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Volunteers help clean up Clarks Summit on April 25

The Franklin Institute Science Series to return to Scranton Cultural Center May 4-9

I was shocked but not surprised at learning PPL is seeking another increase in its rate that is charged to its customers. Seeing that this rate increase was for distribution charges, I thought it sounded familiar so I checked to see when PPL had its last rate increase.Based on an article from Jan. 12, 2013, I learned that our beloved Public Utility Commission gave PPL &#8220;the OK to institute a Distribution System Improvement Charge or DSIC&#8221;.This DSIC was immediately implemented by PPL as a percentage of the distribution and customer charge portion of our bills, and the impact on a typical customer was supposed to amounted to a &#8220;few dollars.&#8221; If you check your PPL bill, you will see this charge, and it may be more than a &#8220;few dollars&#8221;!More interesting, the PUC granted this DSIC charge after granting PPL a rate increase that drove customers&#8217; flat monthly charge up 62 percent.Frankly, I think we, the customers, know full well that the PUC will grant PPL whatever it wants, just as the commission always has done.Please remember, this is the same PUC that has allowed PPL to build the huge power lines that are now being constructed on almost every mountain and forest that surrounds the Wyoming Valley. These power line corridors are causing significant damage to our environment by segmenting the forests and negatively impacting our streams and wetlands.To see a good example of this damage, take a ride up Bald Mountain in Bear Creek or go south on Route 115 to Buck River Road in Buck Township. You will see the massive corridors that have been cut through the forest, towers not yet draped with huge power lines and clear-cut areas that will be used to build transformer stations.PPL is promoting this destruction as a &#8220;reliability project&#8221; to benefit its customers, but the reality is that this is a &#8220;revenue reliability&#8221; program that will probably allow it to sell electricity to New York and New Jersey customers. PPL is divesting its power-generation business and once these lines are built you can bet it will no longer be classified as a public utility that falls under the auspices of the PUC.Then again, that probably won&#8217;t be much of a change for us, the customers.Ron AshtonGouldsboro

Letter to the Editor: PPL doesn’t let anything, including forests, stand it its way, writer says