Bge

When Maryland utilities replace their gas pipelines, customers have had to fork out extra money afterward — not during. But that's poised to change. Both chambers of Maryland's General Assembly, citing safety concerns, approved measures this month that would make it easier for utilities to add infrastructure surcharges of up to $2 a month to natural-gas customers' bills. It's the latest push in a tug of war over the best and fairest way to replace the nation's aging utility infrastructure, the price tag for which has been estimated in the trillions of dollars.

I question the need for the legislature to impose a surcharge of $2 per month on all BGE customers to pay for new gas pipelines ("Utility surcharge bill advances in Senate," Feb. 6). The maintenance of natural gas pipelines is the responsibility of the owner of the pipelines. If maintenance is needed, BGE and those who use its natural gas should pay for it, not the customers who only buy electricity from the company. As BGE customers who do not have natural gas supplied to our neighborhood, it seems grossly unfair to charge those of us who are not direct users of the gas flowing through the company's pipelines.

Bills that would allow a surcharge of up to $2 per month on residential natural gas bills to pay for new pipelines and other distribution system upgrades passed both houses of the Maryland General Assembly last week, as most Harford County legislators gave the bills their support. The exception was in the House of Delegates, where Harford Dels. Glen Glass and Pat McDonough were among 18 votes cast against HB-89, which received 119 yeas, including from Harford Dels. Mary-Dulany James, Susan McComas, Wayne Norman, Donna Stifler and Kathy Szeliga.

Three in every 10 Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. customers are buying their electricity through third-party suppliers, continuing a steady trend of increases in recent years, the company said Wednesday. About 30 percent of electricity customers don't purchase their energy from BGE, up from 25 percent at the end of 2011 and 18 percent at the end of 2010, the company said. BGE's natural-gas customers are less likely to switch to third-party providers, though more have done so in the last few years - 22 percent, up from 13 percent at the end of 2010.

What if you could be greener and save money at the same time? Well, you can.  By switching your home's power to “green” electricity, you can reduce your household's contribution to climate change by 24 percent while also shrinking your utility bills. So what?  Though electricity changed the world for the positive, its big downside is that most U.S. power plants are powered by coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel that spews carbon dioxide (CO¿), sulfur dioxide and mercury into the air. Power plants are the #1 source of man-made CO2 emissions in the U.S., accounting for 41 percent.

Raymond Griffith Sinclair Jr., a retired Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. executive who was a decorated World War II Marine, died Monday of congestive heart failure at Stella Maris Hospice. He was 92. Born and raised in Collingswood, N.J., Mr. Sinclair was a 1938 graduate of the Pennington School in Pennington, N.J. Mr. Sinclair interrupted his college studies at Washington College to enlist in 1942 in the Marine Corps. After being commissioned a second lieutenant in 1944, he joined the 4th Marine Division in the Pacific.

The multiple-day outages might have enraged some customers, but Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s power restoration work after the derecho and Superstorm Sandy last year won it an industry award for "outstanding efforts. " It's the third year in a row that BGE won an "Emergency Recovery Award" from the Edison Electric Institute, the shareholder-owned electric companies' association. The group's president, Thomas R. Kuhn, praised BGE in a statement for how it responded when faced with "a major restoration effort throughout 2012.

State regulators considering Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s request for higher rates will hear this week and next from the people least likely to agree: BGE's ratepayers. So far, though, the volume is hardly deafening: Only one person spoke Monday night at the first of five public hearings about the case. "This is pretty sad," said Julie Grudzinskas of Annapolis after giving the evening's only testimony. "It's pathetic, actually. But I know why more people aren't here. ... It's daunting.

Two points about The Sun's coverage of tree cutting by Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. ("A bid to trim power outages," Dec. 23). First, I told the management of BGE at a meeting held with them by the Baltimore City Forestry Board in 1987 that their aggressive tree pruning was not working and to return to the old method. I also suggested that they contribute to city street tree planting instead of planting under power lines, as was their practice at the time. They refused on both counts.

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. taking down a tree in your yard because it's snarled up in -- or too close to -- the power lines? You might be eligible for money to replace it. The utility offers up to $100 per tree removed if you meet certain qualifications, among them that your property is along a portion of the feeder between a substation and the "first protective device. " Vegetation in such areas across the region are getting more aggressively trimmed due to state rules that went into effect last May, and in some cases the work goes beyond just trimming.