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For Immediate Release: May 14, 2012
Contact: Rob Thormeyer, 202-898-9382, rthormeyer@naruc.org

NARUC Returns to Portland with Focus on Fracturing, Smart Grid, Environmental Rules

WASHINGTON—The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners returns to Portland, Ore., this summer with a loaded agenda and stellar keynote speakers. NARUC’s 2012 Summer Committee Meetings, July 22-25, will focus on the top challenges facing the utility sector, including smart-grid issues, universal service reform, hydraulic fracturing, new environmental rules, and much more.

Featured speakers at the meeting include University of Colorado School of Law Dean Philip J. Weiser, Environmental Defense Fund General Counsel Vickie Patton, QEP Resources President and CEO Charles Stanley, American Water President and CEO Jeff Sterba, members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Environmental Protection Agency, and many more.

Topics under discussion include: Bridging the Hydraulic Fracturing Divide; A Marriage of Convenience: Can Utilities and Wireless Companies Keep the Lights on?; EPA Regulations: Are They Moving America Beyond Coal?; Electricity and Gas Interpendencies; cyber security; gas pipeline safety; utility infrastructure costs; and much more.

The NARUC-Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Joint Forum on Reliability and the Environment will meet Wednesday, July 25, and the NARUC-FERC Collaborative on Smart Response will be meeting on Sunday, July 22.

In addition, NARUC’s various committees will hold panel discussions and discuss policy resolutions that, if passed by the Association Board of Directors on July 25, will become NARUC policy. Draft resolutions will be circulated in advance of the meeting. These topics may include universal service and Lifeline reform, wireless data theft, and much more.

A detailed agenda is available at: http://summer.narucmeetings.org.

More information will be made available as the agenda comes together.

Reporters interested in covering the event should contact Rob Thormeyer as soon as possible to ensure space at either the conference hotel or another nearby venue.
 

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NARUC is a non-profit organization founded in 1889 whose members include the governmental agencies that are engaged in the regulation of utilities and carriers in the fifty States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. NARUC's member agencies regulate telecommunications, energy, and water utilities. NARUC represents the interests of State public utility commissions before the three branches of the Federal government.

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