buzz words to trigger approval," Knight said. "As it goes forward to a panel review, we will have to follow up."
To lock in relatively low copper prices now, the board approved the purchase of $2.2 million worth of 69/34 kV underground high voltage cable from Electric Supply of Tampa to use later to connect to the waste-to-energy facilities Denver-based Alpine Energy Group plans to build on St. Thomas and St. Croix.
In other business, the board authorized Hodge to appraise and negotiate terms of sale for a fifth-of-an acre parcel of land in Hannah’s Rest, Frederiksted, to neighboring Ka-Ma-Kris Hardware, pending a determination that the land qualifies as "surplus" and so can legally be sold by WAPA. It authorized payment of $249,000 to the V.I. Department of Planning and Natural Resources for emissions permits and $267,000 to extend its contract with Ernst and Young and perform an independent audit of the Authority’s financial statements for the fiscal year just ended.
