Good news has arrived â maybe â for Texans who shivered earlier this year during the killer freeze that paralyzed the state in February.
The lights âwill stay onâ this winter, says the head of the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the guy who runs the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the outfit that manages the stateâs electrical grid.
Oh, man. They had better be right.
PUC chairman Peter Lake and ERCOT interim CEO Brad Jones have given assurances that the power grid wonât overload and break down as it did in mid-February, sending millions of Texans into the deep freeze, some of them for several weeks. Whatâs more, the grid failure resulted in the loss of water delivery for many thousands of Texans; that crisis lasted for weeks in many communities.
The Legislature convened a special session to fix the problem and Gov. Greg Abbott assures us that itâs fixed. And we believe this politician, right? Not necessarily.
One of the pols who wants to defeat him, Democratic candidate Beto OâRourke, says the natural gas lines havenât yet been fully winterized, that they need more attention. Iâm not going to buy into OâRourkeâs criticism fully, either.
Still, with winter just a few days away from when the calendar tells us itâs here, I am going to follow the time-honored advice handed down by my parents: hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
Which is my way of saying I donât trust the folks who are supposed to deliver the goods on the product for which I pay good money!