ANTONIO'S DWP PICKS APPROVED PANEL SETS AGGRESSIVE TONE.Byline: Dan Laidman Staff Writer Watching Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's new Water and Power commissioners in action at their first meeting Friday, one may have thought the short morning power outage Noun 1. power outage - equipment failure resulting when the supply of power fails; "the ice storm caused a power outage" power failure equipment failure, breakdown - a cessation of normal operation; "there was a power breakdown" was caused by Nick Patsaouras getting charged up. Some three hours after thousands of customers near downtown Los Angeles Downtown Los Angeles is the central business district of Los Angeles, California, located close to the geographic center of the metropolitan area. The sprawling, multi-centered megacity is such that its downtown core is often considered just another district like Hollywood or briefly lost power, Patsaouras and two others won unanimous City Council approval to join the board that oversees the Department of Water and Power. An hour after that, the new panel set an aggressive and highly skeptical tone in its first board meeting, vowing to be relentless in pushing for renewable energy Renewable energy utilizes natural resources such as sunlight, wind, tides and geothermal heat, which are naturally replenished. Renewable energy technologies range from solar power, wind power, and hydroelectricity to biomass and biofuels for transportation. and scrutinizing the business dealings of the nation's largest municipal utility. Patsaouras led the effort with a lengthy speech to DWP DWP Department of Work and Pensions (UK) DWP Drinking Water Program DWP Dynamic Weapon Pricing (gamin, Counter-Strike: Source) DWP Department of Water & Power DWP Drinking Water Protection officials demanding more information about contracting practices. Some DWP contracts became sources of controversy during the administration of former Mayor James Hahn For the Iowa politician, see . James Kenneth "Jim" Hahn (born July 3, 1950) is an American politician from the Democratic Party. He was the Deputy City Attorney (1975-1979), City Controller (1981-1985), City Attorney (1985-2001) and Mayor of Los Angeles, California . ``I don't want Laura Chick to come here and we have deja vu See DjVu. ,'' Patsaouras said, referring to the City Controller who issued audits highly critical of past contracting practices. Both the City Council confirmation hearing and the DWP Commission meeting began with discussion of Friday's outage, which came a week after a blackout that affected half the city. The incident Friday started when a bank of transformers that had been down for maintenance came back online and, for still-unknown reasons, brought other ones down, said Ron Deaton, general manager of the DWP. About 40,000 customers near the center of the city were affected, but power was restored within minutes, Deaton said. ``We saw for about five minutes again this morning how important this department is,'' Councilman Tony Cardenas told the new panelists. After lengthy questioning primarily about environmental and contracting issues, Cardenas and his colleagues voted unanimously to confirm Patsaouras - a former member of the board of the Southern California Rapid Transit District, the forerunner to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority - as well as David Nahai of the Regional Water Quality Board and attorney Edith Ramirez. They joined Mary Nichols, a former state and federal environmental official and head of the UCLA UCLA University of California at Los Angeles UCLA University Center for Learning Assistance (Illinois State University) UCLA University of Carrollton, TX and Lower Addison, TX Institute for the Environment. A fifth appointee APPOINTEE. A person who is appointed or selected for a particular purpose; as the appointee under a power, is the person who is to receive the benefit of the trust or power. , William Burke, withdrew this week amid concerns about a potential conflict of interest. Nichols was elected president of the board and Nahai vice president. The commissioners approved most of the contracts before them at Friday's meeting ``in a spirit of comity Courtesy; respect; a disposition to perform some official act out of goodwill and tradition rather than obligation or law. The acceptance or Adoption of decisions or laws by a court of another jurisdiction, either foreign or domestic, based on public policy rather than legal ,'' Nahai said, but they asked dozens of probing questions and said they would be tougher on future deals. But already at one point the new panel's watchdog goals ran up against the needs of the utility. The panel approved a multimillion-dollar contract to rent heavy construction equipment amid fears that any delay would halt crucial work, despite commissioners' frustration that they did not yet know enough about the arrangement. In addition to the contracting questions, Patsaouras called for quarterly updates on what is being done to reach a goal of 20 percent renewable energy, and for regular public meetings on any possible utility rate hikes. The previous board proposed a 3.8 percent increase in water rates. Dan Laidman, (213) 978-0390 dan.laidman(at)dailynews.com |
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