Public Interest Briefs

As the “energy crisis” began to drop its black curtain on many Southern California activities, heretofore taken for granted, the Center for Law in the Public Interest moved quickly to respond to some of the new problems associated with the energy drain.

With the Sierra Club as named plaintiff, the Center filed a case in late January in the State Supreme Court against the Public Utilities Commission. The suit challenges the present “promotional” method the PUC uses to determine the price of electricity that utility companies may charge to their customers.

The action also contends that the present PUC rating system encourages the waste of electricity by allowing heavy users of energy to pay proportionately much less than small users. Specifically, the case attacks the PUC’s approval last year of an $89 million rate increase to Southern California Edison Co. without prior approval of an environmental impact report on possible alternative rating methods.

In sharp language, the lawsuit asserts that PUC commissioners have done little, or nothing, to plan for conservation of energy, and have, in fact, encouraged over-consumption of energy by big industries and businesses. Center attorneys additionally charge that the PUC’s lack of foresight in employing the promotional system has caused small users, like typical family residences, to subsidize the lower rates charged for the vast amounts of energy consumed by large users.

The advance of the “energy crisis” has, however, not lacked its environmental victims, as Center attorneys learned after a recent court setback in another case.

In this instance, a superior court judge upheld the state’s one-year delay of the installation of smog control devices in 1966-70 model cars in view of the “energy crisis.”

The delay had been previously ordered by the State Air Resources Board in light of allegations that the devices would cause small percentage increases in the consumption of gasoline.

The Center represented The Clean Air Constituency and Mrs. Gladys Meade, a former ARB member, ousted by the Governor when she protested the one-year delay. The Dana Corporation and Echlin Manufacturing Company, who proposed to manufacture the smog control devices and had invested millions of dollars in the production of the equipment, were represented by private counsel.

The Center had contended that the installation delay will cause up to 100 tons of nitrogen oxides to be deposited daily into the atmosphere, thereby endangering the lives of all Californians.

But in ruling on the case, the judge called the hiatus a “direct victim of the energy crisis.” He also rejected the lawsuit’s contention that the ARB did not have the authority to order the delay.

An appeal of the trial court’s decision is planned.

The “energy crisis” also directly attacks at least two other ongoing Center cases: No Oil v. City of Los Angeles and the California Coastal Commission’s approval of two nuclear power plants at San Onofre, California.

(continued in full brief)