O’Malley’s Letter To Pepco
Jan 31, 2011 16:50 - 8 Comments
While this is a statewide angle, the Pepco outage issue affects Rockville quite a bit so we thought we would share this. Thank you to Maryland Politics Watch for the original post.
January 29, 2011
Photo by Herb Winkler
Joseph Rigby, Chairman
Pepco Holdings Inc.
701 Ninth Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20068
Re: Pepco Power Outages Beginning January 26, 2011
Dear Mr. Rigby:
It is with great frustration and enormous concern for the 26,000 Montgomery County residents and the 1,500 Prince George’s County residents that remain without power that I write, yet again, to express my anger that we seem to be back where we started.
Why can’t Pepco perform as its fellow utilities do? To date, BGE has restored service to 227,800 of the 233,500, or 98%, of its customers affected by the storm. Pepco still has 27,500 customers in Maryland without electricity, a restoration rate of a dismal 80%. I am also outraged that your customer communication remains unacceptable; the outage map posted to your website crashed yet again, leaving customers seeking information about their outage in the dark.
Finally, the reports of Pepco’s slow response in requesting assistance from other jurisdictions is outrageous and demands further inquiry.
Despite earnest promises, numerous press releases, and even a six point plan, families in our State woke up, for the third morning in a row, to a cold, dark house, with Pepco advising them that service should be restored by 11 pm tomorrow night. Five days in the dark is simply not acceptable.
I have asked the Public Service Commission to conduct an immediate hearing regarding these many issues arising from this storm. I also expect the General Assembly to pass legislation that Delegate Feldman and I will introduce, requiring the Commission to adopt enhanced reliability standards and allowing the Commission to fine utilities for poor performance and direct those payments back to the affected ratepayers.
I know that the Pepco employees are hard at work, in cold difficult conditions, doing the best work they can. My frustration is directed at you and your leadership team; these elongated outages must end.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Martin O’Malley
Governor
cc: Douglas R. M. Nazarian, Chairman
Couldn’t have written it better! (Well, maybe I could have.)
I heard that O’Malley wants to fine Pepco. Doesn’t that mean we consumers will get the bill passed on to us in our utility bill?
If the Public Service Commission is an oversight organization, it sounds like they are failing their oversight. Why does Montgomery County have more outages from other jurisdictions? What is the real problem?
I agree with Brigitta - a fine to Pepco is a fine to Pepco’s customers. O’Malley surely knows that.
Ms. Mullican, what you have written, would be great, if that is how it worked. That is why the Governor, legislators, and the County Executive are having such a hard time getting this worked out, so that consumers get fair treatment. Unfortunately, these days, it seems to work like this. When a huge company doesn’t treat its customers properly, instead of rectifying the bad treatment, by the company paying the customers, by the company making less profit and the top executives receiving less bonuses and/or pay, and its stockholders receiving less dividends and stock prices going lower, it works this way, often now. The huge company continues to make profits, without rectifying the bad treatment of its customers, and the top executives continue to receive their big bonuses and high pay.
Then, when questioned, by regulators of the company or the government, about the bad treatment of the company’s customers or, in some cases, why the company has gone bankrupt, the company’s top executives say that its top executives have to be paid the huge bonuses and the huge salaries, because these top executives are so good, at what they do, they are irreplaceable. If these top executives do not receive huge pay and huge bonuses, they would leave the company, and this would do irreparable damage, to the company. Also, the company’s top executives say the company’s stockholders, of which the top executives hold a significant amount of the company’s stock, must have their stock prices maintained, for the good of the company’s operations.
You see, this has become the new American way. We do not produce much of anything, anymore; we just buy and sell investment instruments, through the new captains of industry, financial manipulators and investment bankers who highly leverage any real money they have to the extremely ridiculous. They no longer invest only their money and a small amount of leveraged money, they are allowed to leverage huge amounts of money, which is not their own money. So, any losses are not going to affect them, personally, and gains are “gravy.”
The crash we experienced, in 2008, was not prevented from occurring again, by the so-called financial reform legislation. It can happen again. A great short primer on how this happened and can happen, again, now, is the documentary film, nominated for an Academy Award, ‘Inside Job.’ The producer/director, Charles Ferguson is bi-partisan, in showing fault. Unfortunately, I think it is out of theaters, now, and not yet on DVD. I recommend you catch it, when you can, though.
Pepco definitely needs to be held accountable. At the same time, we should also plan for the future by reducing the different causes of the power outages. One idea: Why don’t we plan to replace large dying trees under power lines with smaller trees? I’ve seen so many large old trees removed after they break or interfere with a power line, only to be replaced by another tree that will one day be just as large (and sadly misshapened from all the pruning around the power lines). Instead of one maple that might reach a height of 50-80 ft, how about a few small 20-25 ft native trees? It wouldn’t make a big difference right away, but 50 years from now, there would be less trees snaggled in power lines and a few less unlucky homeowners sitting in the dark every time it snows/rains/winds.
The City of Rockville has a Master Street Tree Plan which you can read here:
http://www.rockvillemd.gov/masterplan/treeplan/
“The goal of the Master Street Tree Plan is to select replacement trees for specific locations — taking into account planting space, overhead lines, etc. Another objective is to diversify tree species within neighborhoods and provide uniformity on streets.”
The Master Street Tree Plan sketches out which trees are slated to go where for every side of every street in the City. We have a street tree that the City was kind enough to buy and plant in our yard for free (and then quickly replace when it unexpectedly croaked after a few years). When discussing it with the city arborist, I was surprised at the amount of thought that the City has put into which trees should go where. Varieties of trees near power lines are chosen to grow tall rather than wide, and the City won’t plant anything that drops a lot of junk to the ground.
I do not think that fines will be sufficient for PEPCO, as they would just figure out some back alley method of passing the amount of fines onto the consumer. I believe that a better scenario for them would be to waive the monthly bill for those affected by the outages. Let’s say, for example, that at the height of the most recent occurrence, there were 196,000 customers out of power, with an average bill of 200.00 (low by PEPCO standards, i know). If all of those customers had their bill waived, it would amount to 39,200,000. This would definitely hit them where it hurt; each time there was such a waiver put into place, it would then be unlawful for them to raise ANYONE’S utility rates for a period of 3-6 months, and then only with approval from the public utility commission AND the maryland legislature. Right now, there is no incentive for them to do anything more, or better, than what they currently do - which is unacceptable. Having the threat of losing a large amount of money per occurrence would get them on their toes and keep them there. Also, the “leadership” at PEPCO needs to go. They have shown (did you see the president of PEPCO on Channel 4 with Jim Vance?) that there is no concern, or certainly a lack of any noticeable concern, on the part of said leadership. Between PEPCO and Metro ripping of the citizens of maryland and d.c., the situation would appear to be an uphill climb - it is time for the citizenry to stand up and be heard; not in the limited forum of some meeting, but through phone calls, letters and emails to these people. We do not do enough to show that WE are concerned. It turn, these “leaders” can guage the apathy of the citizens and will act accordingly. Maybe the next time, NO ONE from montgomery, p.g. or any other area where PEPCO does business should pay their bill. Again, they can ill afford to have a lot of people turned off at any given time. It’s time for us to show these megacorporations that we will not stand for poor service, terrible customer service, lack of information and a non-willingness to make these things right.