Millions in Texas lose water, power
COLD CRISIS: IT WAS PREVENTABLE – HOUSTON MAYOR
Frigid air mass kills about 70 people and freezes utility delivery lines.
Millions of Texans were still without safe water on Sunday as officials fielded angry complaints over shockingly large power bills spawned by a cold weather crisis that Houston’s mayor said was ultimately preventable.
The frigid air mass that paralysed parts of the southern and central US early in the week claimed more than 70 lives and left millions temporarily without power and froze water lines.
“All of what happened this week was foreseeable and preventable,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner told CBS, saying it had long been clear the independent electric grid in Texas was vulnerable to extreme weather.
Turner said Houston, the fourth-largest US city, was making progress in restoring service.
Both Houston and nearby Galveston on Sunday lifted orders for residents to boil drinking water.
But about 28 000 households remained without electricity on Sunday, the poweroutage.us website said and many Texans were suffering an added insult: residential electric bills sometimes running into the thousands of dollars, with one as high as $16 000 (about R237 500).
While most of the state’s utility customers are on fixed-rate plans, some had signed up to variable-rate plans that can save money in fair weather but produce explosive increases in frigid temperatures.
Governor Greg Abbott met legislators of both parties on Saturday to discuss the billing problem and said: “We have a responsibility to protect Texans from spikes in their energy bills.”
For his part, Turner said “those exorbitant costs [should be] borne by the state of Texas and not the individual consumers who did not cause this catastrophe.” President Joe Biden on Saturday issued a major disaster declaration for much of the state, providing badly needed financial and administrative aid. His spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said Biden hoped to visit Texas “as early as this week” if he could do so without interfering with recovery efforts.
Michael McCaul, a Republican congressman from Texas, said the financial impact of the crisis could equal that of hurricane Harvey, a devastating 2017 storm that caused $125 billion in damages.
He said Biden’s emergency declaration could provide funds to help users pay their exorbitant electric bills. State and local officials have demanded investigations of how the power crisis unfolded so disastrously.
US senator Tina Smith, a Democrat of Minnesota, has called for a federal investigation.
She said spot prices of natural gas had spiked by up to 100 times normal rates and utilities passed the higher rates on to customers.