Click photo to view larger version. CLICK HERE for some background info on this project. The Paxton Herald Source:

37% if you’re on PPL, 50% if you’re on Penelec / FirstEnergy, and 54% if you’re on MetEd / FirstEnergy.  Courtesy of the companies who were caught with their pants down during last winter’s ice storm, my $55-a-month electric bill will soon be $84.70.  The utility companies would have you believe that they’re on the verge of bankruptcy due to the soon-expiring rate caps, but a cursory review of their annual SEC filings suggests quite the opposite.   I’m hesitant to recommend government intervention in a capitalist economy.  Market forces should generally be relied upon to keep prices in check.  But electric companies — like the phone companies — have enjoyed being monopolies for decades.  Starting about ten years ago, you actually can choose a different generation company, but you’ll still pay a fee to your local electric company for the priviledge.  Worse, most consumers still either aren’t aware of PA Electric Choice, or aren’t served by a competing company.  The exact extent to which those factors harm competition can be debated in volumes, but at the end of the day, we still have price gouging on the horizon. Really; in what other industry would this work?  What if Sheetz, Exxon, and Sunoco got together with the local fuel distributors and agreed to raise gas another 50% to $6 / gal?  What if AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint all got together and greed to raise the average consumer’s bill 50% to $75?  What if Giant, Weis, and Karns got together and decided to raise the price of everything 50%?  There is one big difference between the electric companies and the phone companies mentioned two paragraphs up.  The ILEC phone companies (SBC, Verizon, etc) are in bad shape.  They’ve been bleeding subscribers for years.  With the explosion in wireless usage and the advent of VOIP, customers have finally said “enough!” to awful customer service and arcane billing practices and are dropping their home phones in droves. But since we’re not at the point where solar power, wind turbines, or other alternative forms of electric generation are practical at large scales, and since nearly everybody needs electric power, it may be time to re-introduce government intervention. ABC27 published a response from PPL, in which PPL stated that re-introducing rate caps would be bad for consumers. Sure it would.

Confusion over Sunday's water outage continues ... A water company official told me Monday that a boil water advisory didn't apply to the Linglestown area. Today I crack open the The Patriot-News on the Web and find a news brief that says United Water PA's advisory is still in effect for areas that include Lower Paxton Twp. Argh!!!!

Updated Monday, June 23, with link to news briefs. Also, Linglestown Gazette publisher Bill Bostic has filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission's Bureau of Consumer Services about the water company's emergency phone number ringing busy during the outage. As you probably know, there was a major water outage in the greater Linglestown area today due to a water main break along Linglestown Road in Susquehanna Township. Gazette headquarters went dry sometime in the 7 am hour. Dozens of attempts to get through to someone at United Water Pennsylvania's so-called emergency telephone number were unsuccessful – I got a busy signal every time. I finally heard a report on WHP 580 AM early in the 9 am hour about the outage. With the advanced telecommunications technology available today, I’m disturbed that the water company doesn’t have a system to properly handle customer calls during a widespread outage. They should at least have a system in place to give an automated message when call volumes go through the roof that would say something like this:

We’re aware of the disruption of service that is affecting customers along Linglestown Road in Lower Paxton and Susquehanna townships. We are working to restore service as soon as possible. Work to fix the problem is under way. We will update local radio and TV stations with updates.

I guess utility monopolies don’t think about this kind of common sense stuff. ____ The Patriot-News published a news release on PennLive.com Sunday at 11:10 am. The lastest info that I've seen was posted by WHTM abc27 early Monday afternoon, June 23.