The Governor of the Northern Marianas, Benigno Fitial, has justified his continued use of disaster declarations to address the Commonwealth's power problems, saying the territory is still in crisis.
Mr Fitial, in a letter to the Legislature, says the continuing power outages, although sporadic, are proof of the problems still besetting the Commonwealth Utilities Corporation.
He says, despite the arrival of temporary generators, the territory's public utilities remain in a state of crisis and the government has very limited time to resolve it and avoid a further wave of blackouts.
The governor wrote the letter amid lawmakers' concerns about his use of emergency powers to deal with the utility's problems.
