Word: midlands
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...MIDLAND. Conceived as a cooperative venture that would supply Michigan's Consumers Power Co. with electricity and a neighboring Dow Chemical plant with steam, the two-unit, 1,300-MW project on Michigan's Tittabawassee River was launched in 1969. It then carried a $267 million price tag. The problem-plagued development is currently nine years behind schedule and egregiously over budget. Company officials say that construction, now 85% complete, has al ready cost $3.4 billion...
Consumers Power Co. is spending $1 million a day in interest payments to keep its Midland project going. Consumers Power's long-term debt now exceeds the firm's shareholder equity by more than $1 billion; Chairman John D. Selby has warned that if the twin reactors are not finished, the company, which has 1.3 million electric customers, could be forced into bankruptcy proceedings. The credit ratings for bonds issued by several utilities have been lowered. Moody's Investors Service dropped the ratings on bonds put out by Public Service Co. of Indiana from Baa2 to Ba2 after the company...
...Michigan, Attorney General Frank Kelley publicly urged the state's largest utility, Consumers Power, to follow Indiana's example and abandon construction of the Midland atomic power plant. Proposed in 1967 at an expected cost of $260 million, Midland will probably reach $6 billion, says Kelley. Midland came under additional criticism last week from federal inspectors, who announced that the floors in one of Midland's buildings were filled with cracks. Those fissures seemed symbolic of the whole nuclear power industry...
...borrowers fondly regarded the 93-year-old institution as Mother Midland, in tribute to its practice of sometimes extending credit on faith alone. It was known for "handshake" loans on long-shot oil and gas ventures. Says Texas Governor Mark White: "Midland helped a lot of people to make a lot of money." So last week when the troubled First National Bank of Midland was about to collapse under the burden of energy loans gone sour, the community staged a pep rally to stem a run on its deposits. About a thousand citizens gathered in Midland's Civic Center...
...Dallas' Republic Bank (deposits: $11.9 billion). Republic assumed the bank's estimated 76,400 accounts and planned to reopen its doors this week; the FDIC will collect First National's bad loans. The passing of the institution into the hands of out-of-towners left some Midland residents gloomy. Said Mayor Thane Akins: "I feel like hanging a black wreath on my door." The merger was one of the largest commercial bank failures in U.S. history, based on the institution's deposits of $622 million. The biggest bank to go under was New York City...