Public comment hearings week(s) of October 8 or 15, 2007

Status hearing and Charleston public comment hearing - November 1, 2007

Deadline for Staff and intervenors' testimony, including rebuttal to TrAILCo's testimony - December 5, 2007, 12:00 p.m.

Deadline for propounding discovery - December 12, 2007

Deadline for TrAILCo's rebuttal testimony and other parties' cross-rebuttal of each others' testimony - January 7, 2008, 12:00 p.m.

Evidentiary hearing, first phase [everyone's case but TrAILCo] - January 9-11, 14-15, 2008

Evidentiary hearing, second phase [TrAILCo's case, including oral surrebuttal to evidence adduced in first phase; possibly Staff's witnesses unable to attend first phase] - February 12-15, 19-22, 2008. 

Initial briefs and proposed findings/conclusions - March 10, 2008

Reply briefs - March 21, 2008

In general, TrAILCo has agreed to shorten the time for its responses to discovery

1.   Requests should be directed via email to each of rpalmer@alleghenypower.com, gdeaver@alleghenypower.com, hriddle@alleghenypower.com, bmill11@alleghenypower.com, ccallas@jacksonkelly.com, and pmelick@jacksonkelly.com, with the requests in an accompanying document published in Microsoft Word.

2.  Requests received before 12:00 p.m. on a business day will be deemed served that day.  Requests received thereafter will be deemed served on the subsequent business day.

3.  TrAILCo will file and serve its objections within seven calendar days, and its responses within 14 calendar days; provided, that if that day is not a business day, then the time is extended to the subsequent business day. 

TrAILCo has reserved the right to assert that the sheer quantity of requests or other circumstances preclude this accelerated response protocol, as  under standard Commission Rule.  TrAILCo has already responded to discovery from the Staff and the WVEUG and expect thats TrAILCo, rather than the other parties, will be the principal server of discovery in the week ending December 7, 2007

Obviously, there is a premium on getting discovery out first.  In that regard, however, we need to know what, if any, additional information any expert we retain may need.  The expert's testimony will need to be filed by December 5.  The status hearing set for November 1 is intended, in part, to deal with any pending discovery disputes, again reinforcing the idea of propounding discovery earlier rather than later.

I will begin drafting a data request aimed at a range of financial and environmental issues and will forward it for suggestions.