SCE&G customers were lied to, should be refunded for Nuclear Project according to a former consultant

Consultant Engineer Gary Jones says SCE&G misled the Office of Regulatory staff and Public service commission since 2015.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WOLO)– A former consultant for the V.C. Summer Nuclear project says SCE&G customers were lied to and should get their money back.  The failed 9 billion dollar project is still causing ratepayers heartache.

Gary Jones is a consulting engineer and he is the only witness they have been able to get to Friday out of their 11 person list.   Jones says because of SCE&G’s blatant deceptions, they should either refund or credit their customers immediately.

“Unfortunately, SCE&G was successful in deceiving me, as well as the PSC and ORS,” Jones said.

Jones says SCE&G had an independent group, Bechtel come in and do a report– which showed the project was going to fail. He says SCE&G either gave incomplete or completely omitted important information for years, trying to show better projections for the $9-billion nuclear reactor project. So, the big question is–  who knew about the Bechtel report and when exactly did they find out about it.

“ORS was not aware of, and had not been informed by SCE&G of the Bechtel assessment,” Jones said. 

Jones says SCE&G continued to deceive the ORS and PSC by intentionally failing to disclose their lack of trust in the completion schedule. A representative for SCE&G said Jones is supposed to be an expert, not a finder of facts, and in that regard, they are objecting to Jones’ entire testimony.

“He’s acting as a finder of fact. He’s repeating what he claims he learned from an isolated set of facts that he says he reviewed. There are significant dispute of these facts. We believe Mr. Jones is wrong,” Jonathan Chally said, an SCE&G attorney. 

That objection was overruled.

The hearing will continue for many more weeks. The commissioners will also have to decide if SCE&G will have to pay their ratepayers back, and they will also put the Dominion merger to a vote.

“The importance in impact in this failure to disclose cannot be overemphasized,” Jones said. 

During cross-examination, SCE&G claims the ORS did know about the Bechtel report, they just never asked to see it.