Gov. Gregg Abbot of Texas has given Houston’s biggest utility company until Friday to turn on the power for people who still don’t have it, almost a week after hurricane Beryl hit Southeast Texas and caused flooding and damage to trees and power lines with straight-line winds.
At a news conference on Sunday, Abbot said he might issue an executive order telling CenterPoint it needs to make its equipment more reliable and better prepared for storms after Beryl.
According to Abbot, CenterPoint has until July 31 to come up with a plan to make things better. If they don’t, he will “impose my requirements on CenterPoint that are geared to keep power on through hurricane season until the next legislative session,” he said at the news conference.
Around the Houston suburbs, 2.2 million people were without power at its worst. CenterPoint promised that most of its users would have their power back on by the weekend.
Abbott’s action adds to CenterPoint customers’ complaints that they don’t think enough is being done to get power back on for people in the areas of the fourth most populous city in the country. The utility company made a service repair map to help people guess when power might be restored, but people who were already dealing with the unbearable Houston summer heat and humidity didn’t like it.
CenterPoint’s lack of progress was criticized by Abbott as “completely unacceptable.” He also said that the company “repeatedly failed to deliver power to customers for extended periods.” Abbott said that he will ask the Texas Public Utilities Commission to look into how CenterPoint handled the large-scale power blackouts. He also said that the problem needs to be fixed right away and that people should know that this won’t happen all the time this time of year.
“I will work with legislators to craft laws to improve power reliability, but, and here’s the important part, we are still in hurricane season right now, and solutions cannot wait until the next session,” he said. “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 during the remainder of hurricane season.”
“Also, if CenterPoint does not comply, I will demand that the Public Utilities Commission reject CenterPoint’s request to recover a profit and pending request before the Public Utilities Commission,” he said.
Abbot said that Centerpoint needs to do a better job of cutting down trees and other plants that are close to power lines. These are often the cause of power outages when strong straight-line winds blow the trees into the lines.
Abbot also said that CenterPoint should have trained workers before the storm instead of during it, so they would have been ready to handle the outages.
“Maybe they have too large of an area for them to be able to manage adequately,” he said. “It’s time to reevaluate whether or not CenterPoint should have such a large territory.”