Your Help Needed: Exelon-Pepco Make Bad Deal With DC

February 27th, 2016

Awake Goy

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Above photo: From WMAL.

NOTE: At first glance, local activists thought the ruling today was positive. Now that the details are out, it looks like the merger may go through. This will raise electricity rates and have other negative impacts on communities of color as outlined below.

PLEASE TAKE A MINUTE: Sign this petition to Mayor Bowser telling her to reject this deal!

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION

Washington, DC – The effort by nuclear utility giant, Exelon, to swallow up our local electric utility (Pepco) was just DENIED again today by DC’s Public Service Commission (PSC)!

This merger would have formed the nation’s largest electric utility, raised rates for DC residents, and would have harmed renewable energy efforts while helping subsidize ailing nuclear power plants elsewhere in the country.This is a great victory, as Mayor Bowser sought to overturn the PSC’s previous rejection of the merger with some serious arm-twisting and a settlement that failed to address the underlying problems with the merger.

HOWEVER… The PSC proposed a new settlement agreement that would still permit the merger if Exelon and Pepco agree to the 142 conditions they listed, including Exelon moving their corporate headquarters to DC, a 100-Megawatt wind power investment and much more.

Among the secretly-negotiated Bowser-Exelon settlement conditions that the PSC just rejected were two things that have other environmental justice implications for DC:

STADIUM: the DC United soccer stadium, proposed on a toxic contaminated site in southwest DC, was made part of the deal; the merger money was going to finance the stadium land deal. Sorry soccer fans, but if this stadium deal falls through, this could be a good thing for the community, which has been very concerned about the rushed nature of an inadequate toxic site cleanup.

BRENTWOOD TRASH TRANSFER STATION: another land deal to be financed by the merger was one that would enable the city to buy out a sticky and controversial trash transfer station on W St in Brentwood, so that the city can put its sewage maintenance trucks there instead, moving them from another property near the baseball stadium so that condos and a movie theater can be developed there. The Brentwood community has been fighting that transfer station for about 30 years now, and even though it’s the gentrification of the Navy Yard driving the land swap, the community is mostly in favor of swapping the transfer station for DC Water’s sewage maintenance trucks. Now the city will have to find other money to complete this deal.

Please follow the Power DC coalition to stay on top of this, as the merger battle isn’t over yet! See:
http://www.powerdc.org/learn-more.html

Also, like them on Facebook and choose to get notifications so you don’t miss anything:http://www.facebook.com/PowerDCNow

HERE IS MORE INFORMATION ON THE SITUATION FROM POWER DC:

To: Christopher Crane, CEO of Exelon
From: Concerned Residents of the District of Columbia

February 25, 2016

Dear Mr. Crane,

We understand why you want to buy Pepco. It must feel scary to be a giant utility when so much is changing in the world of electricity. Change is often scary, especially for those so deeply invested in the status quo.

It’s OK to feel self-conscious about being the biggest owner of nuclear power plants in the country now that nuclear power is looking more expensive and less reliable than ever before. We see that you have some serious financial problems ahead of you, and we sincerely wish you good luck – just not in DC.

We want to keep our energy bills low. We want to transition to clean, efficient, and locally owned power. And – please don’t laugh at our optimism here – we want our governmental systems to work for the people of DC. From what we’ve seen of Exelon so far, our plans just don’t fit with yours.

The thing is, the merger was already rejected. Our Public Service Commissioners looked hard at your proposal and ruled that Exelon buying Pepco is simply a bad deal for DC. We’ve heard the promises you made in your ‘new deal’ with Mayor Bowser, but nothing in it addresses the fundamental reasons our Commissioners rejected your first offer. You want to sell your power at the highest price, while Pepco is supposed to buy the best power at the lowest price. It just doesn’t add up — and while your executives and shareholders may not mind, we do.

We’ve seen your full-page ads in the Post, your Facebook ads, the endless mailers, and the recent promotional video from Anthony Williams. (They’re hard to miss!) The fact that you pumped so much money into getting a different decision from the Commission feels kind of like you think you can skip over what’s good for DC and simply buy the decision you want.

The Comissioners will announce their decision tomorrow, and we hope our public officials will again stand up for DC in rejecting your offer. You see, when you helped Pepco give $25 million to support the Mayor’s pet soccer stadium project; when you hired the chairman of the Mayor’s discredited PAC as a lobbyist and then fudged his lobbying disclosures; when you paid people to sign petitions; when you ran hundreds of hours of ads that conveniently ignored the millions you’re spending to undermine energy efficiency and renewable energy across the country; and when the majority of DC’s neighborhoods are against the merger — well, we just get the sense that you won’t be a very good neighbor.

We empathize, but we really don’t want our electric bills going to bail you out of your bad business decisions. Sorry to be so direct, but we just don’t want you in DC. If you’re truly committed to affordable, clean, and resilient power systems, please focus on your existing customers in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. They’re really dissatisfied with your service right now, and they could use the attention.

We hope it won’t take long to pack your bags after a rejection tomorrow. But whatever the Commission’s decision, know that DC wants clean, affordable electricity – and we will fight to have it.

Sincerely,
Concerned Residents of the District of Columbia