(The Center Square) – Gov. Greg Abbott on Sunday listed a range of failures he says were made by power companies and primarily by the largest utility provider in the Houston area, CenterPoint Energy, which were “not adequately prepared for a hurricane like Beryl.”
He met with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and other officials in Houston to discuss ongoing recovery efforts after a Category 1 hurricane hit one week ago and more than one million people are still without power.
At a news conference, Abbott said he directed the head of the Public Utility Commission to investigate multiple failures and issued a series of demands CenterPoint must implement to “take immediate action to improve their hurricane preparation and response efforts following their repeated and ongoing power failures in the Greater Houston area.”
Abbott gave CenterPoint until July 31 to comply or said he will take further action through executive order.
“Our number one goal is to preserve life,” Abbott said. Texans still without power are continuing to deal with “life-based issues, not because of the hurricane itself, but because of the lack of power supply.”
No power means more than a million Texans have no food, water and air conditioning under extreme heat conditions that put “lives at risk every single day,” Abbott said. State and local officials are providing ready-to-eat meals and delivering water and ice in “whatever amount of supply is requested by local officials,” he said.
The state is also providing supplies and equipment to hospitals and healthcare facilities and “bringing in or organizing more law enforcement officers to assist Houston and other local police” after the Houston Police Department reported a “slight uptick in criminal behavior” due to ongoing power outages.
“The failure of power companies to provide power to their customers is completely unacceptable,” Abbott said. “Power companies along the Gulf Coast must be prepared to deal with hurricanes, to state the obvious. Early appearances, however, suggest that some power companies are not adequately prepared for a hurricane like Beryl.”
Both the Public Utility Commission and the state legislature will investigate power failures and the governor will work with lawmakers to pass laws in the next legislative session to improve power reliability, Abbott said. Last week, Patrick said the legislature would investigate CenterPoint, citing similar concerns, The Center Square reported.
“But we are still in hurricane season right now and solutions cannot wait until the next session,” Abbott continued. “They are needed now to minimize power disruptions as we respond to tropical weather for the remainder of the summer and this fall to help avoid more power outages.”
Abbott next listed extensive failures he said must be addressed in the demands he issued.
“CenterPoint admitted that Beryl was a heavy vegetation related storm,” he said, noting that it’s responsible for eliminating the vegetation before a hurricane hits. Some reports show that CenterPoint “spends far less per customer on vegetation removal than some other power providers.” He said it must remove all vegetation by Aug. 31.
Multiple reports show that “CenterPoint appeared to have been caught off guard by the unexpected arrival of Beryl in Houston as well as the magnitude of the devastation that it caused,” he said. “A power company on the Gulf Coast should never be caught off guard. It must remain eternally vigilant. And even then, a Category 1 hurricane should never compromise the power system in the state of Texas.”
While CenterPoint has claimed it brought in thousands of additional line crews and other personnel to speed the recovery process, some reports contend “that many of those workers were slow getting into the field” because of several policies. They include training workers after the hurricane hit, not before, and positioning workers days after the hurricane was gone instead of immediately after it left. Another was “haggling with workers over pay and the list goes on,” he said. “The bottom line is this: regardless of the reason, CenterPoint did not have an adequate number of workers pre staged to immediately address the power outage.”
Abbott also said there are allegations that “CenterPoint was penny pinching and cutting corners in ways that slowed the recovery process. Those allegations must be investigated. We must know if CenterPoint is protecting Texans or was it protecting its own pocketbook.”
“CenterPoint admitted to, among other things,” that it was waiting to replace powerline polls until the end of hurricane season at the end of October instead of immediately, he said, adding that it “must get those poles fixed” before another storm hits.
Abbott ordered CenterPoint to provide his office with the actions it will take to remove all vegetation that threatens any power line, to provide an advance plan for preparation for any tropical storm that enters the Gulf Coast, and specify actions it will take to pre-stage enough linemen and other personnel to immediately respond to any power outages that may occur for any tropical storm that hits their service region by the end of the month.
If CenterPoint does not comply, he said he will demand that the PUC reject its pending “request to recover a profit.” He also said the state may have “to reconsider the territorial region that CenterPoint is managing or … mismanaged. Maybe they have too large of an area for them to be able to manage adequately. It’s time to reevaluate whether or not CenterPoint should have such a large territory.”
