Controversy at the City owned utility: citizens will "starve to death"

What do residents say?

I've sit with some elderly people (some in their eighties) and watched them struggle with trying to pay their bills, especially utilities, because Social Services in Bristol refused to help them. Most of them couldn't even buy the food they needed. Did we need the Optinet that much????? They're not retirees moving here, they are local people born here and struggling all their life to survive....

TVA needs to consider that smaller towns and rural area citizens do not receive the same pay scale that larger cities do. My mother is 87 years old and worked until age 65. She only gets a little more than $500 a month, because of what wages were when she worked. Her most recent light bill was $276, more than half of what she draws per month. There is nothing she can cut out of her budget to pay these ridiculous rates. Let the TVA executives try living on $500 a month and see how far they get.

I can't believe this!! I cannot afford to live in the Bristol Virginia area anymore..this is nuts!!! Since the beginning of the phone/cable/internet service at BVU they have had financial problems that have evidently been passed on to customers who use their sorry electric service. The electrical service and water service in the Bristol VA limits is so bad that we almost see a monthly power outage or water line break. Where is the money going?

Cable Ready Socialism What happens when a public utility (Bristol, Virginia Utilities or BVU) decide to wipe out private business after going over $50 million in debt?

Travelocity: A warning for region? Travelocity.com got about $10 million in corporate welfare and decides to dump Clintwood, Virginia for India. Congressman Rick Boucher (D VA 9th) calls this a success story and that he deserves full credit.

'People are going to starve to death'

Update August 21, 2008: The AP reports that TVA has approved a 29 percent rate hike worth $2 billion. This is the largest hike since a 20.2% hike in 1974.

It seems that the pathetic minimum wage increase won't be going very far. Bristol VA/TN and much of the surrounding area is on TVA, which has announced a rate increase of as much as 25%. Much of the cost increases are being caused by low lake levels caused by drought, which are cutting into hydro production, and the cost of coal. TVA generates 55-60 percent of its electricity from coal-fired plants and buys about 11% from other producers. Coal costs have doubled since 2007.

According to www.eia.doe.gov, "In particular, the delivered price of coal at electric utilities (a subset of the electric power sector) increased for a sixth consecutive year, to $34.26 per short ton (1.53 dollars per million Btu), up 9.7 percent from the prior year." Other sources say coal was selling for $30 a ton in 2003, and quoting the Times Dispatch (March 8, 2008), "The cash price for coal that utilities burn to generate electricity exceeded $101 per ton this week at a West Virginia mine served by Norfolk Southern Railway...Central Appalachian coal climb(ed) from less than $50 per ton on the spot, or cash, market in October to roughly $85 per ton at the end of February."

"I don't know what people are going to do," said Maj. Peggy Mullins of the Bristol Salvation Army. "I don't know how people are going to be able to survive. People are going to starve to death." This year, the Salvation Army has been contacted by more "working people" seeking financial help with utility bills. (BHC 8/7/2008) The average TVA consumer in Bristol uses 1,320 kilowatt-hours costing about $125 per month. (That's what I pay now.) An increase of 25% will bring this over $156 per month, almost a weeks wage for many low-income Bristol workers. When Bristol Virginia Utilities joined TVA January 1, 2008 it raised its rates by 18% then.

There's some programs already in place at Bristol Virginia Utilities, Bristol Tennessee Electric, and Atmos Energy (a gas supplier) that might help. It's called the "Help Your Neighbor" program where others donate to help others. But to quote the BVU CEO Wes Rosenbalm, "I knew with all that was going on in the energy market, there would be some increase but had no idea it would be the magnitude of the percentage I'm hearing. That caught us a little off guard, and it's certainly a bad time to have an increase - not that there is a good time." So not counting their 40% rate hike in 2005, BVU will raise its rates another possible 43% in 2008. Yeah Wes, we are going to have people dying here.

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