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Board of Water and Light explains outage

February 19, 2014

The Board of Water and Light cited “technical failures” with their phone system due to high call volumes as the reason for their delayed response to the power outages in December.

This week, the board released a review containing information on the outages, which left hundreds of people in Greater Lansing without power for several days.

The review stated board members are working to improve their operational readiness, customer communications and community engagement, an issue that was addressed by the” East Lansing City Council “:http://www.cityofeastlansing.com/council/during its meeting on Tuesday evening.

For some East Lansing residents, the holiday season was a chilly one. Many residents went without power from Dec. 23 until a few days into the new year.

At the time, East Lansing police were concerned that residents would become victims of robbery because many abandoned their homes until power was restored.

Board of Water and Light general manager Peter Lark said the board was overwhelmed by the scale of the catastrophic ice storm outage.

He said there has not been a comparable loss of service experienced by any other Michigan utility.

East Lansing Mayor Nathan Triplett approved having an East Lansing representative on the governing board for the resolution of the BWL issue.

Triplett said he’s in favor of having a community member on the board because it’s important to have the government reflect the way it serves our community.

“It will give us a seat at the table and a way to ensure that our customers will be considered when they are determining policy,” Triplett said.

Although the Board of Water and Light has taken responsibility for the magnitude of power outages that occurred in the Lansing area and the large amount of angry customers, BWL’s review stated that their efforts in restoration work were “unprecedented.”

Last month, the board hosted a series of discussion forums throughout the Lansing area to hear residents’ thoughts as to how the situation could have been handled better and what forms of action to take in the future.

Triplett said the outage is an issue that touches everyone served by the board, including East Lansing, so it’s only fair for residents to remain involved.

In terms of the board’s attempts to correct their operations and communication issues, Triplett said he thinks there has been important steps taken to correct it — but, he said, their work is nowhere near over.

“I think there’s a lot of additional work that needs to be done to evaluate the BWL response and communications from the ice storm, and make sure that we take corrective steps to ensure that we don’t have the same challenges with winter weather,” Triplett said.

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