Power in Baghdad If you watched the News Hour last night, you might have seen the shrill woman arguing with Richard Perle about electricity in Iraq. I assumed she was overstating her case, but this article from today's Los Angeles Times shows that the electricity supply in Baghdad is still extremely unreliable.
Dhabit, the manager of an electricity substation in the middle-class neighborhood of Qadissiya, is a lean young fellow who sits at a wooden desk and punctiliously records his duties in a primitive ledger.
He punches a button on Outgoing Feeder No. 11. Somewhere nearby, it gets darker and hotter.
"We're supposed to give them three hours on, three hours off," Dhabit said. "But when there's not enough power, it's four off and two on."
In Baghdad these days, there is never enough power. Dhabit has 12 megawatts to distribute to his 50,000 customers. "But people could use 30," he said. "It is their dream."
A lot of dreams aren't being fulfilled here. If the U.S. occupation authority's vision of Iraqis gratefully throwing off the shackles of Saddam Hussein and embracing democracy has curdled in the heat, the lack of electricity is a big reason why.
The trouble restoring power also illustrates the mushrooming cost of U.S. reconstruction. U.S. officials originally planned to spend $230 million to relight the country, but now estimate it will take $6.5 billion.
The top coalition authorities display an odd clueless quality about the power situation:
Instead, power hit 3,400 megawatts early in June and stalled while temperatures rose and demand soared. For weeks, none of the coalition leaders seemed to notice. U.S. occupation overseer L. Paul Bremer said June 12 that Baghdad was "producing 20 hours of electricity a day," a claim he repeated about "most" of the city June 27. Shortly later, most of the city suffered a blackout that lasted several days.
On Aug. 8, the State Department said power distribution was "more stable" than under Hussein. The next day, there were riots in Basra over the lack of gasoline and electricity.
"You know that Clinton campaign slogan, 'It's the economy, stupid?' Here it should be this: 'It's the electricity, guys,' " said Andy Bearpark, Bremer's director of infrastructure. "It determines success or failure. Do it right and you can move forward. Unfortunately, it's the most complex business imaginable."
Bremer said he expected to hit the prewar benchmark of 4,400 megawatts first by the end of July, then by early September, then by the end of September. But by last Saturday, production had hit only 3,678 megawatts, including about 80 megawatts that were being purchased from Syria and Turkey.
And there are indications that things will not be improving markedly soon:
The bigger defects are in the two nonworking oil-fired units, which wheezed to a halt a year ago. They are capable of 160 megawatts each; getting them back in business would go a long way toward solving the city's power shortage.
The units were supposed to be overhauled last winter by their manufacturer, Germany-based Siemens, working under a United Nations contract. But funding was provided only for rehabilitating the boilers, which produce steam to drive turbines, and even this got off to a slow start.
"We were worried about security," said Helmut Doll, who is in charge of a half-dozen engineers whom Siemens finally brought in a few weeks ago.
There was a tussle between Siemens and Bechtel over whether Siemens would do the turbines too and, if so, whether Siemens would be paid at the higher U.N. rate. Bechtel was obligated under government contracting rules to put the work out for bid. At the moment, no one is repairing the turbines. Parts lie scattered over the floor.
Bribes to divert power to specific areas of the city are becoming more common, and it is rumored that some power workers are getting rich, with some of them going door-to-door, soliciting cash for power.
6:50:13 AM 
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