Just this week, as reported by the L.A. Times, experts are predicting over 30 days of blackouts this summer. And where blackouts occur, devastation follows. Long-term blackouts this summer will endanger lives, especially for our seniors. We have already seen this happen in Chicago during the summer of 1998. People of fragile health, who live in the deserts and valleys of California, will be at extreme risk when the blackouts hit and the air conditioning doesn t turn on.
Blackouts wreck havoc on businesses as well.
Tomato farmers tell me that if a processing plant is shut down due to a blackout, they loose the entire product in the plant and have to shut down for days to clean and sanitize the plant. The same is true in Silicon Valley where chip makers could loose millions of dollars if they are hit with a single blackout. Another example is dairy farmers, our number one agriculture industry in California. These are but a few examples of a problem that will occur among industries statewide when the blackouts hit. The purpose of this hearing is to assess the energy problem on the State level and to seek ways that the Federal government can be a partner with the state government to seek solutions to the problems.