Put public interest first - Excellent piece on deregulation!

The electricity deregulation train keeps going off track. The 1998 Midwest price spikes, the 1999 power outages, the 2001 California meltdown and now the Northeast blackout of 2003 all are major derailments caused by one simple fact: Electricity is a vital service with no substitutes and can't be treated like other commodities.

Ignoring the warning signals, Washington policymakers just keep chugging along, replacing public accountability with industry self-regulation. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (news - web sites) (FERC) wants to create new companies called regional transmission organizations that would lack consumer representation and push state regulators to the side. Congress wants to repeal the Public Utility Holding Company Act, allowing utilities to create huge multistate holding companies that would escape state regulation and overwhelm the FERC's meager regulatory abilities.

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We need new transmission facilities, but the primary obstacles are not economic. The barriers are the social, environmental, public health and safety consequences of the wires. Raising the profits of transmission companies won't get lines built. Instead, Congress should focus on improving reliability and create a new institutional framework that puts the public interest first.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20030828/cm_usatoday/11721100

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