Customer, state legislator react to Mountaineer Gas rate hike - WCHS

Customer, state legislator react to Mountaineer Gas rate hike | WCHS

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WCHS) — Another rate hike gets the greenlight, and Mountaineer Gas customers will be seeing their bill go up.

The rate increase will begin on New Year's Day.

The West Virginia Public Service Commission said customers can expect to pay 5.9% more.

The PSC estimates customers' bills will be, on average, about $4.20 more a month due to the settlement approved on December 21.

Commissioners reported they received 161 letters of protest against the rate increase.

Bill Dorsey lives on the West side of Charleston. He was affected by the recent gas outage that started on November 10 and affected more than 1,000 customers.

"I think they were ill prepared," Dorsey told Eyewitness News. "They weren't really thinking that something this big could happen. I understand that, but a lot of it fell onto the customers."

He said he would like to see more done before Mountaineer Gas asks for a rate hike.

"There's always a rate hike. There's always an excuse that it has to go towards maintenance," Dorsey said. "The issue I have is I like to see the companies actually invest in the maintenance first and then look at the rate hike as a method of recovering maintenance."

The settlement between multiple parties will come out to around $13.9 million.

Delegate Mike Pushkin does not support the rate hike.

"Unfortunately, we rarely hear of the Public Service Commission denying one of these utilities a rate increase when they ask for it," Pushkin said. "There's a lot of folks out here living on fixed incomes, and nobody is giving them any relief."

He said there may need to be discussion on how the Public Service Commission is appointed.

"Maybe they should be answering directly to the people and directly to the voters instead of just answering to the utilities," Pushkin said.

Throughout the 161 protests the commission received many read in part, "I am requesting that, if you must approve yet another rate increase, you disallow the increase to apply to West Side of Charleston residents in the 25302 and 25387 ZIP Codes, at least until the cold months are over."

The PSC has not said that West side residents would be excluded from this rate increase.