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January 2, 2014

Ice storm recovery could cost ratepayers

Power utilities in the state say they’ve not yet tallied the cost of recovering from a Christmas week ice storm, but early assessments show the storm could be deemed an “extraordinary storm event,” allowing utilities to recoup some of the cost from ratepayers.

The Portland Press Herald reported that Central Maine Power Co. experienced outages to just over 20% of its customers, a threshold that state regulators use to determine the extraordinary storm event designation. The repairs must also cost more than $1.5 million, the paper reported.

Bob Potts, a spokesman for Emera Maine, formerly Bangor Hydro Electric, told the paper that it’s still too soon to tell but early assessments of the storm damage indicate it was likely bad enough to receive that designation. That company reported outages to about 40,000 customers, making up around 35% of its 115,000 customer base.

The storm had prompted an emergency declaration by Gov. Paul LePage to allow heating fuel trucks to operate for extra hours. LePage ended the state of emergency Wednesday. While the governor said in a press release that conditions have improved since the Christmas week ice storm, The Associated Press reported that the National Weather Service predicts temperatures will drop to the single digits or below zero through Sunday.

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