After years of litigation, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), widely criticized for failing to intervene in a 2000-01 West Coast energy crisis triggered by Enron Corp.'s manipulations of the energy market, ruled last week against Enron's attempts to collect over $140 million (including interest) from the Snohomish County Public Utility District (PUD). The amount, totaling about $500 for every household in Snohomish County, represented what Enron claimed was due it from the remainder of an exorbitantly priced contract that Snohomish PUD signed at the height of the crisis, and then abrogated months later. The PUD claimed they owed nothing because Enron based the contract on fraudulent claims. The FERC agreed.

The ruling represents a major triumph for Rep. Jay Inslee and especially Sen. Maria Cantwell, both of whom have worked tirelessly to defend Snohomish ratepayers from the Enron claims. But local utilities are not done battling with Enron. This week, Enron agreed to pay $3.3 million to settle a claim by Tacoma Power for monies Enron ripped off from the utility during 2000-01. Similar claims have been filed by Snohomish County PUD, Seattle City Light, and the Port of Seattle.

The problem is that actual money recovered in the Tacoma settlement, and the money likely to be recovered by the other victimized local utilities, will be far less than the stated totals. In total, it's estimated that Enron defrauded Western utility customers of up to $1.8 billion. But a proposed agreement between the FERC and Enron lawyers in April would pay out only $10 million in awards, combined, to the utilities Enron stole from. Even worse, the Houston bankruptcy court overseeing payouts to Enron creditors is now paying only about 22.9 cents on the dollar for claims, meaning that in the end, all utilities, combined, will get less than $3 million. Probably less than the lawyer fees.

Tacoma Power, in other words, is likely to only get back about $800,000 of the $10 million it lost to Enron; the Pierce County utility also has a $175 million antitrust lawsuit against Enron pending. Similarly small recoveries likely await the Port of Seattle, which estimates that Enron's market manipulations cost King County taxpayers about $27 million; Snohomish County PUD, which puts its figure at $40 million; and Seattle City Light, stripped of $80 million.

But at least, in Snohomish County, ratepayers aren't being forced to pay Enron. Good work, Maria. --Geov Parrish

Low Power FM in Seattle? Sen. Cantwell won another victory the same day when a bill she has co-sponsored, to expand Low Power FM (LPFM) service to large cities like Seattle, passed the Senate Commerce Committee (which Cantwell serves on). The vote approved the bill and attached it as an amendment to a major telecommunications bill currently before the Commerce Committee.

When the idea of licensing noncommercial low power FM stations was first proposed by the FCC in 1998, the technical parameters proposed would have allowed such stations anywhere in the United States. However, heavy lobbying by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), representing commercial radio, and by NPR, pushed the FCC into adopting much stricter interference guidelines that effectively prohibited LPFMs from being licensed in larger cities, like Seattle, where the existing FM dial is full of stations.

LPFMs have proven to be wildly popular, both as a needed service for rural communities and as evangelizing tool by Christian broadcasters. Moreover, years of on-air broadcasting have shown that the fears of NPR and the NAB of widespread interference to higher-powered FMs simply haven't materialized. Such stations have been successful in communities across Washington state; Spokane, for example, has a widely listened-to community radio LPFM.

In the context of a larger city like Seattle, Cantwell's amendment means that it would be possible to license a neighborhood or suburban station, with limited coverage radius, that would specifically serve the Rainier Valley, or West Seattle, or Bothell. Should it become law, expect a flood of applicants to the FCC looking to fill a rare opportunity to launch a new broadcast radio station in Seattle. --G.P.

Unfortunately, another Senate Commerce Committee amendment, to the same telecommunications bill that includes expanded Low Power FM, failed. That was an attempt, also co-sponsored by Sen. Maria Cantwell, to write into the bill the principle of "net neutrality," that all Internet users have equal access to the system.

It sounds obvious, but it's in peril. The telecommunications lobby--one of the most influential big corporate lobbies in D.C.--has been pushing hard for the "freedom" to charge ISPs higher fees for faster service. Only the largest providers, of course, could afford it. Thus, under the system being proposed by Republicans, your AOL page will load instantly, but that local blog? Or Eat the State! ? S-l-o-w. And, oddly enough, the web page of that union local on strike against AT&T doesn't seem to be loading at all. (It is, however, being flagged over at NSA.)

Sen. Cantwell, to her credit, is opposing this piece of corporate pandering, as are local Internet behemoths Microsoft and Amazon. But the bill has now been passed out of committee and goes to the full Senate. Paging Patty Murray? Patty Murray? --G.P.

The ETS! blog is back! For several weeks technical and server problems laid us low, but we now have a new server and are back in business. Go to http://eatthestate.org, follow the link to the blog, or just go directly to http://fucktheusa.info/etsblog/. --eds.