Opening Day!

 

And a big finish!

$170 For Your Troubles

If you found $170 on the ground, would you pick it up? Does it make up for the rapid rise in your electricity bill?

From WaPo:

Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) and Constellation Energy Corp. hailed their agreement yesterday to give 1.1 million Maryland electricity customers a one-time $170 credit as a victory that will cool the disputes and turmoil of recent months.

"I believe some of the contentious issues of the past are behind us," the governor said at a news conference while flanked by state utility regulators and Democratic legislative leaders. They contrasted O'Malley's effort to wrest concessions from the region's biggest power company with what they contend was the industry-friendly administration of his predecessor, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R).

"We all win in various ways," said Public Service Commission Chairman Steven B. Larsen, who scoured Maryland's 1999 electric deregulation deal for more than a year to find potential givebacks for Baltimore Gas and Electric customers. One included in the proposed Constellation settlement: A $1.5 billion cost that customers were scheduled to pay to dismantle the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant will now be all but wiped out.

Constellation chief executive Mayo A. Shattuck III said in a statement last night, "All parties gain meaningfully in this carefully crafted settlement, and the overarching value is a return to regulatory stability and normalcy."

If the General Assembly approves the settlement, customers of BGE, a Constellation subsidiary, should expect to find the credit on their bills by the end of the year, officials said yesterday. In the Washington region, BGE serves parts of Montgomery, Prince George's, Howard and Anne Arundel counties and Southern Maryland.

Whatever the benefits for electric customers in the short term, the deal doesn't change the skyrocketing rates that resulted when Maryland opened its electricity markets to competition. Electric bills rose when rate caps came off for Pepco customers in 2004 and BGE in 2006. The expected competition never arrived. Fuel prices are climbing, and unregulated power companies, including Constellation and Mirant, are free to charge what the market will bear to supply Maryland's growing electricity needs.

"What customers are losing every year dwarfs the credits," said Sen. E.J. Pipkin (R-Queen Anne's), the General Assembly's chief critic of deregulation. "On the surface, it's cents on the dollar. If we're trading in regulatory reform for this, we're giving in."

BGE customer Liz Barrett of Annapolis, a choir director and activist, called the $170 credit "ridiculous."

"It's less than the increase on my bill for this month," she said, noting that it has doubled since 2006 and totals $425 to heat her four-bedroom house. "The thing that kills me is we're facing these horrendous bills and we're not having much of a winter."

The deal was struck by attorneys for Constellation and the O'Malley administration after two weeks of negotiations to resolve a lawsuit the company filed in federal court this month. Constellation sued to recover $2.83 in monthly credits it is giving electricity customers over 10 years. The state filed a countersuit to continue the credits.

A public relations war over rising rates, simmering since O'Malley's 2006 campaign, boiled over. The governor took aim at Constellation's wealthy stockholders; the company was furious at a report Larsen made to lawmakers in January that assailed the deregulation deal as bad for consumers.

For Constellation, the settlement restores political peace in a dispute that industry analysts at J.P. Morgan described yesterday as a "high stakes political issue." The company gains more leeway to sell stock to investors without approval from regulators. And it has withdrawn its threat to pursue financing for a new nuclear plant in New York instead of building a proposed third reactor at Calvert Cliffs.

"Maryland was getting a lot of negative national attention as a result of these disagreements," said Glen Thomas of the P3 Group, a consortium of power companies in the mid-Atlantic.

Under the agreement, the company will assume the costs to decommission the two existing Calvert Cliffs reactors starting in 2034, perhaps the biggest long-term gain for electricity customers. BGE transferred the nuclear facility and its other power plants to Constellation in 2000, but customers, not shareholders, were on the hook to dismantle it. Customers have paid $920 million to a decommissioning fund through their bills. But the PSC disputed the future cost in recent months, contending that customers would pay in excess of $1.5 billion if they kept contributing through 2034, a windfall for Constellation.

O'Malley and lawmakers said yesterday that the agreement does not preclude any attempts by the legislature to adopt reregulation of the power industry.

"Issues regarding reregulation are still very much on the plate," Larsen said.

Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) said O'Malley "made out very well politically" by announcing a deal for customers. But he said the "financial benefits aren't going to be enough to stop high utility costs."

Sean Dobson of Progressive Maryland, an advocacy group, said O'Malley is "playing a bad hand as best as he can."

"Given the fact that the 1999 law was a total and absolute giveaway to the power companies, it's the best he could negotiate."

Local Science

Time for a little science lesson...this from the folks at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab:

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has discovered evidence that points to the existence of an underground ocean of water and ammonia on Saturn's moon Titan. The findings made using radar measurements of Titan's rotation will appear in the March 21 issue of the journal Science.

"With its organic dunes, lakes, channels and mountains, Titan has one of the most varied, active and Earth-like surfaces in the solar system," said Ralph Lorenz, lead author of the paper and Cassini radar scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md. "Now we see changes in the way Titan rotates, giving us a window into Titan's interior beneath the surface."

Members of the mission's science team used Cassini's Synthetic Aperture Radar to collect imaging data during 19 separate passes over Titan between October 2005 and May 2007. The radar can see through Titan's dense, methane-rich atmospheric haze, detailing never-before-seen surface features and establishing their locations on the moon's surface.

Using data from the radar's early observations, the scientists and radar engineers established the locations of 50 unique landmarks on Titan's surface. They then searched for these same lakes, canyons and mountains in the reams of data returned by Cassini in its later flybys of Titan. They found prominent surface features had shifted from their expected positions by up to 19 miles. A systematic displacement of surface features would be difficult to explain unless the moon's icy crust was decoupled from its core by an internal ocean, making it easier for the crust to move.

"We believe that about 62 miles beneath the ice and organic-rich surface is an internal ocean of liquid water mixed with ammonia," said Bryan Stiles of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in, Pasadena, Calif. Stiles also is a contributing author to the paper.

The study of Titan is a major goal of the Cassini-Huygens mission because it may preserve, in deep-freeze, many of the chemical compounds that preceded life on Earth. Titan is the only moon in the solar system that possesses a dense atmosphere. The moon's atmosphere is 1.5 times denser than Earth's. Titan is the largest of Saturn's moons, bigger than the planet Mercury.

"The combination of an organic-rich environment and liquid water is very appealing to astrobiologists," said APL's Lorenz. "Further study of Titan's rotation will let us understand the watery interior better, and because the spin of the crust and the winds in the atmosphere are linked, we might see seasonal variation in the spin in the next few years."

Cassini scientists will not have long to wait before another go at Titan. On March 25, just prior to its closest approach at an altitude of 620 miles, Cassini will employ its Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer to examine Titan's upper atmosphere. Immediately after closest approach, the spacecraft's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer will capture high-resolution images of Titan's southeast quadrant.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The mission is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The Cassini orbiter also was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

For information about Cassini visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/index.html

Is David's An Anchor?

The Sun says the natural food emporium is interested, and its had a successful run in Wilde Lake. HoCo Exec Ken Ulman discusses vague plans to create new zoning laws to help village centers and urges folks to give him a jingle. Hometown Columbia says in her blog a new paradigm is needed.

There's obviously a lot of shopping energy in Columbia, just not in the village centers. Instead of forcing something that is not to be what else could that property be used for? Are grocery stores and nondescript office buildings the only option? In other words, is anything better than nothing, or does there need to be a whole plan and community buy-in for how stuff is to be sustained?

This is a little simplistic but...Back in the day we lived in Alexandria about the time the community decided to turn an old abandoned torpedo factory into an art center. Downtown Alexandria was pretty gritty in those days, not exactly a safe place at night. But after much discussion, endless discussion, among many different parties, the center opened, which in turn gave a shot in the arm to nearby restaurants, which inspired new galleries, which fed further waterfront development, and suddenly you had a boom.

So, and we are just musing here, not making a suggestion...what if CA, the county and a developer team up to build a first class, Olympic quality swim, tennis and track complex with shops to complement? Or the ice rink was dramatically expanded, and indoor soccer and basketball courts added. Would that be something families would rally around, and keep coming to?

We recall a comment by Barbara Russell, musing about why more people come out to CA meetings talk about a proposal to eliminate towels at the athletic club than engage in more substantive discussions. Maybe they want more towels.

Police Chase Ends In Crash

From the Sun:

A speeding car weaving between lanes on southbound U.S. 29 crossed the median south of Columbia and collided with a northbound car yesterday, sending both drivers to Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore.

Howard County police said an officer in an unmarked police car saw a 1993 Toyota Paseo speeding and weaving between lanes on U.S. 29 at 2:40 p.m. The officer tried to stop the vehicle, but the driver sped up, police said.

As the Paseo's driver approached Rivers Edge Road, south of Route 32, the vehicle suddenly changed lanes, skidding across the grassy median and into the northbound lanes, where it was struck by a 2000 Toyota Camry driven by Joshua Jacobs, 39, of the 6100 block of Rusk Ave. in Baltimore.

Both drivers were taken by helicopter to Shock Trauma. Jacobs was listed in stable condition. The Paseo's driver was in critical condition and was not identified by police.

Fireworks Costs Skyrocket

Another sign of the times: The cost of shooting off Columbia's fireworks could go up 32 percent because county officials are pessimistic that anyone would want to volunteer their time to help put on the show.

Here's what the Sun said:

County officials have said they will look for sponsors to make sure that the tradition of Fourth of July fireworks at the Columbia lakefront continues after the Kiwanis Club announced that it will no longer finance the event.

"We haven't gone too far in how it's going to be financed," Kevin Enright, a spokesman for County Executive Ken Ulman, said last week. " ... We'll make sure the tradition continues."

The Kiwanis Club spent $38,000 on the event last year with an all-volunteer staff, Enright said. He estimated that the cost would be about $50,000 this year, because the cost goes up each year and the county would not have the same full volunteer staff.

Who'll Launch The Fireworks?

From WaPo:

By Susan DeFord
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 20, 2008; HO03

The Kiwanis Club of Columbia said this week that it's unable to sponsor the Independence Day Festival at Lake Kittamaqundi. But Howard County Executive Ken Ulman (D) promised the county's help and said "the show will go on."

The July 4 festival and fireworks display has drawn up to 20,000 people to the lakefront for nearly 20 years, but the Columbia service organization no longer has the manpower to stage the event, said Henry Stern, chairman of public relations for the group. The Kiwanis Club has 15 members, he said, and several are in poor health.

The club is responsible for organizing the event, arranging for vendors, hiring security and funding the $20,000 fireworks display. "There's just so much involved in this," Stern said. "Since we're down to these few members, we just can't do it anymore."

Stern said the Kiwanis Club contacted the Columbia Association staff and the county Department of Recreation and Parks in recent weeks to help find an organization to sponsor the event with assistance from the Kiwanis.

"We didn't want to abandon it completely if it was at all possible," Stern said.

Steven Sattler, the association's director of communications and marketing, said: "It's obviously unfortunate for the community, but CA can't tackle this on its own. If somebody can step forward, we'll do whatever we've done in the past."

Howard government spokesman Kevin Enright said Ulman, learning of the matter while he was out of town, said the county would look for sponsors.

"It will happen," Enright said.