SCANA shareholders will vote on selling to Dominion Energy July 31.

If you owned SCANA stock no later than May 31 you will be eligible to vote.

The Lexington County-based corporation is billing it as a merger with the giant Virginia-based company.

SCANA said the vote will be at 9 a.m. at the Columbia Conference Center.

SCE&G and taxpayer-owned Santee Cooper ratepayers are saddled with billions of dollars in debt after the companies abandoned their $9 billion twin nuclear reactor project last July.

SCE&G ratepayers are still paying $37 million a month for the abandoned reactors.

Dominion wants to buy SCANA, which owns SC Electric & Gas, in a $14.6 billion deal that will include:

• Refunds of about $1,000 per SCE&G customer.

• A cut in the average SCE&G customer’s rates by more than $7 a month.

• A $1.7 billion write-off of SCANA assets would end SCE&G ratepayers’ costs over the next 20 years. That’s faster than the 50 to 60 years SCE&G plans.

The sale has been thrown into doubt after state lawmakers tried unsuccessfully to make SCE&G refund ratepayers’ money.

The Senate voted to repeal the Base Load Review Act, the controversial 2007 law that allowed SCANA to charge ratepayers for the reactors which may never produce the savings the company had promised.