Customers should get Vogtle money back
The Public Service Commission was wrong a few years ago to allow the advance billing of the public to help fund the Plant Vogtle expansion. This is/was the companies’ and their shareholders’ funding obligation, not the public’s. Now that Westinghouse is about to walk away through a bankruptcy filing, and Southern and partners likely to abandon the project at that point, the public deserves its advance loan of approximately $2 billion or so returned with interest. Southern should be ordered to make this refund as a one-time immediate payment to all customers who paid these additional fees. The courts often deem a 10 percent interest rate to be reasonable rate, so these refunds should come with interest paid from the date collected to the date refunded. Southern and associates should not be allowed to collect a $3 billion or so settlement from Westinghouse/Toshiba and pocket it, then walk away from the unfinished project, leaving the public with a $2 billion investment in a trash heap. The stockholders need to buy back the public’s share of this mismanaged project and pay us interest on our loan to them. Buying it back over time is not acceptable nor is doing so through a bill credit. There should be no loss, nor cost, to the public over this fiasco.
ROBBIE HEWITT, SMYRNA
No solutions to Atlanta traffic problems
I keep reading reports regarding solutions to Atlanta’s traffic problems.
Can we be brutally candid about this issue? There are no solutions. Building more roads is not the solution, especially regarding the two-lane roads most of us travel on. When I see a new apartment/condo complex being built, at least one, and possibly two traffic lights are soon to follow. How do we possibly counteract the growth in Atlanta and the increase in cars that follow? I see traffic getting exponentially worse year after year, and the talk of solutions becomes more impractical, because there are none.
PATRICK MORRIS, ATLANTA
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