2. Procedural Background
On June 1, 2011, Golden State Water Company (GSWC) filed and served Application (A.) 11-06-001 on behalf of its Bear Valley Electric Service Division (Bear Valley Electric) seeking approval of direct costs and accrued interest booked into Bear Valley Electric's Catastrophic Event Memorandum Account (CEMA) incurred from June 30, 2005 through December 31, 2010 related to mitigation of the bark beetle infestation. GSWC, on behalf of Bear Valley Electric further seeks approval of under-collection of costs and accrued interest related to mitigation of a bark beetle infestation for the period April 3, 2003 through June 30, 2005 and costs and accrued interest booked into the CEMA related to January 2010 wind and snow storms. GSWC seeks recovery of all costs and accrued interest via a per kilowatt hour (kWh) surcharge over a 12-month period and requests that any over- or under-collection be accrued in the Base Rate Revenue Adjustment Mechanism.
The Division of Ratepayer Advocates (DRA) timely filed a protest on July 5, 2011, and GWSC filed a reply on July 14, 2011. On July 27, 2011, DRA filed an amended protest updating its proposed schedule in this proceeding. The assigned Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) convened a prehearing conference on August 4, 2011, and the Scoping Memo and Ruling of Assigned Commissioner and Administrative Law Judge was issued on August 31, 2011. Pursuant to Rules 3.2(c) and 3.2(d)1 GSWC submitted compliance filings on June 17, 2011 and August 2, 2011, showing proof of notice to customers of the proposed rate increase.
As stated in the Scoping Memo and Ruling, issues related to the reasonableness of costs and accrued interest incurred in the CEMA, the applicability of various State of Emergency Proclamations regarding the bark beetle infestation and the January 2010 winter storm, the reasonableness of the proposed recovery method and timeframe, and the treatment of any over- or under-collection are within the scope of this proceeding. In response to an October 25, 2011 e-mail from DRA advising that all parties had reached a settlement, the assigned ALJ issued a ruling on November 3, 2011 suspending the previously adopted schedule and ordering parties to file and serve status updates on the fifth day of each month until such time a settlement was filed.
Parties filed and served status updates on December 5, 2011 and January 5, 2012. GWSC and DRA properly noticed and convened a settlement conference on January 5, 2012. On January 10, 2012, GWSC, on behalf of Bear Valley Electric, and DRA filed a motion for approval of a proposed all-party Settlement Agreement.2 Because the proposed Settlement Agreement is uncontested, there is no need for comments on the Settlement Agreement. In addition, because this Settlement Agreement resolves all material disputed issues, there is no need to convene evidentiary hearings.
1 All citations to Rules are to the Commission's Rules of Practice and Procedure.
2 On April 22, 2012, the assigned ALJ sent an e-mail to parties to the Settlement Agreement notifying them of a mathematical error. In the original Settlement Agreement, parties agreed to a total settlement amount for recovery of $796,690; however, addition of the components to that total yielded a total of $796,080. On April 25, 2012, all parties filed and served an amendment to the Settlement Agreement noting the mathematical error and correcting the total to $796,080.
