Photo via Office of Councilmember Tommy Wells

For the eighth year in a row, Councilmember Mary Cheh has moved emergency legislation barring Pepco from disconnecting service to customers during an extreme heat wave.

While D.C. law prohibits utilities from cutting off power when temperatures are 32 degrees or below, there is no corresponding legislation for summer weather. Under Cheh’s emergency act, the utility can’t shut off service on the day before, or the day of, when temperatures are forecast to be 95 degrees or more.

She started introducing the measure in a year of particularly brutal heat waves.

“The problem with shutting people’s AC off is more severe than having their heat shut off,” Cheh said. “There’s these incidents, where people, particularly if they live in larger buildings and maybe live alone, have died or suffered serious injury when their power gets shut off. Temperatures inside can rise as high as 120 degrees.”

While Pepco had taken issue with the legislation in years past, Cheh said she no longer hears from them about it. “Maybe they realized it was something they could do and was the right thing to do,” she said.

But the Council got into a cycle of taking care of the problem with emergency legislation when it arose in the summer and then letting permanent legislation languish during the rest of the year.

Cheh hopes to correct that this year again. She recently re-introduced a bill, co-sponsored by D.C. Council chairman Phil Mendelson, to make it a permanent law.

“One of the reasons I want to get it done is this summer came along, and luckily someone on my staff said ‘It’s time for the emergency legislation,'” Cheh said. “I’m afraid I will forget one year.”