Duke agrees to consumer-friendly reliability reports

Ever wonder, Duke Energy customers, how your service compares to that of other utilities?

You're about to find out. Duke has agreed to file, for the first time, quarterly reports that compare its North Carolina power outage data to industry benchmarks.

Thirty-six other states require utilities to publicly report how often, and for how long, outages occur.

But as the Observer reported last year, it's near impossible for North Carolina customers to get that information. Duke closely monitors the data but doesn't publicly report it. To complicate matters, utilities differ in how they measure and report results to the two widely-used industry reliability indices.

The N.C. Utilities Commission's Public Staff, which advocates for consumers, recommended a change. When the commission approved Duke's merger with Progress Energy in June, it required the companies to find a way standardize the indices and report their service quality.

This week, the two Duke subsidiaries that serve the Carolinas proposed a rule they developed with the Public Staff. The rule bases quarterly performance reports on industry indices for outage duration and frequency, and sets standards to ensure the data is used consistently.

Neither the utility that serves northeastern North Carolina, Dominion North Carolina Power, nor the N.C. Electric Membership Corp., which represents cooperatives, signed on to the proposal.

It's up to the Utilities Commission to approve the rule.

At the time of the Observer's article in August 2011, the industry indexes showed Duke's outage performance in North Carolina had steadily improved since 2003. Progress Energy, now a Duke subsidiary, showed improved performance after 2006 followed by an uptick in outages in 2010.

How have they done since then? I don't know -- and, for now, neither do you.

No health risks in Mountain Island Lake, official says

The arsenic reported earlier this week in Charlotte's major drinking water source poses no health hazards, Mecklenburg County's water-quality chief says.

Rusty Rozzelle and Sam Perkins, the Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation's director of technical programs, talked to the community group We Love Mountain Island Lake at a Thursday night meeting. 

The meeting followed publication Monday of a Duke University study that found arsenic in the discharge water that flows into the lake from the Riverbend power plant, and in lake sediment. Arsenic is, of course, toxic.

But Rozzelle told the group the arsenic is largely in sediment, not the lake water itself.

"There is no potential threat to the water supply downstream of the discharge pipe," he said. "We've never found any arsenic above the minimum detection limits, and to my knowledge no one else has either."

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities tests Mountain Island water weekly with similar results, spokeswoman Karen Whichard said today. No arsenic is detected in treated water that flows to household taps, she said.

 

The Riverkeeper Foundation worked with Duke University to collect water and sediment samples for study. Perkins said contaminated "pore water" in sediment can be released into the water column during certain conditions, such as summer heat, or if the sediment is disturbed.

A more important question, Rozzelle said, is what will happen to Riverbend's ash ponds once Duke closes the c.-1929 plant by 2015. Rozzelle said Duke will have to submit a plan to permanently close the ponds, but hasn't yet.

"To me, the important thing is how it's closed," he said.

Longtime N.C. forestry advocate passes

Bob Slocum, the voice of North Carolina's forest products industry for 24 years, died Tuesday in Raleigh at 62.

Over his tenure, the N.C. Forestry Association grew to nearly 4,000 members, one of the largest such groups in the country. Slocum lobbied the N.C. legislature and served on commissions and task forces, defending his industry and private property rights -- and frequently irritating environmental advocates.


I first encountered Bob in the early 1990s as controversy raged over chip mills and clear-cut logging in North Carolina's national forests. He was a forceful, knowledgeable advocate for his industry, but always a gentleman. At left, he's with Gov. Perdue at last year's Forestry Day at the legislature.


Among his top achievements the association lists is 2005's "Right to Practice Forestry" legislation, which limited local governments' control of forestry operations done under forest management plans or on property taxed as timberland. He also oversaw development of the association's ProLogger training program and forestry education programs for public schools.

A career forester, he graduated from N.C. State University with a forestry management degree. He's survived by his wife, Linda, and three adult sons.

Lake Norman group, volunteer take wildlife awards

Lake Norman Wildlife Conservationists and Carolina Raptor Center volunteer Anne Steinert are among this year's winners of the Governor's Conservation Achievement Awards.

The annual awards are made by the N.C. Wildlife Federation.

The Lake Norman group was named the federation's chapter of the year. The Mooresville-based group has certified the lake as "community wildlife habitat" with the National Wildlife Federation.

Steinert, named wildlife volunteer of the year, has volunteered an average of 800 hours a year for the past 10 years at the Raptor Center, where she's a master-level rehabilitation volunteer. She assists in surgery, transports injured birds -- and bakes bread for the staff each Friday.

Catawba County was named municipal conservationist of the year for its recycling and waste reduction program, which runs the county's EcoComplex and Resource Recovery Facility.

Winston-Salem lawyer Michael Leonard won conservationist of the year for helping land trusts protect 266,750 acres across six states, including 120,000 acres in North Carolina.

Read the full list of winners here.

NC legislators' conservation ratings: Zeroes

The N.C. League of Conservation Voters' annual scorecard awards an unprecedented 44 state legislators zeroes for their votes in the 2012 session. The League had previously handed out only four zeroes since 1999, and none since 2001.

The league calls the 2011-12 legislative session one of the worst for the environment in state history. It charges that the Republican-led chambers, in an anti-regulation drive, made "reckless decisions" in approving hydraulic fracturing, banning policies on sea-level rise, removing key divisions from the environment department and limiting state oversight of toxic air pollutants.

Twenty-nine legislators -- all Democrats -- voted the league's way, earning perfect scores. All the zero scores went to Republicans.

Most interesting about the scorecard is how quickly and deeply divided the political parties have become on environmental issues.

In the 2007-2008 session, the average difference between Democrats and Republicans was about 20 percent in both chambers. In 2011-12, that difference ballooned to 79 percent in the N.C. House and 61 percent in the Senate.

Use NC's offshore winds, group says

Atlantic states including North Carolina should more aggressively take advantage of their offshore wind resources, the National Wildlife Federation says in a new report.

Harnessing 4 percent of the 1,300 gigawatts of Atlantic wind energy potential, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated, could power 14 million homes. North Carolina has more wind potential in near-shore waters than any other East Coast state, the lab has estimated.

Yet not one turbine spins off the East Coast, although the controversial Cape Wind project in Massachusetts is expected to generate electricity by 2015.

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is working with officials in North Carolina, South Carolina and eight other states to set the stage for offshore wind-energy leases. The bureau expects to announce potential lease areas and gauge the interest by commercial developers through an upcoming "call" for information.

About a dozen developers responded to similar calls in Virginia and Maryland, says Brian O'Hara, president of the N.C. Offshore Wind Coalition. The Department of Energy is also expected to announce research grants for offshore wind technology aimed at bringing costs down.

The challenge, O'Hara says, is finding buyers for the power. It's a question not only of connecting offshore turbines to the electric grid but of policy. North Carolina demands that utilities supply the cheapest power available, a position that doesn't consider the long-term benefits of developing a resource with high initial costs.

Wind should be included in the state's renewable-energy standard, alongside the existing targets for solar and other alternative fuels, says Richard Mode, the Wildlife Federation's outreach coordinator in Morganton. Legislators should make the standard itself more aggressive than the 12.5 percent clean-energy goal it sets for 2021, he says, and reconsider a measure to boost the economic development potential of offshore wind.

"All this is to build certainty in the marketplace" that state policies support the industry, he says.

Gov. Bev Perdue created an offshore wind task force in 2011, but because of budget cuts it has never been met.

Duke makes one sustainability list, falls off another

For the seventh year, Duke Energy has been ranked on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for North American companies -- but fell off the world index after a two-year run.

Duke is among nine utilities picked of 33 considered for the North American index. Companies are reviewed for their performance on topics including corporate governance, environmental policy, climate strategy, human capital development and labor practices.

Now the largest U.S. electric utility after its merger with Progress Energy, Duke touts its renewable energy, energy efficiency and environmental records in an annual report. “Sustainability pushes us to find the right balance among the needs of people, the planet and profits,” Lee Mazzocchi, Duke's senior vice president and chief integration and innovation officer, said in a press release.

But Dow Jones dropped Duke from its world index, where it was listed in 2010 and 2011. Duke was the fifth-largest corporation to be deleted, following IBM, GlaxoSmithKline, United Technologies and Spain's Telefonica SA. Microsoft, Target and Hewlett-Packard were among U.S. companies joining the list.

It's not clear why Duke fell off the index. A Dow Jones spokesman wasn't immediately available.

"I think it's just a matter that the bar keeps getting raised," said Duke spokesman Randy Wheeless. "We definitely have our sights set on getting back on that list."

Dow Jones compiles the index with Zurich-based Sustainable Asset Management Group.