
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 17, 1995                   TAG: 9503180038
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-16   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CLIFF SHAFFER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

APCO'S CONTINUING FEAR TACTICS

IN YOUR Feb. 4 article ``Power line environmental report gets new deadline,'' Appalachian Power Co. Vice President Charles Simmons said that Forest Service delays put Apco customers at increased risk of brownouts and blackouts. He goes on to say that Apco can do nothing about this risk. Simmons continues Apco's campaign of fear, implying that the only alternative to the power line is blackouts.

Here are some important facts about Apco's business practices. This summer, it signed a 15-year contract with North Carolina Membership Electric Corp. to sell 200 million watts of power using Apco's transmission system. This is equivalent to more than three times the peak demand of Salem. This brings Apco's current long-term contracts for transmission to other power companies to 1,350 million watts, about one-fifth of the total peak demand for Apco's service area.

On one hand, Apco claims transmission capacity is endangered to the point of imminent blackouts due to rising demand, while on the other hand, Apco increases demand through wholesale power sales. Apco profits from wholesale contracts while at the same time inventing a ``problem'' with transmission capacity. Its ``solution'' to the problem is a power line that allows more wholesale contracts while increasing energy imports to Virginia from its sister companies in the Midwest. These imports drain our economy of more than $250 million annually.

The utility's dishonesty extends beyond deliberately loading the transmission system with wholesale contracts. The size of the winter peak load is the major factor determining our risk for blackouts. Apco aggressively advertises heat pumps, which contribute four to eight times as much to the winter peak as a house without electric heating. Thus, in its effort to gain market share, Apco increases the peak load on its transmission system. Its heat-pump advertising costs more than $1 million per year, paid for by its ratepayers.

And that's not all! To support its power-line public-relations campaign, Apco has created an organization called ``Coalition for Energy and Economic Revitalization,'' headed by its paid advertising consultant. It appears Apco has funded CEER with nearly $250,000.

Simmons admits this line cannot be built before the year 2000. If Apco believes that there's danger to the power system, it is obligated, both morally and legally, to come up with workable alternatives to solve the problem.

We know there are better solutions than the power line. Here are a few:

Cancel Apco's wholesale contracts.

Initiate a true demand-side management program.

Repower the Glen Lyn power plant.

Replace the existing 138-kv transmission system with buried 240-kv transmission lines.

Other alternatives that won't degrade this region's environment or economy also surely exist.

Cliff Shaffer, of Newport, is an associate professor of computer science at Virginia Tech and chairman of Citizens Organized to Protect the Environment.

by CNB