Co-op sees 6,000 utility cancellations

As the housing bubble grew bigger, the local electric cooperative was adding about 300 new accounts per month.

In July, three years after that bubble burst, Withlacoochee River Electric added only 13 new accounts, said company spokesman David Lambert.

During the start of the recession, he said, Withlacoochee was logging cutoffs at a faster rate than hookups.

"It just goes to show you the situation we're in," said Lambert. "We've been hit hard."

During the past 14 months, Withlacoochee has lost 2,340 accounts in Hernando County. Another 3,660 accounts have been closed in Citrus and Pasco counties, he said.

That means the utility provider is roughly 6,000 accounts below its target, Lambert said.

Those numbers include both residential and commercial properties.

A spokeswoman with Progress Energy, the other major electricity provider for Hernando County and the city of Brooksville, said the company does not release statistics related to cancellations or foreclosures.

Lambert also said more customers are paying their utility bills using their credit cards. That adds more debts among the customer base, which in turn usually means more cancellations.

Withlacoochee itself also is suffering through greater debts. When customers move or fail to pay, most of the money owed is collected somewhere down the line, but not all of it, he said.

"We have seen a significant downturn in our revenues," said Lambert. "A big part of the reason has been all the bad debts ... We will not always collect that money."

From Jan. 1 through Aug. 31, there have been 2,227 home foreclosures in Hernando County, according to circuit court records.

Withlacoochee General Manager Billy Brown has been with the cooperative for more than 50 years. During a recent conversation, Lambert said Brown told him "he has never seen it this bad."

The decrease in demand for electricity has led to sharp reductions in power prices nationwide, according to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal.

Daily market prices for electricity have dropped by more than 40 percent in some regions, the report stated.

Similar trends are not being seen locally, Lambert said.

"We had an extreme building boom and there's a lot of infrastructure out there that we have to pay for," he said.

Withlacoochee covers most of the costs of installing electrical equipment at new developments so the builders aren't saddled. It is a way for houses to remain more affordable, Lambert said.

The cooperative recoups those costs through monthly fees that are part of the regular billing cycles.

"We have 6,000 vacant houses and businesses that we weren't expecting to be vacant," Lambert said.