August 3, 2000

Article discusses how vacationers at beach communities in New York City metropolitan area are coping with wet, rainy weather pattern that continues to engulf region; photo (M)

Joyce Purnick Metro Matters column holds that two members of US Commission on Civil Rights, which issued report critical of NYC Police Department on matters of racial relations, have issued dissenting statement from report; statements critical of commission report from members Russell G Redenbaugh and Carl A Anderson noted (M)

California, which led nation in deregulation of electric industry, is on brink of power supply breakdown as heat wave causes electric demand to soar across West; regulators order utilities to curb supplies to big commercial users that have agreed to cut use in times of shortage and weigh ordering rolling blackouts; such blackouts, rare across nation, are usually response to extreme weather or power plant failures; California utility executives and regulators are upset that crisis comes when no plants have failed and temperatures have not been extraordinarily high; utilities, fearing they would be unable to recover costs of new power plants in deregulated environment, have not built new plants as demand surged along with state's economy; electric rates are soaring in face of short supply, spurring calls for reregulation; graphs show shrinking margin between peak demand and amount of power available; photo (M)

Billy Joel talks about his interest in boats and how he designed the Shelter Island Runabout, a speedboat with a base price of $300,000; he designed boat in consultation Peter Needham, who builds them; photos (M)

Market Place column on increasing demand by executive recruiters for equity stake in companies as remuneration for performing top-level search in tight labor market for private companies seeking to go public or others whose stock seems particularly appealing; photo (M)