CenterPoint falls short of goals Company hits benchmark for restoring power, but fails in ZIP code projections
By LYNN COOK and BRETT CLANTON Houston Chronicle Sept. 24, 2008, 12:25AM http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6019124.html CenterPoint Energy is now fighting two battles. The first, restoring power to 580,000 customers who remain without electricity 12 days after Hurricane Ike roared across the coast. The second, delivering accurate neighborhood-specific information to residents demanding to know when their homes will rejoin the grid. On the first front, CenterPoint met its broad goal, stated soon after the hurricane, of restoring 50 percent to 75 percent of power in the area by Monday. On the second front, the Houston area's largest power transmission company is falling short. Last week CenterPoint issued a map and timetable projecting that 80 percent of power in 69 ZIP codes would be restored by Monday night. But Tuesday morning the company's Web site showed CenterPoint hit that target in only 25 of those ZIPs. Tuesday afternoon the company issued a new map that appeared to push back restoration to Sunday for a wide swath of Houston. But late Tuesday, company spokesman Floyd LeBlanc said the company was backing off that map and trying to refine it for today. The company also said it was pulling the map off its Web site. "The problem is people are taking our projections, which are the best we can give with the knowledge we have, and taking them as expectations. If we say 80 percent restored, that means 20 percent not restored but everybody assumes they'll be in that 80 percent," LeBlanc said. "What's getting forgotten is that we told people it would take two to three weeks to get everybody back on and that's still true. In fact, it looks like we'll get most people back on Sunday which is the two-week mark." In a regulatory filing Tuesday, CenterPoint said repairing Hurricane Ike's damage could cost up to $500 million. CEO David McClanahan said that would translate to between $1 and $2 per month for the average customer. As of 8 p.m. Tuesday, CenterPoint said 580,000 customers, 26 percent, still were in the dark. Entergy, meanwhile, said Tuesday that it has returned power to 97 percent of its customers, which mostly are in the north and east part of the area, and is releasing 4,000 out-of-state line workers. CenterPoint has added 1,000 of those into its restoration effort bringing its total force of linemen and tree cutters to 12,000 CenterPoint employees and workers here from other states under mutual assistance agreements. The company said it would be unsafe and inefficient to add more. "Bringing in thousands more people to pull limbs off lines wouldn't take hours off the restoration," said Tom Standish, CenterPoint's group president of regional operations, in an interview Tuesday. "If five guys can do the job, you don't need 25 to show up. It's not safe to have multiple crews working on the same line." CenterPoint's continuing struggle to provide accurate projections likely will only frustrate customers already wondering why the recovery is dragging out and whether initial repair estimates were overly optimistic. As to the missed ZIP code targets for Monday, CenterPoint officials said they provided the best initial estimates they could given the data they had. The company says it now is working to repair line fuses the neighborhood lines that serve 100 to 300 customers. Such repairs may restore many customers, but won't help customers with blown transformers or damage to the "drop" lines that connect line fuses to individual customers. LeBlanc said the company has started to tackle transformers but cannot say when crews will begin making repairs to drop lines. George Gray, 74 and disabled, lives off Scott Street in the 77021 ZIP code that was projected to have "substantial restoration" by Monday. As of Tuesday morning only 43 percent of customers had power back, according to CenterPoint. "We've been holding out thinking maybe tomorrow it will be better. But they tell us one thing and then they tell us another. It's getting hot," Gray said, adding his neighbors cannot sleep with windows open because they fear intruders. Official displeasure also mounted. "I'm a little less than satisfied," said Bellaire City Manager Bernie Satterwhite. The 77401 ZIP in that enclave city was projected to get 80 percent of its power back by Monday and fell short. "The problem is when you make a conservative estimate and it changes you need to tell people fast. We lose credibility when we want to get good information out there, assume it's correct and it turns out not to be," Satterwhite said. Standish, when pressed about why CenterPoint had not met Monday's ZIP code goals, said some areas had more damage than originally thought. "Some areas had less and they came on quicker. We hope we didn't mislead anybody, but that was our best estimate at the time. "Those people who have suffered damage on their property at the very end of the line will have to wait to get it picked up," he said. ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu ******************************* * POST TO [EMAIL PROTECTED] * ******************************* Medianews mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
