The Utah Supreme Court on Friday determined that consumer activists and utility watchdogs Clare Geddes and Roger Ball tried to get involved too late in the case before the Public Service Commission and therefore weren't in the position to challenge the rate increase.
"It is really unfortunate that it came down to that issue," said Salt Lake attorney Janet Jenson, who represented Ball and Geddes and dozens of other consumers who were upset with the rate increase. "It just goes to show how difficult it is for consumers to get their voices heard, especially in this case where the Committee of Consumer Services was siding with the utility."
The case stemmed from a decade-long effort by Questar Gas to get its customers to help pick up the cost of removing troublesome carbon dioxide from the natural gas it was piping to Utah homes.
Questar tried repeatedly to pass the cost on to its customers but was thwarted by the Committee of Consumer Services, which at that time had Ball as its director. The committee challenged the utility and won a Utah Supreme Court case that resulted in the gas company in 2004 refunding about $29 million it had collected for gas processing to its customers.
Undaunted, Questar Gas tried again in 2005.
It held a series of informal technical conferences where it again presented its case to regulators that consumers should pick up their share of the cost. And in a surprise move, the Committee of Consumer Services, after holding a series of closed-door meetings among its members, emerged to support Questar Gas and signed a settlement agreement to increase rates by about $19 million over a three-year period beginning in February 2006.
When they realized the committee was siding with Questar, Geddes and Ball, who by that time was no longer working for the committee, tried to get involved in the case to protest the settlement. The state's top utility regulators on the PSC, however, determined they were too late - a position the Utah Supreme Court upheld.
John Flynn, a retired University of Utah law professor whose advocacy efforts in the 1990s in a single telephone-rate case helped save consumers roughly $225 million, said it looked to him like the state's high court ducked the issue of whether the gas processing costs should be on customers' bills.
"One way to avoid a hard issue is to just say that someone doesn't have standing" to pursue the case, he said.
Questar Gas, though, said it is glad the 10-year ordeal is over.
"Case closed," Questar Gas spokesman Chad Jones said. "We continue to believe we did all that we could for our customers to help keep them safe."
The Utah Supreme Court's ruling is especially timely.
Last week, Questar Gas filed for a pass-through rate adjustment to lower its natural gas rates by approximately $89.6 million, or about $5 a month for the typical homeowner. As part of that 9 percent rate reduction request, Questar wants to remove the approximately 50 cents a month each of its customers is paying for natural gas processing. After collecting approximately $12 million in processing costs, it now says it has another way to make the gas it delivers safe. Questar intends to blend natural gas from different sources.
If approved by the PSC, that rate reduction will go into effect Nov. 1 and likely will bring to an end the more than 10-year dispute over natural gas processing that started with Questar Gas' sister company; Questar Pipeline began to accept coal-bed methane gas into its system that needed additional processing before it could burn safely in most of the natural gas appliances in the state.
Committee of Consumer Services director Michele Beck, who joined the committee in December of last year and wasn't heavily involved in the case, said the Utah high court ruling speaks for itself. "Utah ratepayers have a right to get involved in rate cases, but they have to follow the rules when they want to get involved," she said.
Ball, who recently launched the Utah Ratepayers Alliance to help give consumers another voice in utility regulatory matters, said he was disappointed by the ruling.
"The Supreme Court has decided that, even if regulators fail to protect them from unreasonable utility demands, ratepayers have no judicial redress unless they take an active part from an early stage in every regulatory proceeding," Ball said.
"That's an incredibly time-consuming and costly undertaking," he said.
steve@sltrib.com
