Abbott said he met with CenterPoint executives for over two hours Aug. 1 and ordered them to complete the bulk of their proposal by the end of the month. The governor directed the utility company to overhaul its policies July 14 and threatened executive action if they did not make changes.
“Their proposal was inadequate,” Abbott wrote on social media Aug. 1. “More must be done, and it must be completed faster.”
What you need to know
CenterPoint will clear tree branches and other vegetation from 2,000 miles of “higher risk” power lines by Aug. 31, according to the proposal. The company originally planned to complete this project by the end of the year.
Since the storm, CenterPoint has nearly doubled its vegetation management crews to about 1,000 workers. CenterPoint will also use “damage modeling” to more efficiently dispatch vegetation workers after future storms, according to the plan.
The company is expected to replace about 1,000 utility poles by the end of August, which was also originally scheduled for the end of the year.
The plan says CenterPoint will meet with emergency management officials and representatives of local critical care facilities, such as hospitals and nursing homes, about their emergency preparedness plans by Aug. 9.
Abbott’s meeting with CenterPoint follows a tense week of legislative hearings over the utility’s response to Hurricane Beryl. Members of a special Texas Senate committee grilled CenterPoint CEO Jason Wells for hours July 29, and House lawmakers from the Greater Houston area shared how the days long power outages affected their communities July 31.
The Public Utility Commission of Texas is also investigating how CenterPoint handled the storm and its aftermath, and will release a report by Dec. 1.
More details
Abbott also directed CenterPoint to improve its communication with Houston-area residents after Hurricane Beryl. The utility has held five “community listening sessions” to get customer feedback since July 17 and will hold large open houses in each of the counties it serves before Sept. 30.
CenterPoint also launched a new power outage tracker Aug. 1 after its previous outage map could not withstand high web traffic following the storm. Company executives said they would provide all customers with estimated power restoration times within 24 hours after a storm leaves the area, and estimates will be updated daily.
Daily briefings will be held before, during and after a named storm hits the Gulf Coast area, CenterPoint said.
The utility company hired PA Consulting to conduct an after-action review of Hurricane Beryl, according to the proposal. CenterPoint is expected to share the consulting firm’s report with the governor’s office by Oct. 31.
Quote of note
“You have my commitment that our leadership team will work urgently and take every possible action to re-earn your trust, and that of the millions of people in the Greater Houston area who depend on us,” Wells wrote in the proposal to Abbott. “Our company and the thousands of men and women of CenterPoint will remain tireless in our efforts to strengthen our system and serve the community we love and are proud to call home.”
One more thing
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick urged the PUC to “claw back” $800 million from CenterPoint in an Aug. 2 letter. CenterPoint used the money to lease large generators after Winter Storm Uri in 2021—but the generators were not used during Hurricane Beryl, Wells admitted to lawmakers July 29.
Patrick, who served as acting governor while Abbott was out of the country during Hurricane Beryl, said he was “committed to fighting on behalf [of] ratepayers to ensure they do not pay for CenterPoint’s mismanagement.”
