Duke Energy CFA Spill and Income Inequality, 2/20/14

Duke Energy will past the cost of Coal Fly Ash Spill on to Customers, not Shareholders.   Coal Fly Ash (CFA) is a waste generated from combusting coal.  The waste is often slurried with water and pumped into large settling ponds.  One would think that negligence in maintaining such ponds would be a criminal offense, or at least a civil crime.  When BP spilled oil in the Gulf their shareholders lost billions (I was one of them, I lost thousands) as their share value plummeted.  There is some justice there. Billions of dollars will probably be spent on this clean-up.  

But, Duke Energy is a public utility and as such their profits are set by agreement.  Add up all the costs and then set the cost of electricity to cover the costs and guarantee them their agreed profit.  A CFA just becomes a cost.  And in most states, competition between power companies is not encouraged, so all is good for Duke.  Who would set such rules.  Politicians that are supported by PAC’s that get donations from Duke et al.  Is the public best served, probably not.  

When we talk about wealth inequality in America, we like to assume the brilliant, deserving people made it to the top of the pyramid, the bums sunk to the bottom.  That may have been true at the dawn of the American experiment, but for now that is the huge exception not the rule.  The rules are set up to maintain the wealth inequality ( Four Shocking Examples of American Inequality), and they are by no means fair.  In the example above, the Company, the Shareholders win, the customers (mostly poor and middle class Americans, what’s left of them) lose.  It is a form of wealth distribution from the poor to the rich.  There are thousands of rules set up to the benefit the rich at the expense of the poor.  That’s one of the themes of this blog is to point out that the world ain’t fair, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, thems the rules, baby.