Agreement Brings Calvert Funds for Emergency Planning

Calvert commissioners signed an agreement this week with the Maryland Emergency Management Agency that will bring the county nearly $360,000 in grant funding for terrorism prevention and emergency planning efforts.

The grant includes money to renew the county's contract with Code Red, a service that allows county residents and businesses to sign up for automated telephone notification of emergencies.

The service makes up to 60,000 calls per hour for announcements that include bioterrorism alerts, power failures and missing children alerts. The public can sign up at http://www.co.cal.md.us (search for Code Red) or call 410-535-1600, Ext. 2638.

The grant also will pay to replace an emergency management vehicle, and buy breathing equipment for the Special Operations Team of the Calvert County Sheriff's Office and sensors for reading air conditions for a tactical robot.

The county also approved a $32,000 budget adjustment to complete funding of a project for the Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program.

BG&E Says Service In Calvert Improves

Baltimore Gas and Electric executives said service to the company's Calvert customers was better in the last half of 2007 and early 2008.

The company, owned by Constellation Energy, has been criticized by state Del. Sue Kullen (D-Calvert) and some of its customers who say that they receive poor service and that the company is slow to respond to outages, compared with the Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative, the utility that serves most of Calvert County.

BGE serves fewer than 7,800 customers in Twin Beaches and the surrounding area of northern Calvert. SMECO serves 30,150 customers in the rest of the county.

BGE reported a customer average of 0.31 power failures or interruptions in 2004, not including major weather events. The rate more than doubled to 0.73 in 2006. In comparison, SMECO reported an average of 1.03 disturbances per customer in 2004 and 0.49 in 2006.

A BGE customer in Calvert went without power for an average of 1.68 hours in 2004 and 2.05 hours in 2006, not including major weather events. For SMECO customers, the average was 1.81 hours in 2004 and 1.02 hours in 2006.

BGE is in the midst of "an aggressive" tree-trimming plan to reduce power failures, said Stephen J. Woerner, senior vice president. Tree trimming will finish in June, he said.

The company also moved a crew to the area of southern Anne Arundel County and northern Calvert to improve response time.