My thoughts on the Ice Storm/Power Outage and BWL Rep.

Sam SIngh December 31, 2013 at 9:00am Now that the immediate crisis of people without power is coming to a close, I wanted to share some of my thoughts, concerns and questions that I will be asking regarding the response by public and private utilities during the recent ice storm and power outage in mid-Michigan. There should be a review of the responses by the Board of Water and Light, Consumers Energy and DTE in our area. Other utilities should be reviewed for other parts of the state. Yesterdays Lansing City Council Public Hearing regarding the response of the Board of Water and Light provided some answers but opened up some questions about capacity, emergency preparedness and long-term planning. The public hearing along with an earlier press conference has brought significant concerns to light regarding the Board of Water and Lights response to the crisis. Here are a few of my thoughts that deal with BWL. Public Hearings and a Formal Independent Review 1. The Lansing City Council should be the first public hearing of many. There should be public hearings in other communities of the BWL service area like East Lansing and Delta Township. 2. Since BWL is not regulated by the Public Service Commission, an outside entity should provide an independent assessment of the capacity of BWL and an analysis of how it conducted this recent response to the power outage crisis. The independent review should benchmark BWL against industry standards and compare them to public and private utilities in the state. 3. On the state level, there should legislative hearings to review the response of utilities and review any needed legislation to improve capacity and response in the future. Board of Water andLight Management and Governance There are a series of questions that have been brought up by the community and local leaders that need to be answered and documented. Though some have been answered in certain media reports or some during the first City Council hearing, these questions and responses and others from the community need to be catalogued and available on-line for the community to understand and review. BWL Preventative Measures What policies and practices does the BWL have in place to prevent a crisis of this nature from occurring? For the size of utility and geographical size of the service area what are the industry benchmarks for appropriate staff resources dedicated to tree trimming activities throughout the year? What level is BWL staffing and deploying resources for tree trimming services throughout the year?

Should we have a more aggressive standard regarding how close we cut trees and vegetation to proximity to wires? What are industry standards? There is a report that cutbacks in municipal forestry services has resulted in more downed wires during this storm. Are these reports accurate? What are the roles of local communities in working with BWL to either physically cut trees/vegetation or flag trouble areas? BWL Response to the Storm Staffing Levels There has been much discussion regarding how many crews were on duty during the crisis and could there have been more brought in from other utilities in thestate and region to help. An analysis ofthe staffing and when new crews were brought in from other utilities to respond to the crisis should be examined. A few of the questions to be part of that analysis: What is the industry standard or best practice for staffing the geographic size of a utility of BWLs size? Reports that other utilities brought in hundreds or thousands of other workers from other across the state and surrounding states. How did BWL assess how many crews it needed and who to ask to send support? Do other utilities like Consumers Energy and DTE require that one employee be part of every crew for crews brought in during emergencies? Technology Reports have suggested that BWL couldnt provide some communication pieces like outage maps because their technology and upgrades to the smart grid have not been completed. What is the BWL technology plan and timelines for smart grid improvements? How does that compare to other utilities in the state? What are industry standards and best practices and where a utility should be regarding smart grid improvements? Communications There has been much written and many people who very eloquently and passionately spoke about the poor communication from BWL and how that impacted them during the prolonged outage. BWL management has agreed that their response was lacking. So the big question is where do we go from here?

There should be an analysis of each type of communication vehicle that was utilized by BWL during the outage by quantity and effectiveness on each day of the crisis. Benchmark the BWL response to how other utilities like Consumers Energy and DTE responded to the crisis. What are the best practices on how utilities communicate to municipal partners, hospitals, nonprofits, media and customers during prolonged outages? How does BWL compare to those best practices? Peter Lark acknowledged a lack of an emergency crisis communication plan. What is the timeline to develop one and how will BWL engage different stakeholders? What is BWL social media plan and how was it staffed and implemented during the crisis? Much anxiety from people was not knowing if BWL knew that their power was out because they couldnt get through to a person or see a map on a website that outlined where outages were. What was the BWL staffing level for hotlines services on each day of the crisis? In the future how will BWL utilize other web-based technology to help customers understand the severity of the problem and what measure are being used to restore power? BWL and the City of Lansing Over the past few years, there has been significant pressure put on BWL to help the City of Lansing meet its budget shortfalls. A thorough independent analysis of these changes should occur and outline the opportunity costs whether staff time, technology upgrades or other investments that could have been made internally to BWL. Other Issues to Consider Once the crisis is over, it is appropriate for the Board of the BWL to conduct a review and make public statements. I will be interested in their thoughts and if they will make any changes. There should be a review from each community on how they conducted their emergency response during the crisis and how they interacted with their corresponding utility. There will be a number of potential legislative items that could be considered in the wake of the crisis. Each item should be reviewed as part of an overall thoughtful strategy. Some of the issues to review: Whether the Public Service Commission should regulate or have some level of oversight on municipal utilities like BWL? Should items that the PSC mandates for private utilities such as outage credits for customers be implemented legislatively?

Provide for geographic representation on the boards of municipal utilities that provide services for other surrounding communities. I will be looking to working with members of the community and BWL to make sure we learn, make changes and adapt from this crisis in the New Year.