County wants more investment from Hydro One
Power flickers continue across several local municipalities and Essex County council wants something done about it.
Essex Mayor Sherry Bondy brought forth a motion at the Oct. 7 meeting of county council that urges Hydro One to accelerate and prioritize localized investment.
“It’s not just Essex. It’s Harrow, Amherstburg and Kingsville and the scope is growing and growing,” said Bondy. “I think Hydro One needs to step up and take more accountability.”
In her motion, which was seconded by Lakeshore Mayor Tracey Bailey, Bondy said that there continues to be a severe, disruptive and frequent pattern of brief power interruptions, voltage sags and flickers.
“Residents have lost faith in some of our utilities and it’s mainly Hydro One,” said Bondy.
Both Amherstburg Mayor Michael Prue and Deputy Mayor Chris Gibb echoed Bondy’s concerns.
“It’s past the point of inconvenience. It’s costing people money when appliances fail and businesses lose productivity when it takes time for their point-of-sale equipment to come back up,” said Gibb.
Gibb noted that Hydro One’s municipal relations department did make a presentation to Amherstburg town council, as it did in Essex, but Gibb urged residents who are experiencing flickers and outages to contact their MPP, Anthony Leardi directly.
“It’s time we band together and do something. In Amherstburg we are at the end of our rope, and we’ve taken this as far as we can,” commented Gibb.
Prue explained that as he has been campaigning for the upcoming municipal election, residents are asking him why there are so many service disruptions and he said that it is important to know that it is not a municipal issue but rather, a provincial one as Hydro One is regulated by the province.
“We have to be able to say, with some certainty, that the majority of flickers are caused by Hydro One and here is (Premier) Doug Ford’s number,” said Prue.
Prue said that while Hydro One did make a presentation to Amherstburg council, they could not answer why there are flickers and what future investment is in the works.
“We’ve heard nothing from them.”
Prue is a board member of Essex Power and he said that that utility is making investments and monitoring flickers but Hydro One has not.
Lakeshore Mayor Tracey Bailey said Hydro One is bringing new lines into the Comber and Woodslee areas as well as transfer stations.
“They might be bringing in new lines, but what are they doing with the aging infrastructure that is here?”asked Bondy during her motion.
County wants more investment from Hydro One
By Fred Groves
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