Almost a year ago, I wrote an article about a court decision for the sale of Delcora to go ahead and that the state PUC would be soliciting public feedback. Well, that time has come,

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission has set two times on Nov. 17 to receive public input regarding Aqua Pennsylvania’s proposal to acquire DELCORA’s assets…

As part of the process to acquire DELCORA, Aqua filed an application with the PUC. Part of that includes gathering public input.

To obtain that, the PUC has set two telephonic hearings on Nov. 17, one at 1 p.m. and the other at 6 p.m. PUC Administrative Law Judge F. Joseph Brady will preside over the hearings.

As usual, they’ve made it difficult to provide feedback, you have to pre-register for the call and attend one of the two meetings. Exhibits have to be submitted before-hand. It’s a cludgy system, one that clearly favors the utilities. I wrote previously why privatizing public utilities like Delcora is bad. This PUC hearing is one of the last steps before the sale is given the go-ahead.

One of the realities of Pennsylvania’s good government (or sunshine) laws is that their main use is not to keep the public informed but to prevent public participation in government.