Hydro’s game

What kind of a game is the Bangor Hydro playing this time? What’s its excuse for raising the rates? It surely can’t blame it on the high price of crude. That low price hasn’t changed in years.

I was told it costs more to generate electricity in the winter months. Ha! What garbage! My bill went up another $15 more a month and I’m not talking about the Christmas lights. That one will probably make me sick. Anyway, I still live in the same house with the same electric wire going into my place.

I use less electricity because my family is grown and gone. That means I have less laundry to do, I cook less, I iron less and there’s no dryer, no hot water heater, no air conditioner, VCR, and I heat with oil. My electric bill has more than doubled from when I used to pay it every two months a couple of years ago.

You can be sure we’re picking up the tab for the Basin Mills project. Paperwork, meetings, wine and dining, lobbyists and the lawyers all cost money, not to mention the investors and stockholders. They all need their cut too.

The Hydro claims that with Basin Mills it won’t have to buy power anymore. That’s another story. You know the story about the little boy who cried wolf so often that after a while no one believed him. That’s Bangor Hydro. No one believes it. Why does it occasionally sell power?

The Public Utilities Commission allowed the Hydro to install the so-called winter rate increase a few years ago anticipating that the crude would go up. Well, it hasn’t so I think the PUC should reverse that order. Let the Hydro pick up its own tab and I’ll take the money I’ll save and buy my prescriptions at the drugstore, which is another big rip-off. Jean Hamilton Veazie