Howard County Group Hopes to Expand Fight Against BGE

A group of Howard County residents who have started a petition calling for an investigation into power outages in the county hope to grow their cause to neighboring communities.

The group Reliability4HoCo, which has a Facebook page, has started a petition calling for an investigation by the state Public Service Commission into what the organization contends is a large number of outages in certain areas of Howard County.

The movement has grown since spring 2011 after resident Cathy Eshmont started to question the large number of power outages she was experiencing in her Ellicott City home off of Baltimore National Pike. The group , including several with BGE, but is not satisfied that its issues are being addressed. So far more than 190 people have signed the petition.

Residents are particularly curious about "blue sky outages," which occur when there are is no inclement weatherin the area. Residents are also concerned about the large number of outages that appear to occur in areas where the power lines are still above ground.

They hope the petition will spur an investigation by the Public Service Commission, the state agency that regulates public utilities.

Eshmont said as word has spread, many residents in Howard County have found they share similar problems.

"As long as you stay in your pocket, you think you're the only one," she said.

The movement has been noticed by elected officials in recent weeks, as Howard County Executive Ken Ulman has written two letters to the PSC voicing his concerns, the Baltimore Sun reported.

Baltimore County was hit hard with outages after Hurricane Irene and roughly half of BGE's 1.2 million customers after the September storm.

Eshmont hosted a meeting last week for interested residents and is speaking at an upcoming community association meeting in Oella. For more information, visit the group's Facebook page or email ceshmont@gmail.com.