The efforts — at the local level and at the state level — that will result in lower electric rates for many people, businesses and industries in eastern North Carolina deserve praise.

As of Aug. 1, it appears the electric rates for the City of Washington’s residential customers and its small general service customers will be reduced by 6 percent. Other rate reductions likely would occur after a rate-service study and a load-management study are completed later this year.

At the local level, officials with the 32 cities and towns that make up the N.C. Eastern Municipal Power Agency — which includes Washington and Belhaven— worked diligently for many years to help bring about the situation that should allow those cities and towns to charge lower electric rates. Washington councilmen Doug Mercer and William Pitt played roles in that local effort. Mercer has been the city’s representative to NCEMPA. Pitt has been the city’s representative at the N.C. League of Municipalities, which helped lobby for the legislation that opened the door for the lower electric rates.

The area’s legislators — state Sen. Bill Cook and state Reps. Paul Tine and Michael Speciale — supported the movement to work out a deal that would lower power rates in eastern North Carolina.

In May, the Washington City Council voted for the ordinance consenting to the agreement between Duke Energy Progress and the North Carolina Eastern Municipal Power Agency that should lower power rates in the 32 NCEMPA cities and towns that sell power. The council also approved other documents related to the agreement.

The $1.2 billion agreement allows Duke Energy Progress to buy stakes in power-generation facilities now owned, in part, by NCEMPA. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has approved the agreement. Gov. Pat McCrory signed into law legislation that opened the door for the agreement to move forward.

The new law allows NCEMPA members to sell their physical assets (power plants and the like) and issue bonds to refinance approximately $580 million of debt after this purchase is complete. It also allows NCEMPA power agencies to enter into purchase power agreements to replace the electricity previously provided by the generation assets they are selling.

Looks like those efforts resulted in a good deal for all those concerned, especially the region’s consumer of electricity.