JIM SAUNDERS/FLORIDA NEWS SERVICE
State regulators Tuesday approved a controversial proposal by Florida Power & Light to collect at least $176.4 million from customers for a project dealing with a saltwater plume that moved from the FPL plant at Turkey Point into nearby groundwater.
Representatives of consumers and business and environmental groups fought the proposal, contending that customers should not have to pay for the cleanup project in Miami-Dade County. Continue reading…
Indian River Guardian 
Power Failure: How utilities across the U.S. changed the rules to make big bets with your money
Over the past decade, state legislatures across the country rewrote rule books for how power companies pay for new power plants, shifting financial risks away from electric companies to you and everyone else.
This rule change ignited a bonfire of risky spending — $40 billion so far on new power plants and upgrades, a Post and Courier investigation found.
Flush with your cash, utilities tried to build plants with unproven technology; they launched projects with unfinished designs and unrealistic budgets; they misled regulators and the public with schedules that promised bogus completion dates; they hid damning reports from investors and the public; they tried to silence critics and whistleblowers.
Then, when delays and cost overruns couldn’t be ignored, they asked state regulators to charge you more for their failures.
Read more:
https://www.postandcourier.com/news/how-utility-companies-across-the-u-s-helped-change-rules/article_434e8778-c880-11e7-9691-e7b11f5b3381.html
Mike, One danger to our democracy the founders did not foresee was corporate dominance of the political process. today, at all levels of government – city, state and national – corporations such as Florida Power and Light, along with wealthy individuals such as Indian River Shores residents, use their considerable wealth to essentially buy politicians who will do their bidding. More power leads to more wealth, which is then used to acquire more power – and the downward spiral continues. At this point, ours is a failed democracy. It is time for a peaceful, popular uprising demanding changes to the U.S. Constitution that will more narrowly define the rights of corporations and that will limit any one individual’s power to control the political process, regardless of their wealth.