Tuesday, April 9, 2013
The fiber optic monitoring system meant to warn WSSC of impending breaks in the water main did not fail, WSSC engineers said, Bethesda Now reported.
Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission engineers still do not know what caused the massive water main break on March 18 at the intersection of Connecticut Avenue and Chevy Chase Lake Drive, but they say that the fiber optic monitoring system installed in the pipes in 2010 did not fail, Bethesda Now reported. The monitoring system detects only the sounds of snapping steel wires in the concrete pipes, but as the steel wires did not snap before the break, the monitoring system could not detect the impending break, WSSC chief engineer Gary Gumm told the Montgomery County Council’s Transportation and Environment Committee on Monday morning, Bethesda Now added. But, "[that] is a distinction however that has very little comfort to our …
Friday, April 5, 2013
Montgomery County Council's Transportation, Infrastructure, Energy and Environment Committee reviews the request on Monday morning.
The Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission is proposing a 7.25 percent rate increase for water and sewer use in Montgomery County, according to a news release from the county council's office. On Monday, April 15, at 9:30 a.m., the Montgomery County Council's Transportation, Infrastructure, Energy and Environment Committee, chaired by Council Member Roger Berliner, will review WSSC's operating budget request. Council Members Nancy Floreen and Hans Riemer are also on the committee. The budget request comes as an investigation examines the cause of a massive water main break on Connecticut Avenue in Chevy Chase on March 18. Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission engineers still do not know what caused the break, but they say that the …
Saturday, March 23, 2013
WSSC hopes to have the repaired line back in service by the end of the weekend.
Repairs to the 60-inch-in-diameter water main that burst Monday night on Connecticut Avenue in Chevy Chase are nearly complete. A new pipe section was put in place Thursday, and the grout in the pipe joints cured overnight. Early Friday morning, Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission crews "slowly opened a valve to begin filling the isolated stretch of pipe," according to a statement on the WSSC website. On Friday, WSSC crews were slated to "[flush] the repaired line during the day, which is part of the standard decontamination process to ensure water quality, before putting the transmission main back into service," the statement said. The Acoustic Fiber Optic monitoring system was re-installed yesterday, The Washington Post reported. …
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
In the wake of Pepco's most recent request for permission to raise electricity rates, the county tasked an assistant county attorney to focus solely on utility issues.
Montgomery County now has an in-house attorney dedicated to utility issues. "[Lawyer] Lisa Brennan moved from the Office of Consumer Protection, where she dealt frequently with utility issues, to the Office of the County Attorney where utilities will now dominate her time," Montgomery County spokesman Patrick Lacefield told The Gazette. So far, the county has hired outside attorneys as well as using in-house ones to fight against Pepco's rate increase requests. Dedicating one in-house attorney to utility issues, rather than paying for outside counsel, should save the county some money, The Gazette reported. The county's move to consolidate its efforts to ensure that county residents are paying fair prices for quality utilities comes in …
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Just what the opt-out option will be is still undecided, according to the Maryland Public Service Commission.
Marylanders less-than-thrilled at the thought of having smart meters in their homes might appreciate news from the Maryland Public Service Commission on Monday: The commission is requiring Pepco to give customers an alternative to smart meters—devices that send radio signals about a household’s electricity usage to Pepco. Just what that alternative will be is not yet settled, but the commission has narrowed the list down to two "opt-out" options: The commission will be holding proceedings to determine which alternative should go into effect, but in the meantime, Pepco customers who previously told the utility company that they did not want smart meters on their properties (this was allowed via an interim order from the commission in May…
Friday, November 16, 2012
The new Bing map makes it easy to report streetlight outages.
The next time you spot a burned-out streetlight, try Pepco's new upgraded online streetlight outage reporting system. It's an easy system to use. At the "Report a Streetlight or Area Light Problem" page of Pepco's website, one may enter in the streetlight pole's number or an address in the vicinity of the streetlight, and one will be presented with a Bing map indicating where all of the streetlights are located in that area. Hover the cursor over the green dot representing the streetlight that is out, and one will get a pop-up menu with a link allowing one to "click here to report a problem for this light." "Once a streetlight problem is reported, the new reporting system sends the customer an email with a tracking number, location and …
