Anger over huge power bills in 'preventable' Texas weather crisis

Millions of Texans were still without safe water on Sunday as officials fielded angry complaints over shockingly large power bills spawned by a cold weather crisis that Houston's mayor said was ultimately preventable.

The frigid air mass that paralyzed parts of the southern and central United States early in the week claimed more than 70 lives, left millions temporarily without power and froze water lines.

"All of what happened this week was foreseeable and preventable," Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner told CBS's "Face the Nation," saying it had long been clear that the independent electric grid in Texas was vulnerable to extreme weather.

Turner said Houston, the fourth-largest US city, still needed both plumbing supplies and plumbers, but was making progress in restoring service.

Both Houston and nearby Galveston on Sunday lifted orders for residents to boil drinking water.

But some 28,000 households remained without electricity on Sunday, the poweroutage.us website said, and many Texans were suffering an added insult: residential electric bills sometimes running into the thousands of dollars, with one as high as $16,000.

While most of the state's utility customers are on fixed-rate plans, some had signed up to variable-rate plans that can save money in fair weather but produce explosive increases in frigid temperatures.

Governor Greg Abbott met with legislators of both parties Saturday to discuss the billing problem and said, "We have a responsibility to protect Texans from spikes in their energy bills."

For his part, Turner said "those exorbitant costs (should be) borne by the state of Texas, and not the individual consumers who did not cause this catastrophe."

President Joe Biden on Saturday issued a major-disaster declaration for much of the state, providing badly needed financial and administrative aid.

His spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Sunday that Biden hoped to visit Texas "as early as this week" if he could do so without interfering with recovery efforts.

Michael McCaul, a Republican congressman from Texas, said the financial impact of the weather crisis could equal that of Hurricane Harvey, a devastating 2017 storm that caused an estimated $125 billion in damages.

He said Biden's emergency declaration could provide funds to help users pay their exorbitant electric bills.

State and local officials have demanded investigations of how the power crisis unfolded so disastrously.

A US senator, Tina Smith, a Democrat of Minnesota, has called for a federal investigation. She said spot prices of natural gas had spiked by up to 100 times normal rates, and utilities passed the higher rates on to customers.

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How the Texas electricity system produced low-cost power but left residents out in the cold
Gainesville FL (The Conversation) Feb 19, 2021
Americans often take electricity for granted - until the lights go out. The recent cold wave and storm in Texas have placed considerable focus on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, the nonprofit corporation that manages the flow of electricity to more than 26 million Texans. Together, ERCOT and similar organizations manage about 60% of the U.S. power supply. From my research on the structure of the U.S. electricity industry, I know that rules set by entities like ERCOT have major ... read more