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Energy Act
Opposed
To the editor:
The U.S. Senate is now considering legislation which will adversely affect all consumers of electricity and their suppliers, such as The Potomac Edison Company. This is Part E, Title I, of the National Energy Act, S. 1469.
The Act includes provisions which would allow the transfer of regulatory power over electric utilities from state commissions to some bureau of the vast new Department of Energy. The reasons given for this power flow to Washington are that present electric rates are wasteful and that national regulation is needed to insure that no state gains an unfair advantage in its appeal to industry by lagging in. rate reform efforts.
We believe these reasons are faulty. Your own experience will tell you how much incentive to conserve has already been provided by the near doubling of the average kilowatt hour cost of electricity over the past five years. Electric power cost is simply not the determining location factor for almost all industries. Local differences would be ignored in a heavyhanded effort to require national implementation of unproven new theories of rate design. Other provisions in this Act would cause longer delays in construction of new generating facilities and would increase the already serious danger of catastrophic electric power shortages within the next few years. Because I believe there is no proven need for Part E of this Act and because its enactment will lead to unnecessarily higher costs and reduced reliability for electric . consumers, I urge you to write or call your Senators and express your opposition
to this attempted assumption j of increased power by the central government in Washington. '
If you would like more ; information on this matter, 1 please let me kno\& 1
-v •. *]
JOHN M. McCARDELL 1 Executive Vice President and ! General Manger, Potomac Edison Company ]
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