Tag: Memphis Light Gas & Water

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News The Fly-By

MATA Reduces Bus Fares for Students, MLGW Defers High Bills Through August

The Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) began reducing bus fares for all Shelby County School students on August 8th, the first day of classes.

“It is important that we are able to help parents send their children off to school at a reduced cost and improve their access to public transportation,” said Ron Garrison, CEO of MATA.

The annual reduced student fare is $1.35 per one-way bus trip. Students may also purchase daily passes ($2.75), seven-day passes ($13), or a month-long ($40) MATA FastPass unlimited ride card.

Students must present a MATA identification card with their name, school, age, and photo to receive a discounted fare when boarding the bus. MATA advises students to bring two forms of identification and $3 to the William Hudson Transit Center at 444 N. Main Street to purchase an identification card. Students who bring a parent only need one form of identification. State or school identification cards, birth certificates, insurance cards, Social Security cards, or report cards qualify.

The transit authority will provide identification cards Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. until September 30th. Following that date, MATA will provide identification cards Mondays through Fridays from 1 to 5 p.m., and from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m on Saturdays.

“MATA is pleased to continue to offer reduced bus passes for students to ride,” Garrison said.

MATA lowers fares for students.

Memphis Light, Gas and Water (MLGW) will ease its deferred billing rules through August to prevent customers with high bills from having their utilities disconnected.

“The major benefit is, during these extreme temperatures, MLGW has a payment plan that will offset our customers from having their services disconnected for non-payment,” said Gale Jones Carson, MLGW’s director of corporate communications. “If you can’t pay the total amount, we’ll work with you during these temperatures.”

Customers eligible for the loosened billing rules must have a bill that exceeds at least $250. They will pay 25 percent of the owed amount or $250, whichever is less, and the remainder will go on a payment plan that lasts up to five months. Should the deferred billing payment surpass a monthly $500 balance, customers may establish a payment plan for up to nine months. A current and approved residential service agreement must be filed before making an arrangement. Customers who qualify can bring two forms of identification to any of MLGW’s five community centers.

“Normally, customers only have three months to pay they bill, and the balance has to be a minimum of $500,” Carson said.

The relaxed deferred billing rules are different from MLGW’s weather-related moratorium policy. That policy states they won’t disconnect services for residential customers due to non-payment under the following conditions: The forecast wind chill factor will be 32 degrees Fahrenheit or below freezing for 24 hours or longer. The forecast heat index will be 100 degrees Fahrenheit or above at any time during a 24-hour period. The forecast heat index will be 95 degrees Fahrenheit or above at any time in a 24-hour period for customers 60 years or older, physically challenged, or customers dependent on life-support.

“We do this every year when the weather gets extremely cold or extremely hot,” Carson said. “We do this to help customers avoid having their services disconnected for non-payment. When the weather gets extreme, we focus on not cutting services off.”

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Opinion Viewpoint

Hot Water in Memphis

It was one of those drop-the-microphone, Elvis-has-left-the-building moments that Memphis City Council meetings can sometimes produce: A frustrated councilwoman, Wanda Halbert, verbally blasted stoic Memphis Light Gas & Water President Jerry Collins with an observation that sounded familiar. During a discussion about the city-owned, nonprofit power company’s fees, Halbert said, “Memphis Light Gas & Water belongs to the city of Memphis. It doesn’t belong to Memphis Light Gas & Water. It feels like it does not belong to the City of Memphis. It’s almost like, somehow, you all have evolved into an island of your own!” She then exited the room without waiting for a response. No rebuttal was needed and none came.

Almost the exact description of MLGW’s operational procedures was uttered by our former “forever king,” Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton more than a decade ago. In 2003, Herenton roared, “MLGW is an island unto itself,” in accusing the utility of being wasteful and inaccessible to the needs of customers. Six years earlier, Herenton had tried mightily to convince council members to sell off what is universally acknowledged as the city’s most profitable asset.

Former Flyer columnist John Branston chronicled the story in great detail. Herenton hired a Philadelphia consultant named Rotan Lee, who, for the nice round figure of $150,000, produced a study of the utility’s effectiveness — making a case for privatizing all or parts of the utility, estimated at the time to be worth $800 to $850 million. Lee tried to make the case that community-owned utility companies could no longer be “natural monopolies” in a world where federal deregulation of utilities was becoming the norm. Lee concluded that such utility companies would, in the end, “lose the crucible of good will with their customer base.” In hindsight, Lee’s prediction would appear to rival those of Nostradamus.

Distrust of the utility’s intentions only heightened, when, just after receiving the tongue-lashing from Halbert and other skeptical members of the council, MLGW officials announced they would propose a 2 percent hike in residential water rates to make up for revenue projected to be lost when the Cargill company closes its corn-milling plant on Presidents Island in January 2015. MLGW officials said that Cargill accounted for 5 percent

of the water sold by the utility, leaving a $4 million revenue shortfall to make up. There had been no mention of the rate hike in the council meeting just two days earlier.

To add insult to injury, Cargill is walking away — without any financial penalty — on the four years that remain on a PILOT property tax freeze agreement issued by the city and county in 2010.

What should be even more worrying for MLGW customers is the fact that Roland McElrath is the man behind the plan for the utility’s proposed rate hike. McElrath became the utility company’s controller in 2012 after resigning his post, for the second time, as the city of Memphis finance director. This is the same career numbers-cruncher who, in 2011, assured city council members Memphis could afford to give its city employees Christmas bonuses because of a surplus created by cost-saving measures enacted during the prior fiscal year.

After the council passed a $6.2 million Santa offering, a sheepish McElrath recalculated. Oops. There was actually a $6 million deficit — a shortfall that later ballooned to $17 million — that required the council to dip into dwindling city reserves to cover the overall deficit. This should give all of us, particularly those struggling to pay their bills each month, plenty of reason for pause when it comes to MLGW’s plan to offset lost Cargill revenue.

When most companies lose a valued client, they don’t take it out on the good customers that remain with them. They buckle down and try harder to keep them happy. As MLGW customers, we appreciate the employees’ hard work and dedication whenever power outages hit the city. We appreciate their charity work. We appreciate their moratoriums on bill payments in extreme weather conditions. However, it’s their perceived arrogance and take-it-or-leave-it autonomy that spawns tirades like Halbert’s. Taxpayers pay the hefty salaries of the utility’s management. Aren’t we owed an open accounting of their billing procedures, rather than being suddenly blindsided with a rate hike?

Don’t we all live on the same island?

Les Smith is a reporter for WHBQ Fox-13 News.

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News The Fly-By

MLGW Sponsors Solar Car Race for Kids

This Saturday, on the rooftop of Beale Street Landing’s parking garage, kids from across Shelby County will race miniature cars using nothing but sunlight to power them.

The event is part of Memphis Light, Gas, & Water’s (MLGW) second annual A-Blazing Race competition, which gives young people in third through eighth grades a chance to enhance their skills in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). The event takes place August 16th from 8 a.m. to noon. It’s free and open to the public.

The initiative is MLGW President Jerry Collins’ brainchild. He said solar power is becoming more popular and the costs associated with it are becoming more affordable.

“Solar power is a green power source [that] works beautifully when the sun is shining,” Collins said. “Our solar car race promotes green power, and it educates youth about energy and teamwork. It’s a lot of fun.”

A participant in last year’s MLGW solar car race

About 40 kids attended an MLGW engineering workshop last month, where they were taught scientific principles regarding friction, aerodynamics, energy, and transmission. They were also taught the design process engineers utilize when creating a product.

Participating kids purchased a $24 model solar car kit that contains a solar panel and motor. They were given several weeks to use the kit along with other materials to design and build their model solar cars, which will operate completely on the conversion of sunlight into electricity.

As long as model cars are roughly 30 x 60 x 30 centimeters, kids can use anything from coke cans to plastic bottles to create their devices. For example, last year’s winning solar car was composed out of a Girl Scout cookie box.

Daniel Hochstein, project engineer for MLGW, said the solar panel collects energy from the sun, converts it into electricity, and transmits it to the model cars’ motors, enabling the wheels on the structures to turn, moving them forward.

Hochstein said he thinks learning to build model solar cars might pique kids’ interest in STEM-related careers.

“I think it’s important to have careers in those fields because it helps society as a whole to improve and advance, to problem solve, come up with new solutions, and new alternatives,” Hochstein said. “It’s part of the reason everybody has a cell phone now and that cars are so rampant … science, technology, engineering, and math over the years have developed new products that make living easier and more convenient.”

There will be two divisions for the event: One division will be for kids in the third through the fifth grades. The second division will be for kids in grades six through eight. Each team can consist of two to eight kids.

Model solar cars will race in a series of head-to-head elimination rounds on a 20-meter racecourse. Whoever completes the race in the shortest possible time will be crowned the winner.

MLGW spokeswoman Tamara Nolen said she thinks solar power is the future for utility companies. She also said youth participating in the A-Blazing Race competition could potentially heighten their chances of enjoying successful careers as adults.

“If we can catch them in an early age, after they’ve got the basics down, hopefully they can take it onto high school and college and hopefully start thinking about careers,” Nolen said. “Maybe [they could even] work for us one day at MLGW as an engineer.”

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News News Blog

TVA Proposes Retiring Allen Fossil Plant

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Tennessee Valley Authority

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is considering replacing the Allen Fossil Plant on Presidents Island, which produces power through three coal-fired units, with a new natural-gas fired plant in the same area. Memphis Light Gas & Water purchases power for the area through the TVA. The Allen Fossil Plant was completed in 1959 by Memphis Light, Gas and Water and purchased by TVA in 1984. It produces 4.8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, enough to supply 340,000 homes.

The TVA outlined their plans in a draft environmental assessment looking at ways to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions at its Allen Fossil Plant. In April 2011, the TVA entered into agreements with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and several states and environmental groups to reduce coal emissions.

The agency is considering either installing flue gas desulfurization systems (better known as scrubbers) at the Allen Fossil Plant to reduce emissions or just retiring it altogether by December 2018.

In a 2010 Memphis Flyer story on Shelby County’s worst polluters, TVA’s Allen Fossil Plant topped the list with emissions of more than 1.3 million pounds of pollutants in 2008, the most recent data available at that time. Data from 2013 shows that the Allen plant emitted over 4.7 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that year, and the facility is also home to coal ash impoundments that contain over 417 million gallons of toxic coal ash.

Scott Banbury, the Sierra Club conservation programs coordinator for the Tennessee chapter, wishes the TVA would look into solar and wind power rather than replacing the Allen plant with a natural gas plant.

“[In the environmental assessment], they totally leave out putting solar, like the project Bioworks is working on with the city to try and put solar panels on our buildings and all of the potential for putting solar power into the brownfield sites that we have around town, where we have empty lots, many already paved and equipped with drainage. They’re missing out on that,” Banbury said. “And they’re missing that this could be an economic boon to Memphis if we were to make decisions now about getting our power from renewable alternative sources.”

The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy applauded TVA’s proposal to retire the 55-year-old coal plant, but they would also like to see TVA put more focus on alternative and renewable power rather than natural gas.

“We welcome TVA’s decision to retire the old and inefficient Allen coal plant,” said Dr. Stephen A. Smith, Executive Director of Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. “Moving away from coal is the right decision for both public health and the environment. TVA has options on how to replace this coal plant, and we understand that natural gas is one of those options. However, we believe that TVA should take a broader perspective on replacement and look at both renewable and energy efficiency opportunities that could further reduce the use of fossil fuels in the greater Memphis area.”

There’s a 30-day public comment period on the proposal. Comments can be submitted online, mailed, or emailed by August 5th. There will be a public comment meeting on Tuesday, July 8th at Amtrak Central Station downtown from 3:30 to 7:30 p.m.