A few months after repeated severe winter storms and resulting power outages, locals, government officials and the power company are working on one thing — getting ready for the next big one.
The City of Langley is still exploring ways to keep electricity flowing, as well as finding a safe place for people to go if the lights go out.
One idea has been to wire a church in town with emergency power, so it could serve as a temporary shelter during the next outage. City officials now say St. Hubert Catholic Church is the logical place, and buying and installing a generator there may cost approximately $30,000. The costs for supplying emergency power at other Langley churches proved to be significantly more expensive.
Still, City Administrator Walt Blackford said the city plans to meet with the leaders of Langley’s churches this week to discuss how and to what degree the churches can serve as emergency community centers.
“We have to look at feasibility and what we can do,” Blackford said.
The city is also exploring the possibility to buy a second generator to keep city business, and the water treatment plant or city hall supplied with power.
“This has been identified as a high priority,” Blackford said.
While the city already owns a high-output generator, public works employees had to haul the existing generator back and forth from city hall and the water treatment plant during the recent storms.
Currently there is no money for a second generator budgeted.
The city is also conducting interviews to hire an emergency preparedness coordinator. The part-time employee would educate residents about the city’s emergency preparedness efforts, but also to find grants to pay for outage-related projects.
Community is
still dissatisfied
With more than a month gone by since the last widespread power blackout, the talk about readiness for the next big storm has calmed down within the community. It has not passed, however.
Ten South Enders were invited by Puget Sound Energy to discuss power issues late last month.
The group got together at The Inn at Langley and spent two hours discussing power problems on Whidbey.
The meeting was facilitated by Market Decisions Corp., an independent marketing research company hired by PSE. It was the last meeting in a string of such gatherings around the greater Puget Sound, including ones in Woodinville, Bellevue, Olympia and Federal Way.
At the beginning of the evening, seven out of 10 participants said they were somewhat satisfied with PSE’s customer service, but power outage stories shared throughout the evening brought back fading memories of spoiled food, cold feet and lost business.
At the end, only one participant remained satisfied, said Langley resident Rhonda Salerno.
Salerno said she had done her homework, and had also brought printouts of online blog discussions, e-mails from friends and other research.
“I wrote and wrote and wrote. He (the facilitator) knew I was representing more than just me,” she said.
Salerno hails from a remote town in Alaska and said she personally didn’t struggle during the outages because she has a propane stove. Even so, electric service should be reliable.
“In Alaska we never had outages like that. There was back-up everywhere,” she recalled. “They consider it a priority.”
During the focus group meeting, some said the technology on the island could be updated. Some said alternative sources of energy are needed, as well as underground power lines and Whidbey Island-based PSE crews.
Since the meeting Salerno has contacted the committee handling energy issues for Langley’s growth plan, and initiated more talks with residents. Her goal is create a “think tank” to tackle the problem. Salerno said she also hopes the city’s emergency coordinator will support the community efforts.
PSE tallies up storm damages
Meanwhile, PSE has released estimates of how much the storms have cost the company.
The fierce windstorm on Dec. 14-15 that knocked out electric service to more than 1 million Washington homes and businesses caused at least $72 million worth of damage to the PSE electric system, according to a preliminary damage estimate.
“The December storm was, without question, the most expensive and damaging in our utility’s history,” said Sue McLain, senior vice president of operations. “A final tally of the storm’s damage will likely go even higher with the rebuilding of two remaining damaged transmission lines as well as other permanent repairs.” .
Once final repairs are complete, PSE will have installed approximately 700 new power poles, 600 new transformers, and 200 miles of new power lines — much more than PSE usually installs. It’s enough wire to link Bellevue to Portland, McLain said.
PSE customers won’t pay all at once for the repairs.
State regulations on utilities are designed to spread storm costs out over a number of years to minimize the impact on customers. PSE will defer the recovery of the December storm costs for consideration in a future rate case, she said.
The severe winds knocked out electric service to 70 percent of PSE’s electric customers — more than 700,000 homes and businesses in all.
PSE has promised to complete a comprehensive independent review of the storm. PSE has issued a request for proposals from outside experts in disaster planning and response to help the company with its review and identify areas for improvement.
Some areas on the company’s radar are:
• Customer communications;
• Tree trimming;
• Burying power lines.
Blackford said the city met with PSE representatives about two months ago and PSE vowed to keep the city informed of any service changes or new plans. So far, the city hasn’t heard back.
