LOGAN — “A disaster waiting to happen.”

That was the phrase Sen. Truman Chafin used to describe the condition of electric power lines when he addressed the West Virginia Public Service Commission at a meeting set up to receive input about massive power outages following a snowstorm last year.

Mike Albert, Chairman of the PSC, and Commissioner John McKinney were in Logan to hear from the outages, which affected 220,000 American Electric Power customers in Southern West Virgina, some for as long as 22 days after the Dec. 19 storm.

During the massive storm, record amounts of heavy wet snow fell on the region, causing trees to come down on power lines. The remote geography and rugged terrain made accessibility difficult, and crews from across the country were brought in to held restore power.

“The power company says this [the outage] was an act of God,” Chafin said. “But I spoke to some people from Georgia and Mississippi who came here to work for the power company after the storm. Those people said lines had been allowed to dry rot, that vegetation was not cut.”

Chafin said he had seen substations where vegetation had grown up through the chain link fences surrounding the property, and grown into the stations themselves.

“Federal regulations say the power company must maintain their right-of-way,” Chafin told the PSC. “Somebody is not doing their job.”

Chafin went on to point out that American Electric Power has hired employees in the last five years, and that the cost of those employees has been passed on to the consumer, yet last December, the company had to bring in crews from other states to restore electricity.

He explained that the company paid $70 million to those crews, as well as millions of dollars in salary and bonuses to AEP’s top executives, and asked the PSC to consider the source of those funds.

Rates charged by the company raised in November, with another rate increase on the horizon.

“Who is paying for this? We are,” he said. “AEP has a monopoly, and it must be brought under control. The company is asking for a rate increase when people are having to choose between medicine and electricity.”

Some customers addressed the PSC as well, each with a story of non-existent maintenance, the company’s lack of communication, poor service and sky rocketing power bills.

Glenna Belcher from Red Jacket said her electric bill for January was $1,474, and $900 for February. She said she had been in contact with the power company, who checked the meter used to measure her usage and told her the equipment was working properly. She said one of the company employees she spoke with gave her several reasons her bills had been high, ranging from extremely cold weather to having a door to the crawl space underneath her house open to the elements.

Belcher said she had researched and none of the reasons for the high bills applied to her home.

“She [the power company employee] asked me how many meth labs I was running in my home Belcher said. That is not funny.”

She said one person she spoke to at AEP did admit it was virtually impossible for a single family home to use so much electricity, but that there was nothing the company could do except set her up on a payment plan.

Several people claimed Appalachian Power has so reduced their maintenance of lines and right-of-ways that it has been 10 or 15 years since trees have been cut around lines.

Manuel Ojeda of Chapmanville said he has been asking AEP to cut trees near his home that were on power lines for years.

Ojeda explained there was an outage last summer that lasted three days, and he spoke with the power company as well as a contracting company, Apsplundh, which does tree removal work for AEP . He said persons from both companies assured him the trees would be cut, but nothing was done.

“Someone in upper management [at AEP] made a business decision to stop preventative maintenance,” Ojeda said. “That decision affects us.”

Another public comment meeting is set for Thursday at Iaeger.