Politics short-circuits utility accountability

[UpInArms]

http://www.mlive.com/news/aanews/index.ssf?/base/news-9/1091959811237380.xml

When a tree branch fell onto an Ohio power line about a year ago, it set off a chain of events that blacked out much of the Midwest and East Coast and brought high-voltage criticism to America's interwoven and vulnerable electrical maze.

Since those dark days last August, the people who bring you electricity say they've learned many lessons to avoid a mammoth blackout like the one on Aug. 14, 2003.

Yet partisan power politics in Washington, D.C., has stalled reforms to hold utilities accountable if your lights go out again. The coming presidential election, worries about terrorism and a mostly cool summer may have pushed the nation's energy woes from the agenda.

<huge snip - full of information>

Federal energy reliability standards would have passed long ago had they not been included in the larger, and hotly contested-energy bill, according to Dingell. The broad energy legislation includes controversial measures such as oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, passed in the House but stalled amid a Democratic filibuster in the Senate in November.

Dingell said the Republican leadership of the Energy and Commerce Committee has kept the reliability rules from moving forward. So last month, Dingell introduced a resolution to extract the reliability standards from the energy bill and include them as stand-alone legislation. At the end of last week, 169 of the required 218 House members signed off on the effort to bring the measure to a vote.

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[Nambe]

1. Smells like the Enron syndrome. DC bought and paid for.

Things must change.