The integrity of the Public Utilities Commission may be our only saving grace.

Over the past year, Bangor-Hydro has been attempting to buy out the Babcock Ultrapower plants. They claim that these plants will raise their rates up 15 percent over the next five years, a figure that I find hard to believe — that plants with 30-year contracts would have that kind of affect on the whole Hydro system.

In the first eight years, these plants have purchased $28 million in fuel from local woodsmen or about $3.5 million per year; have paid property taxes of a combined $1 million per year; outside service budgets of approximately $1 million per year that goes to local businesses; paid out $2 million in local salaries per year (which the state receives a fair amount in income tax from), plus the amount paid to local and state unemployment taxes, licenses, fees, local scholarships, contributions to local programs, fire departments and towns. So, at a return to the state and local businesses of $5-6 million a year (for the next 22 years), these plants will return most of $160 million any way.

Central Maine Power has demonstrated in Fort Fairfield that without the debt service, these plants can be a valuable part of our system and run very economically.

So, if the Public Utilities Commission has the fortitude to press through and support that rather than buy out the whole contract, maybe they should work on buying down the increases in the next seven years of these contracts — thus putting less liability on the taxpayer (backing less than the $100 million in FAME money), making Hydro rates stable, if not lower, in a short period of time, keeping the tax bases in the local towns and less strain on an already strained educational budget.

The ball is now in the PUC’s court, and we need the PUC commissioners to come to the front and show us the best way to resolve this issue. And with Maine Yankee in limbo and our memories not yet clouded of an oil embargo that sent rates soaring, I don’t feel that financing a multi-million dollar buy out that will make us more dependent on foreign power is in the best interest of the state. Chris Hews East Machias