Editor: I am delighted to have at last drawn

Editor:

I am delighted to have at last drawn a response from the august offices of the Virginia Electric Power Co., whose senior vice-president, Donald B. McCammond, wrote you last week. For awhile there I was afraid I was going to be ignored by Vepco.

Based on one inadvertent inaccuracy in a long list of criticisms I directed at Vepco, this powerful utility apparently lost its cool and resorted to some pretty wild phrases, such as “halftruths” and “distortions.” Surely this reflects the company’s “overkill” tactics, unleashed against anyone who dares to question this giant’s increasingly burdensome electric rates. More than anything I could write, such intemperate language mirrors the company’s corporate arrogance and irresponsibility in public relations.

McCammond went all out, at the start of his letter, by labeling me a “frequent critic” of Vepco, as if the phrase were an epithet. I am indeed a frequent critic because there is so much to criticize. So are thousands of electric consumers across the state who are organizing to protest skyrocketing electric costs and needless, unsightly new powerlines.

As to Vepco’s complaint that my criticisms comprise “halftruths,” let us imagine for just a moment that it is correct. I have said there is something drastically wrong with Vepco’s corporate operation, its construction program, its figures on future needs, its lobbying, its public relations program, its public statements about radioactive problems at its Surry plant and about the geologic fault -underneath its Louisa nuclear plant, among other things. If that’s only half-true, I’ll settle for that for the time being. It’s a good beginning.

My sincere thanks to Mr. McCammond for calling my attention to the one inaccuracy in my long letter critical of Vepco’s plans and policies.