County Council Committee Grills Pepco on Reliability, Alternatives

Pepco executives spent two hours on the hot seat Monday afternoon as members of the County Council called for an update on the power company’s improvements and explanation for another storm's worth of multi-day outages. 

“I don't see the utility of the utility,” Councilman Marc Elrich (D-At large) of Takoma Park said towards the end of the question-and-answer period of the council’s Transportation, Infrastructure, Energy and Environment Committee meeting.

Councilmembers Roger Berliner, Nancy Floreen and Hans Riemer got first crack at asking Pepco about a possible rate increase, what went wrong in the last storm and what is holding up further improvements.

“We're not where we need to be—in meeting expectations or clear communications,” said Pepco Executive Vice President Dave Velazquez.

Pepco repeatedly referred back to a six-point improvement plan scheduled to improve the service over the next five years, including tree maintenance, priority feeder work, distribution automation, load growth, underground cable replacement and selective undergrounding of existing wires.

And when Councilman Hans Riemer (D-At large) of Silver Spring asked if Pepco is seeking a rate increase, Velazquez did not deny it.

Berliner (D-Dist. 1) of Potomac, the committee’s chairman, asked Pepco’s executive team what is keeping them from speeding up the time table. Velazquez responded that the improvements are too many to complete in one year.

“Improvements will be seen as we go along,” he said. “But it will take us a number of years to go through the infrastructure.”

Other councilmembers were skeptical that Pepco had made significant gains over the past year.

“It’s getting discouraging," said Floreen (D-At large) of Garrett Park. “I’ve been having these meetings since 2003. We’ve had this conversation. It’s a Groundhog Day experience.”

Leventhal acknowledged that with the exception of Berliner, the council's lack of technical knowledge prevented them from following up as deeply as they would have liked.

“It's clear to me that Pepco is able to avoid questions,” said Leventhal (D-At large) of Takoma Park. 

Paired with Pepco's testimony was a presentation from Ursula Schryver, director of customer programs at the American Public Power Association, a trade association for utilities owned by municipalities and communities. Schryver noted that public power lined up with many of the county's wishes for their power infrastructure—local control, reinvestment and potentially lower rates. 

While the county’s cost of buying Pepco’s infrastructure was cited as a possible barrier, Elrich argued that, in the long term, the cost savings would go back directly the county.

“We're paying them anyway,” he said.