The lax enforcement and flaccid regulation of Texas utilities was largely responsible for the deadliness of the 2021 Winter storm blackouts.
Now, as a Category One hurricane has blacked out much of Houston for close to a week, evidence that nothing’s changed in Gov. Abbot’s Texas.
But the enforcement tools that worked to hold companies accountable for the 2011 failures had been removed under Gov. Greg Abbott’s appointees on the utility commission. Hearst Newspapers reported last week that commissioners in November cut ties with the Texas Reliability Entity — the specialists hired — leaving state regulators without an external independent reliability monitor.
Four months before that, the governor’s commissioners had also disbanded the Oversight & Enforcement Division. The head attorney was told he no longer had a job; nine other team members were reassigned throughout the utility commission.
Several pending cases were dropped. According to commission records, by the end of 2020 the number of enforcement cases had fallen 40 percent.
Critics and former employees say the division was cut precisely because it was working — the state’s most recent move in a 25-year campaign to pare down oversight to favor energy companies and their largest customers, starting when Texas began deregulating its electric market in the 1990s.
Whether the wind is from a derecho or Cat 1 hurricane, there’s a limit to how much more resilient you can make a grid with above-ground power lines in a wind storm. Likewise, an ice storm pulls down heavy branches.
During some Houston floods, the “Cajun Navy” has moved in to rescue people. Maybe they’ll come up with a Cajun Chainsaw Brigade to help clear downed trees.