HSUD Challenges brought to light
Mississippi House members held a field hearing Friday, July 21, at The Apothecary in Holly Springs to discuss recent challenges for the Holly Springs Utility Department. State Rep. Chris Brown, Rep. John Faulkner, Rep. Bill Kinkade, Rep. John Lancaster, State Senator Neil Whaley, and U.S. Representative Trent Kelly, a bipartisan team, came to ask HSUD team members, in an open meeting, what is causing this problem. The answers not only surprised the audience but panel was surprised too.
Michael Howell, assistant electric superintendent at HSUD, who has been with the company since 1981, named many reasons why the system is not working as it should.
He told the panel how they don’t have experienced people or equipment; and he said new services are put back on the back burner until they can get to it.
Rep. Brown asked Howell how many linemen HSUD has working.
“We have 5-6 linemen now,” Howell said. The audience gasps.
HSUD serves parts of Marshall, Benton, Lafayette, Hardeman, and Fayette counties in Mississippi and Tennessee with their services. They serve more than 11,400 customers and maintain more than 1,700 miles of transmission line. I was floored and wondered how in the world they were able to take care of the service area.
Howell said the rural ROWs are bad. He went on to say that “It’s collapsing now!” He went on to say that it can be fixed. “We can fix it by doing something,” Howell told the panel.
Rep. Faulkner spoke up and said in 2019, HSUD had a $3.6 million contract to take care of the ROWs for 60 months, and it was broken (in 2021) by the current administration. “Can that contribute to where we are today?” he asked.
Howell said if you lose one contractor, you should have one right away.
I moved to Holly Springs over a year ago, and the long outages in their service area have become a problem for those that pay for reliable electricity. I remember the first week or two at the office, and the electricity would surge and blink on and off. Everyone in the office would yell, “Save Your Work!” I was surprised when it first happened, but it has become routine at the office. Of course, I did start my job at the newspaper after a very bad storm had come through the area, taking out large trees and damaging lines, but today some people in the HSUD service area are still dealing with these types of problems.
Some areas are not as bad as others, and we all understand it takes time to get the utilities back on depending on the size area that was hit. But the outages continue after the storm.
The Holly Springs Utility Department’s challenges have affected many people in the surrounding counties. I hope and pray that something can be resolved and people will have reliable service.
Monday, July 31, from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m., another meeting will be held for the public to come and comment. Rep. John Faulkner and Rep. Chris Brown will be there to hear what life has been like for the people in the HSUD service area.