Again we have been lucky to have a cool Spring. As hot weather arrives, though, it’s time for another reminder that our Council unnecessarily placed our electric service at risk when it voted to “pause” the transmission line planned for the Southwest, with no alternate plan in place.

Now yet another consultant has confirmed that yes, the Perche Creek substation is overloaded. In a presentation sent to the Integrated Electric Resource and Management Plan Task Force, the engineering firm assisting the task force (Siemens) confirms that the substation has exceeded its firm capacity (in fact is currently operating at 150% of firm capacity at peak temperatures) and that its associated feeders are overextended.

As we have pointed out before, this puts us at risk for serious outages. A failure at Perche Creek would affect everyone in Columbia. Note that both the McBaine Water Treatment Plant and the Gillespie Bridge Sewer Treatment Plant are served by the Perche Creek substation. Due to the failure to build the transmission line, these facilities are not backed up the way Water & Light had planned or would like to them to be.

The pandemic has given us ample illustration of the fact that when those in leadership positions ignore or deny latent but serious risks, the potential harm to citizens increases. When the line was paused it was on-time, on-budget, and fully funded. During the last five years, we have paid millions in increased rates (which were approved but not “paused” by the Council) without getting the promised return.

It is unlikely that at this point we will be able to fix our electric infrastructure without paying out millions more. We should, however, be able to get a full accounting of what the Council’s “pause” has cost us, put in the infrastructure needed to ensure the reliability of key services, and adopt procedures to ensure that the Council cannot in the future so easily and heedlessly derail key projects that the public has already approved and paid for.