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RAPPAHANNOCK citizens who have already had vast experience with the arrogance and high-handed ways of utility companies are not surprised that protest groups are springing up all over Virginia about the high cost of electricity.
We’ve heard some real horror tales in recent weeks— of small households getting electric bills for $100 or better for a single month, of small businesses being forced to move, possibly close up, because of $300-a-month bills, and so on.
Obviously, the upward spiral has got to stop, the utility’s legal “guarantees” of profits notwithstanding. When something is priced out of the market, it’s priced out of the market, and the only thing keeping people from just shutting off their electricity altogether is that our whole society has come to depend on the stuff.
But how can you pay more for electricity than you do for rent or mortgage payments, and still enjoy life? Isn’t something ridiculously upside down when no matter what homeowners do to cut back on wasteful use of something, their bills still keep climbing?
BUT THAT’S the way it is, and no wonder protesting consumer groups are popping up all over the Commonwealth. One of these groups called a mass meeting in Sterling, in Loudoun County, last Sunday afternoon, and some 400 people turned up to pledge support for citizen
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