Baltimore City Council Grills BGE, Agencies Over Repeated North Charles Fires

Baltimore City Council members convened a tense Public Safety Committee hearing on March 3, 2026 to press Baltimore Gas & Electric, the Baltimore Department of Transportation and the Baltimore Fire Department over a string of underground conduit fires on the 300-block of North Charles Street. The hearing followed a September 2024 blaze at North Charles and West Pleasant that triggered manhole explosions an independent review called “damaging, dangerous and disruptive.”

BGE officials were asked to explain system oversight and planned capital work after an investigation and report recommended enhanced monitoring practices, emergency plans, identifying which areas are at risk, and taking steps to reduce congestion and overcrowding in the conduit system, among numerous other recommendations. Sterling Sumwalt, who oversees the conduit system for BGE, said the company “has made great progress with the underground conduits.”

Councilmember Mark Conway directly challenged the structure of the City’s agreement with BGE, telling the committee that “The city can make recommendations, BGE decides the priority. That's how the current agreement is structured. And they said that in the hearing. I think that that that's problematic because if we're talking about safety and preventing fires or explosions, that shouldn't come down to a company that may not necessarily have, and I hope they do have those, those desires and intentions and priorities, but that may not always be the first thing on their agenda. And so we need to make sure that there is no room for misinterpretation if we have to address the safety issue.” Conway also raised costs to ratepayers, saying he wants the City’s agreement “to position us in a way such that we can truly address some of the capital needs that we have, but also do so in a way that doesn't land on the shoulders of ratepayers,” and warned about households forced to choose between bills and essentials.

The conduit-safety scrutiny comes as the Council has separately probed BGE rate increases. The Committee on Legislative Investigations held an informational hearing on February 20, 2025 at City Hall, Room 250, to examine major increases in BGE gas and electric bills; participants included Council President Zeke Cohen, BGE representatives and David Lapp for the Office of the People’s Counsel. Public testimony for that hearing was required in person and livestreamed on CharmTV; the City operator phone is (410) 396-3100.

Regulatory context underpinned questions about who pays for conduit work. Baltimore City noted the Public Service Commission approved a 2023 multi-year rate plan spreading nearly $400 million in rate increases across 2024–2026. The Office of the People’s Counsel told the Council that BGE’s rates have risen 10% since Exelon acquired the utility in 2012 and warned of planned 2026 increases — a 4.2-cent increase in gas rates and a 0.1-cent increase in electric distribution. A BGE spokesperson told CBS the increases reflected work to keep the system “safe and up-to-date for our 1.3 million electric and 700,000 gas customers.”

Council members left the March 3, 2026 hearing with the independent review and the investigation’s recommendations at the center of follow-up demands, and with separate oversight plans on the calendar: the Committee of the Whole had been set to further examine BGE business practices and pipeline inspections before scheduling changes tied to Council President Zeke Cohen’s family circumstances. The Council has signaled it will continue to seek detail on the investigation’s authorship, timelines for any corrective actions, and how conduit capital costs will be allocated so Baltimore ratepayers do not bear unexpected burdens.