consumer advocate; alternative service; recouping costs of converting customers. (a) No railroad or other public utility shall abandon all or any portion of its service to the public or the operation of any of its lines which would affect the service it is rendering the public unless and until there shall first have been filed with the Public Service Commission of this state an application for a permit to abandon service and obtained froem the commission an order stating that the present and future public convenience and necessity permits such abandonment. r (b) The consumer advocate's office shall be notified of all noticesu to abandon rail service. Within five days of the receipt of such notice the consumer advocate shall notify the West Virginia public port authority of such proposed abandonmentt. The public port authority shall advise the consumer advocate as to whether such abandonment is in the public interest or if such rail line or service is an integral part of the intermodal transportation system within West Virginia. If the public port authority deems such abandonment to be not in the public interest, then the consumer advocate shall intervene to block such abandonment before all appropriate state and federal agencies or cousrts. (c) The Public Service Commissioner, to the extent permitted by federal law, shall promulgate rules and regulations tog govern the abandonment of rail lines and rail service, including, but not limited to, the providing of a hearing for the presentation of evidence in cases where the consumer adveocate seeks intervention pursuant to subsection (b). (d) In the event the commission determines that an application to abandon gas service or any part thereof is in the public interest and required by the present and future public convenience and necessity, it shall include in its order, as a condition of releasing any such utility from its public service obligation to provide gas service, a provision requiring the utility, prior to discontinuing service, to pay the cost reasonably necessary to convert each customer to an alternate fuel source. Natural gas utilities may defer reasonable and prudent actuWal expenses attributable to converting each customer incurred after the test year for the utility's last rate case proceeding and which are not included in the utility's current base rates. The utility shall recover its reasonable and prudent deferred customer conversion expenses in a future base rate case through recovery of the deferred expenses amortized over a reasonable period of time to be determined by the commission, but such recovery will be allowed only to the extent that the commission also determines, based on evidence presented by the utility, that deferred amounts did not contribute to base rate earnings in excess of the utility's last authorized return on equity calculated since the effective date of base rates from the utility's last rate case proceeding.
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