By PSC Chair Charlotte Lane
West Virginia has approximately 500 water and sewer utilities. The Public Service Commission of West Virginia is often asked to examine the operations of these essential systems and to determine whether the public is being provided safe and reliable service.
The Commission gets requests regarding systems that can no longer function safely. In some cases, managers of a system determine they need help. They tell the Commission someone else must run their operations. Sometimes systems need help, but won’t admit it.
Concern for public health caused the Legislature to pass a law in 2020 to allow the Commission to examine any troubled system, if those operations aren’t providing safe and reliable water or sewer service.
This can be for any number of reasons. But mostly the cases come to the Commission because of aging systems where resources simply are inadequate to meet the demands. These systems can be extremely expensive to operate.
The law allows the Commission to assign a healthy utility to take over the operations of a nonfunctioning or poorly operating entity if the public’s health is endangered.
We get pushback in some of these cases. People don’t want to lose local control. People don’t want to pay higher rates. People don’t like change. We understand all that. None of use likes change. It makes us uncomfortable at times. But sometimes it is necessary and often unavoidable
As aging systems lose their source of income because of dwindling populations, we are going to see more of these cases. And we are going to be forced to step in to make sure your health and safety are protected.
We are not seeing a wholesale change. But we are seeing differences that reflect the world out there evolving in many ways for all of us. Lots of things will be different in the future.
It is important in these changing times that the Commission is able to use a wide range of legal tools to make sure the public is protected. This is how we help to keep your home and your community healthy.