Potomac Edison

Maryland energy regulators have approved the sale of Allegheny Energy, which serves Western Maryland, to FirstEnergy, but placed 20 conditions on the $4.7 billion stock deal that would create one of the biggest power companies in the country. The conditions include providing a one-time $29 credit to Maryland residential customers of Allegheny's Potomac Edison, ensuring there are no job losses in Maryland's utility operations related to the merger for at least two years and establishing a regional headquarters in Potomac Edison's Maryland service territory, according to the order issued late Tuesday from the Maryland Public Service Commission.

Uniontown is more like Splitsville these days.The town's residents are upset at the possibility of being left in the dark. Literally.Three years ago Potomac Edison Co. gave the Uniontown Improvement Association a choice: replace the 50-year-old incandescent street lamps with high-pressure sodium lights or go without lights altogether after Dec. 31, 1992. The association handles civic issues in the unincorporated town."Everything was fine. We loved the old lights, and we turned on porch lights for any extra light we needed," said resident Tom Romoser, chairman of the town's lighting committee.

As mayor of Hagerstown, Steven Sager has the usual municipal concerns: potholes, taxes and zoning. But he has other things to think about, too: peak-load factors, power wheeling and kilowatt hours.Hagerstown is one of a handful of Maryland municipalities that own and operate their own electric utilities. When Hagerstown residents pay their electricity bills, they send them to City Hall along with their sewer and water charges.The arrangement, a vestige of the haphazard development of the nation's electrical grid 80 years ago, puts Hagerstown in the center of today's electrical utility revolution.

The handwriting is on the wall for this state's small but tenacious coal mining industry in far Western Maryland. Tougher air pollution rules make its high-sulfur coal undesirable for industrial boilers and power plants. Electric utilities are delaying expansion plans for new generators amid a slowing growth in consumer demand.Within a decade, the coal business in Maryland's Appalachia will be extinct, local officials warn. That's 3.5 million tons a year of surface and deep-mine coal and 350 jobs in a region that badly needs employment.

HAGERSTOWN -- Allegheny Power System Inc., an electric utility holding company that serves 1.4 million customers, including 188,000 in Western Maryland, will relocate its New York City headquarters to Washington County by late 1996, company officials said yesterday.The move will mean the relocation of "fewer than 20 workers," primarily senior management officials and management personnel, said Donald L. Whipp, a spokesman for Allegheny Power System Inc.The company's three subsidiaries serve a 29,000-square-mile area that includes parts of Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

County taking bids for new runway, roadCarroll County is accepting bids from companies interested in building a new runway at the county airport and relocating nearby Meadow Branch Road.Bids will be opened at 10:30 a.m. June 30 at the County Office Building.The county wants to build a 5,100-foot runway at Carroll County Regional Airport and relocate Meadow Branch Road, which intersects Route 97 near the airport.Work on the project should begin this summer, officials said.3 bid for work at community collegeThree companies submitted bids yesterday to replace a boiler unit and do piping work at the Carroll Community College Annex.

New Windsor intersection to be widened by springTrucks traveling through New Windsor soon will be able to turn more easily at the intersection of Routes 31 and 75 once the intersection is widened.The State Highway Administration has staked out the area of the old Warehime property on that corner and plans to start work this fall,once Potomac Edison Co. removes telephone poles, Mayor Jack A. Gullo Jr. said. Work is to be complete by spring, he said.FIRE* Taneytown: Taneytown and Harney were dispatched to investigate the report of a fire alarm in a building on Francis Scott Key Highway at 8:39 a.m. Saturday.

More than 14,000 customers lost electricity during a thunder and lightning storm that passed through Carroll County Thursday, according to a Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. spokeswoman.All but 220 of the customers had their power restored by 9 a.m. Friday, and the remainder of the service was reinstated later in the day, the spokeswoman said.An official of Potomac Edison Co. said about 100 of its Carroll County customers lost electricity during the storm, but that all power was restored by 10:30 p.m. Thursday.

A lightning storm brought wind gusts of more than 60 mph, knocking out power to 61,527 homes in the Baltimore area late yesterday afternoon, utility officials said.Hardest hit was Anne Arundel County, with 25,500 outages, said Peggy Mulloy, a Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. spokeswoman."Most of the outages were in Carroll and Baltimore County, then all of a sudden, boom, it hit in the southern end," Ms. Mulloy said. "The second blast came as a surprise."The storm hit Carroll County about 4:45 p.m. It ripped through Anne Arundel about 8 p.m.In Baltimore County, 19,747 homes lost power; in Howard County, 6,083; Baltimore City, 5,962; Carroll County, 3,352; and Harford County, 787.Ms.