Nonprofit, utility strike deal to help rural poor lower bills

WHITE HALL, Ala. -- Lucille Johnson is 66 years old and lives on a $600 per month disability check. In a good month, more than a third of that goes to pay her electricity bill.

Hundreds of Johnson's fellow Lowndes County residents, most of them also poor, have monthly power bills much higher -- between $400 and $600.

"It's been like that as long as I've been here," said Johnson, who has lived in her modest mobile home, badly in need of repairs, for about four years.

Johnson and other residents of this rural county in Alabama's Black Belt are expected to get some relief starting next month.

A Washington-based organization joined in an announcement Wednesday that the local utility company has agreed to institute an amnesty period for late fees and help residents lower their bills through equipment changes, education and better customer service.

"Nothing disheartens people more than the prospect that things will never change," said Bob Woodson, president of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, an advocacy group for the poor.

Program announced

Pioneer Electric Cooperative Inc. vice president Malloy Chandler, at a news conference in conjunction with the NCNE, announced a half-dozen steps to provide relief for about 600 customers in Lowndes County, one of the poorest in the nation. The news conference was held in a small, rural church near White Hall.

Chandler said for the first three months of 2003 the company, which has about 3,000 customers in four counties, will waive late fees for residents who pay their past due balances. Some customers owe as much as $1,000 in overdue bills, he said.

Chandler also said Pioneer workers will begin regularly reading customers' meters instead of customers doing it and submitting estimates as they have done. He said many residents presented inaccurate readings of their meters and later got stuck with heavy "catch-up" bills.

NCNE and the company will also set up a finance program to help customers replace electric furnaces with propane heaters, which are more expensive to buy but less expensive to use. Electric furnaces are less expensive for home builders to install but can be inefficient.

Replacements for furnaces

Woodson said his organization would work to get grants and raise private donations from around the country to cover the costs of replacing electric furnaces.

The company will also expand customer service operations in Hayneville, Georgiana and Camden as part of the plan, Chandler said.

The majority of Lowndes County residents live in badly insulated trailers and small brick homes built with the help of a federal housing program in the early 1970s. For years, many in the county claimed Pioneer Electric overcharged them by hundreds of dollars and took advantage of them because they're poor.

The issue came to a head after the NCNE intervened early this year. During church meetings to discuss Pioneer Electric power bills, hundreds brought along their receipts and put them in a pile to build a case against the company.

But Woodson said a study conducted by his organization found that the company's meters function properly and the rates the company charges -- though high because of distribution costs in the sparsely populated county -- are in line with the industry.

"As an electric utility that's an extremely important message that we need ... to instill confidence in customers," said Terry Wilhite, a spokesman for Pioneer.

However, the organization's study found Pioneer has the highest electric use rate of any cooperative operating in Alabama; that its interest rate on unpaid balances of 5 percent contributes to some residents' high utility bills; that better education about energy efficient practices would save customers money; and that the relationship between the company and its customers is strained.

Despite the changes, Woodson said he believes it will take a long time for the bulk of the customers to catch up with their bills.

James Brooks, 73, a lifelong resident of Lowndes County, attended the news conference Wednesday. Brooks has a modest electric bill compared to some in the county at about $150 per month. But he knows plenty of people who have steep electric bills and he believes the new program will make a lot of people happier.

"It's going to do a lot of good," he said.