| Citizens Action Celebrates 25 years Auburn Evening Star, Monday, April 17, 2000 Thirty years ago, the first Earth Day was born in the wake of rising concern about air, land, and water pollution. Twenty-five years ago, a number of citizens' groups were born in the wake of rising anger at gasoline prices - and in northeast Indiana, in the wake of rising anger at the loss of Fort Wayne's publicly-owned municipal electric company to a for-profit utility. The group that was born in Indiana was called the Citizens Energy Coalition. Now it's called the Citizens Action Coalition. Most folks call us CAC. It's been a good quarter-century for CAC: A couple of electric companies tried to build nuclear power plants in our state, gave up, then billed customers for their mistakes. CAC went to court and got the money back. Another electric company so thoroughly mismanaged a plant in Michigan that it had to be shut down, then charged customers for replacement power. CAC helped get that money back, too. Most Hoosiers have some of the lowest electric rates in the nation. The one's who don't are the poor souls who get their electricity from NIPSCO. CAC's working on that, too. This April 22, these two phenomena - CAC and Earth Day - will converge at Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne for Earth Day 2000, whose theme is, "Clean Energy Now." That's an important theme right now in Indiana. For about five years, the companies who sell electricity in our state (as well as their largest industrial customers) have been pushing legislation to alter how electricity is produced, priced, and delivered. They call it "deregulation," or "restructuring." "Deregulation" doesn't involve changes which will last a few months or a few years. The current regulatory order is based on laws passed early in the 1900's. If we "deregulate" wrong, we'll make mistakes which will hound Hoosiers long after you and I have passed on. A bunch of other states have already handed control of their energy policy over to big electric companies. The result? Big electric companies fell all over themselves offering lower rates to big factories. Big electric companies engaged in lots of mergers to become even bigger electric companies. Big electric companies stuck residential customers with the costs of those nuclear power plants they didn't want anymore. But the big electric companies didn't fall over themselves to offer lower rates to people like you or I, average schmoes with a couple of light bulbs to light and maybe a TV or a computer. To an electric company, average schmoes just aren't as cute as a steel mill. I feel bad for folks in those states. Guess they should
have learned There's more at stake here than just money. When big electric companies want to offer cheap electricity to factories, they cut costs. They don't do it by cutting CEO salaries. They do it by laying off lots of workers. Problem is, I need those workers. They're the ones who turn my electricity back on after a thunderstorm so I can write letters to CEOs. I've got concerns about the environment, too.
There's a lot of coal Our state is already one of the biggest emitters of pollutants that cause acid rain, global warming, and mercury contamination. Indiana regularly ranks among the top five most polluting states in the nation. That's part of why kids can't eat the fish around here and why forests are dying up north and why the weather's so weird all over. These warm winters are nice, but it's kinda like having purple Kool-Aid come out your water faucet. It's pleasant, but it's also darned peculiar and it makes me wonder what's next. If we change the electric industry, we should do it so Indiana winds up polluting less, not more. Electricity it too important for Hoosiers to just hand
control of our Or stop by our booth at Earth Day.
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