ROCKY MOUNT, Va., April 6, 2010 – The new federal operating license for Appalachian Power’s Smith Mountain Hydroelectric Project in southwestern Virginia became effective April 1 and with it the company has added a new centralized reporting process to meet the needs of lake users and property owners.
 
Area residents can now call 1-800-956-4237 to report floating and dangerous debris in the navigable channels, aquatic vegetation locations or issues concerning navigation aids on the project's two lakes. The number is the company's Customer Solutions Center (CSC) used by Appalachian Power’s electricity customers.
 
A CSC representative will take pertinent information from callers and forward it to the Hydro Generation Department where it will be tracked and handled in accordance with new license requirements and relevant management plans.
 
"We expect this new process to be more user-friendly and provide a single phone number that is already familiar to most Appalachian Power customers," said Teresa Rogers, project manager. "In the past, some lake stakeholders had to search for correct telephone numbers to call at the company, agencies or external organizations and had to make calls at inconvenient times."
 
The Appalachian Power CSC is available to callers 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
 
For other lake issues such as the permitting process for in-water construction, shoreline vegetation work or questions regarding the Shoreline Management Plan, residents or businesses should continue to contact the Appalachian Hydro office in Rocky Mount, 540-489-2556.
 
Smith Mountain Project is a 636-megawatt pumped storage hydroelectric facility that utilizes an upper reservoir (Smith Mountain Lake) and a lower reservoir (Leesville Lake).  Water stored in Smith Mountain Lake first passes through turbine-generators in the powerhouse to produce electricity and is discharged into Leesville Lake.  Most of the water is retained in Leesville Lake and pumped back into the Smith Mountain Lake for re-use.  A portion of the water goes through the turbine-generators at the Leesville powerhouse to generate additional electricity and to meet the minimum discharge requirements of the project´s operating license. 
 
Appalachian Power provides electricity to 1 million customers in Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee (as AEP Appalachian Power). It is a unit of American Electric Power (NYSE: AEP), one of the largest electric utilities in the United States, with more than 5 million customers in 11 states. AEP ranks among the nation’s largest generators of electricity, owning nearly 38,000 megawatts of generating capacity in the U.S. AEP also owns the nation’s largest electricity transmission system, a nearly 39,000-mile network that includes more 765 kilovolt extra-high voltage transmission lines than all other U.S. transmission systems combined. 
 
 
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