Marblehead's electric utility is solvent and reliable: it has taken in more than it spent every year since at least 2010 and holds national reliability awards three years running. Maintenance spending has doubled since 2016, digging out of what its own staff call "25 to 35 years of non-maintenance."
The sore spots are real too: the annual reports hid a 3.5-year plant shutdown until a management change, bills jumped 34% in nine months in 2022, and the board's 2025 replacement of its manager ended up in court.
Big storms still hurt: an October 2019 storm knocked out 20% of the town, some for three days, and falling trees on the Salem supply lines blacked out the whole town for a morning in 2021. The $9.7M substation rebuild now underway targets exactly that weak point.
State regulators ordered the town's only emergency generators offline from 2015 to 2019 over emissions and noise. The fix cost $1.2M and failed twice before passing.
No newspaper ever covered it. The full paper trail →
A decade of slow drift, then 2022: up 34% in nine months as gas prices spiked after Russia invaded Ukraine. The rainy-day fund held only one month of power costs during the spike; the board tripled it afterward. The monthly fixed charge also rose from $4.25 to $18.50 in two years, which hits small users hardest. The rate story →
Carbon-free share jumped 42% → 65% in 2024 while wholesale power cost fell 3.4%. Where green had a payback (LED streetlights, cheap hydro), they took it; where it didn't (local solar at twice the going rate), they passed.
The gaps: Berkshire Wind's cost has never been published, and the contested Peabody peaker went online in 2024 without its promised green hydrogen. The full ledger →
The suit is pending. A new manager, from Ipswich's utility, started September 29. The whole saga →
The department's voluntary payment to the town was $330,000 every single year from 2010 through 2024, while its reserves grew past $23M. The first raise, to $360,000, came in 2025, now set by a formula tied to electricity sales. Why it stayed flat →
Every number above is footnoted on the full page. Sources: MMLD annual reports to the Town (2010–2024), Marblehead Annual Town Reports, MMLD board minutes, MassDEP enforcement records, the 2025 GreatBlue customer survey, and local news coverage.