At Wilmington Chamber of Commerce’s annual meeting Tuesday, a year and a day after news broke of the spill from Duke Energy’s coal ash pond into the Dan River, company president and CEO Lynn Good acknowledged that Duke has considerable work to do.

Not only is the company “working actively” to clean up the Dan River and other of its coal ash sites – including the one at New Hanover County’s Sutton Lake – but is also making efforts to earn the trust and confidence of its customers, Good said during a lunchtime speech at the Wilmington Convention Center.

The Dan River spill and Duke Energy’s response to it “made an enormous impact on the company,” she continued, saying that Duke is asking how it can raise the standards of its operations.

“At the heart of Duke is doing the right thing, moving forward with integrity,” she said.

The energy company chief emphasized that Duke is focusing on: safety and the environment, customer expectations and technology.

Customers large and small want reliable sources of electricity, and Duke is making major investments in both solar and natural gas, Good said.

In a media session following the meeting, Good was asked how the company is responding to a low score compared to other Southern utilities in a recent J.D. Power customer satisfaction survey.

“We are very focused on improving those ratings over time,” Good responded, noting the importance of improved communications and delivery of services to its customers. She added that Duke Energy is also investing in both the Atlantic Coast Pipeline that will bring natural gas from northern fields as far south as Robeson County and is moving forward with plans to purchase the generating assets of the N.C. Eastern Power Agency.

“We’re investing in economic development projects that make sense for the state,” she said.

Also during the meeting, outgoing chamber board chairman Rickey Godwin reviewed the chamber’s achievements of the past year before passing the gavel to new chairman Chris Boney. In his remarks, Boney enumerated the chamber’s 2015 focus areas: crime, education, business advocacy and economic development.

The chamber will work broadly to educate the community about the causes of violent crime and to address its causes, such as poverty and lack of opportunities, through support of the Blue Ribbon Commission and agencies such as Phoenix Employment Ministry and Hometown Hires, Boney said.

He highlighted the chamber’s focus on STEM education through programs such as Project Lead the Way, which is expanding from its original local pilot in the 2013-14 school year.

In the area of business advocacy, Boney said the chamber would work hard to ensure that the perspectives of Wilmington’s business community are heard, mentioning the special use permit in particular as an issue of concern. He said that for businesses to look seriously at moving to New Hanover County, the county must do away with the ambiguities in the ordinance and ensure that the timeline for working through the application process is clear.

The chamber will also advocate for the state’s Medicaid expansion and its expansion of a film and television incentives program, Boney added.

The core of the chamber’s efforts in economic development will be to help create an environment in which the recommendations of the Garner Report can be vetted and in which businesses can prosper, he said.

In Godwin’s remarks, he referred to progress on creating an economic development scorecard, and said the scorecard should be available in October.

Following the meeting, Boney explained that the chamber is working with researchers at University of North Carolina to collect data from Wilmington and several of its peer and aspirational cities for use on the scorecard. When the data are available, the team will determine which points will be used to measure Wilmington’s economic growth in comparison with other cities.
 
“We all need measurable goals we can hold ourselves accountable to, year after year,” Boney said. “The scorecard is intended to help us benchmark ourselves for years against other cities.”

The inaugural Duke Energy Leadership in Economic Advancement and Development (LEAD) Award was presented by John Geib, Duke Energy's director of economic development, to former chamber board Hal Kitchin.