HOUSTON — The Public Utility Commission of Texas, which oversees CenterPoint, is investigating the power company’s response to and preparation for Hurricane Beryl.
PUC Chairman Thomas Gleeson made that announcement during a news conference on Monday with Gov. Greg Abbott, Houston Mayor John Whitmire and Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd.
You can watch the entire news conference in the video window above.
“I think it’s clear from the events of the last week that the quality of their infrastructure, their ability to maintain their infrastructure and their ability to communicate with their customers has been called into question,” Gleeson said.
Gleason said there are things CenterPoint can do now, but also said that there are long-term solutions that will have to be addressed by state lawmakers in their legislative session.
He said the PUC will come back with recommendations by December, in time for the next legislative session.
During Monday's news conference, Abbott again mentioned the July 31 deadline he set for CenterPoint to get him actions they'll take to improve their response to a situation like the one with Beryl.
Abbott said he understands that CenterPoint's focus right now is to complete the restorations, but said they also need to be considering how they'll reshape their processes.
“They’re making a huge mistake if at this very same time they’re not preparing answers to the questions I laid out yesterday with the expectation that if they don’t get that information to me, I will be prepared to swiftly issue an executive order establishing the guidelines that I think are most important to ensure there will not be another disaster caused by lack of power in this region,” Abbott said.
As for those action items from CenterPoint, Abbott said on Sunday the company needs to explain what they will do to remove vegetation that could lead to additional power outages. Abbott also said that CenterPoint needs to tell his office what they’ll do in the coming months to ensure we won’t have the outages we saw in Beryl. And third – Abbott said CenterPoint must outline what they’ll do to make sure there will be an adequate number of line workers ready to immediately respond to widespread outages.