Austin Energy’s power outage crisis blamed on city’s environmental policies and property owners

Austin, Texas – Local utilities are now cleaning up the mess that broke Austin’s local power grid.

Jackie Sargent, CEO of Austin Energy, who came to the aid of teams from other cities, was sure of this and made this prediction.

“At this point, due to the forecast for rising temperatures, we expect major restoration work to be completed by Friday evening,” Sargent said.

On Thursday afternoon, Austin Energy monitored the situation and said it was not clear when power would be fully restored.

CONNECTED: Central Texas Weather: Check Power Outages in Your Area

Circuit breaks lit up the night sky during an ice storm as some 265,000 Austin Energy customers lost power.

More tree branches fell during Thursday’s morning thaw, leading to more outages after 113,000 people were initially reconnected.

During the briefing, Sargent was asked why line breaks in trees are a recurring problem for Austin, given that the utility has a tree pruning program. She blamed the city’s environmental policies and property owners.

“Over the past few years, we have increased our budget and focused on tree pruning. We really could use help in this area so that our residents understand the importance of vegetation management, allow our crews to get vegetation management. We can always be better, but under the circumstances, I don’t know what you saw when you drove here this morning, but the amount of weight that has accumulated on the vegetation is probably historically extreme and it has caused significant problems for us.” Sargent said.

Sargent later provided more details on why the devegetation utility program was unable to fix this recurring problem.

“So we have rules that govern our tree, our vegetation management programs, and because we want to keep the beautiful urban canopy that we have here, we are often only allowed to make V-cuts on certain sections of the line. Thus, trees that emphasize and weaken trees. And so in cases like this, it actually exacerbates the potential problem. We will work with our politicians to help us with this, but by certainly helping us to educate the community about the importance of this and the need for this, we would appreciate your help,” said Sargent.

Sargent also blamed the weather forecasts, claiming they knew the ice buildup wouldn’t be all that bad. Austin Energy also defended how they choose the areas to get back online in the first place. Locations are determined by the size of the outage.

Mayor Kirk Watson pointed out during the briefing that there were mistakes in the management of the crisis.

“I also want to admit that, like many of our residents, I was disappointed. I was frustrated by the lack of electricity in our homes, including mine. I feel that it should have been better with the inhabitants of the city. A similar Q&A press conference should have taken place earlier,” Mayor Watson said.

Mayor Watson promised that changes would be made. But this work will begin after this crisis is over.