nuclear-news

That’s the latest turn of the legal screw in a lawsuit involving more than 2 million of Santee Cooper’s customers.

A key issue is whether Santee Cooper’s customers will be stuck with paying several billion dollars that the power company is said to owe due to the nuclear project’s failure in mid-construction in July 2017.

Another affected matter is whether the historic state-owned utility, which began as a rural electrification project in the 1930s, will eventually be sold to a big out-of-state energy company or remain under state control.

Last year, Santee Cooper’s partner in the doomed V.C. Summer nuclear venture — SCANA, a publicly traded company suffering financial woes because of the project — was sold to Dominion Energy, one of the nation’s largest power companies. The state’s 170 lawmakers will be mulling the possible sale of Santee Cooper in this legislative session.

Last week, U.S. Judge Terry Wooten ordered that the Santee Cooper case — which had temporarily been transferred to federal court — be sent back to state court to be tried before special Judge Jean Toal, a former S.C. Supreme Court chief justice.

It is unclear when a trial will begin. Toal had originally set Feb. 24 as the trial start date in the case. But Judge Wooten’s order could be appealed to the federal 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, delaying the trial.

The lawsuit was initially filed in August 2017 by Santee Cooper customers seeking to avoid having to pay for the failed nuclear plant. Costs for the project — estimated at $9 billion before it failed — had for years been added to their monthly bills and continue to be added, according to a complaint in the case.

Over the next two years, the parties “vigorously litigated in state court, engaging in significant discovery — including dozens of depositions and the exchange of millions of pages of documents — and arguing numerous substantive motions,” according to a memorandum in the case.

Defendants in the case included Santee Cooper, SCANA and various electric cooperatives to which Santee Cooper provides power to be sold to customers around the state.

As joint partners in the nuclear venture, Santee Cooper contributed 45% of the cost, while SCANA took responsibility for project oversight and shouldered 55% of the cost.

In November, SCANA suddenly moved to transfer the case from Toal’s court to federal court, where it wound up before Judge Wooten.

In the month before the case was transferred, Toal had certified the case as a class action, rejected a move by SCANA to send the case to an arbitrator and set a three-week trial to begin on Feb. 24, according to records in the case.

Although numerous lawsuits have been filed in state and federal court against SCANA, this lawsuit is the major legal action against Santee Cooper on behalf of ratepayers.

According to plaintiffs in the case, Santee Cooper increased its electricity rates five times over the years to pay for construction and other costs associated with the doomed nuclear project. Santee Cooper spent some $4.7 billion on the failed project, and its customers continue to pay extra on their monthly bills for the failure, according to plaintiffs. Santee Cooper is a main defendant in the case, along with SCANA and SCE&G.

Plaintiffs are asking the court to refund hundreds of millions of dollars in costs associated with the failed nuclear project they say they have already paid in increased monthly bills. Plaintiffs also also asking the court to rule that Santee Cooper cannot keep passing costs for the failed project on to them — a future amount estimated at more than $4 billion.

After the case was transferred to Wooten, the Santee Cooper customers, along with Santee Cooper, urged Wooten to send the the case back to state court, arguing there was no need for federal courts to take up the case.

“The central issues involve South Carolina actors, agreements made in South Carolina, governed by South Carolina law, affecting a South Carolina power project and costing South Carolina customers billions of dollars,” they argued.

Wooten agreed. “The court finds it would not be appropriate to exercise federal jurisdiction here,” he wrote in his order last week.