Texas power company files for bankruptcy after big storm

The oldest and largest electricity cooperative in Texas has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following the devastating winter storm that wreaked havoc on the state in February.

Brazos Electric Power Cooperative filed its bankruptcy petition after racking up bills owed to the state’s grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, in connection with the outages.

Power companies that went down during the winter storm Feb. 13-19 were required to pay for replacement power sources at what Brazos described as “excessively high” rates.

The Waco, Texas-based Brazos said it was presented with a bill for more than $2.1 billion for seven days of what it called a “black swan winter event.” It refused to pay, saying the winter storm legally eliminated its requirement to do so.

The cooperative, which serves more than 1.5 million Texans, said it filed the bankruptcy case “to maintain the stability and integrity of its entire electric cooperative system.”

When February began, the idea that Brazos would end up in bankruptcy at the month’s conclusion was “unfathomable,” Brazos general manager and executive vice president Clifton Karnei said in a court filing.

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Texas electrical grid.

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It appears as though today every subject needs to be framed in terms of race and class. Friday’s “Vaccination rates unequal in state” is no exception.

Selective statistics are manipulated to attempt to paint a discrimination picture that may or may not actually exist.

Statistics for the total percentage of Latino’s getting shots appears to be a substitute for the percentage of Latino’s over 65. Is that a fair or accurate representation?

The percentage of shots going to various races does not total 100%. Ten percent of the shots went to unknown people and the total only adds up to approximately 75 percent. Non-Hispanic white people got 49% of the shots compared to their 54% of the population.

What percentage of each race comprises health care workers, policemen, firemen and teachers. They were given priority for the vaccination. What is the race breakdown of those recipients?

Do the census numbers and the United Health Foundation numbers and the Burden Report numbers come from the same time frame and are they estimates based upon the same sample?

Ethnicity is unknown for 36% of the people. Are poverty and health issues a proxy for vaccine distribution?

To compare a Gila Bend ZIP code with a Scottsdale ZIP code without any other demographic or statistical information is just plain silly.

Can we do a better job of vaccination? Absolutely. Are there inequities in life? Absolutely. Should we strive to treat all people equally? Absolutely.

If we worked as hard on solutions as we work on placing blame perhaps we would have more success.

Ollie Byrne, Scottsdale