The West Virginia Public Service Commission (PSC) recently permitted West Virginia American Water, Inc. (WVAW) to purchase several private water utilities in Jefferson County for $27 million.

This is an outrage. The PSC’s Consumer Advocate valued the utilities at a combined $14 million. The $13 million profit will be borne by the ratepayers of those utilities, in the form of rate increases amounting to close to 50 percent.

Water companies are monopolies, like electric companies, and are therefore subject to state regulation.

The customers served by these utilities don’t deserve this highhanded, cavalier treatment. Some are among the lowest income folks in our county.

Many people, I included, protested this sale at a public hearing in Charles Town several months ago. I had some optimism that the PSC might greatly reduce the price of the purchase, or significantly reduce the rate increase. I was wrong.

WVAW, which operates over much of West Virginia, is a subsidiary of American Water, Inc. American Water is, despite its name, a German conglomerate. WVAW has taken over the operations of many small private water systems, as well as many municipal water and sewer systems, in our state.

The company is the water utility for Charleston, our state’s capital and its largest city, and for many of the municipalities nearby. WVAW received a major black eye in 2014, when it was unable to contain a chemical spill that poisoned the drinking water of about 300,000 people in and around Charleston. Much of that population was without drinking or bathing water for weeks, and many folks got sick as a result of WVAW’s incompetence.

Many knowledgeable observers think that WVAW’s reason for agreeing to pay a seriously inflated price for these utilities was to position itself to take over local municipal water systems in Jefferson County. WVAW has done that over much of the state. The company sweet-talks mayors and city/town council members into believing they can save money by turning over the operations of their water/sewer systems to WVAW. As in the case of Charleston, sometimes those “savings” have come back to bite the communities.

WVAW originally offered $30 million for these utilities. Perhaps the PSC believes it did Jefferson County a favor by reducing the price by 10 percent, and by mandating that the rate increases be spread out over three years. The PSC threw us two bones.

The PSC didn’t have to allow WVAW to make up the total cost of the purchase from the ratepayers. A law passed by the West Virginia Legislature in 2020 permits the PSC to allow those costs to be recovered, but that law doesn’t mandate permission of recovery costs.

I know two of the three members of the PSC that made this decision. They are both honorable people, but both have what I call “corporate” mentalities.

Outrages like this recent decision could be avoided if the PSC were elected by the people of our state, as is the case in some states, rather than appointed by the governor.

John Doyle is a 26-year former member of the West Virginia House of Delegates. He can be reached at rjohndoyle@comcast.net.