Following last December’s ice storm, Ninnescah Rural Electric Cooperative needs to rebuild 424 miles of power lines at an estimated cost of $24 million. The cooperative, along with 25 other Kansas utilities, is locked in a dispute with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which effectively “puts the brakes” on the work they need to do, according to General Manager Carla Bickel.
“Each of the utilities have line sections that are so badly damaged that the engineers have concluded the conductor needs to be replaced, but FEMA disputes the extent of the damage,” said Stuart Lowry of Kansas Electric Cooperatives, Inc. “FEMA has proposed additional inspections by the utilities to identify visual evidence of damage.”
Lowry speculated that the additional inspection, requiring an inch-by-inch examination from a bucket truck could take months or even a year.
Meetings held with municipal and cooperative electric utilities and FEMA during the last month have failed to resolve differences and written appeal to the FEMA regional office is a likely next step.
Licensed professional engineers made a damage assessment of Ninnescah’s lines within two weeks of the storm, while repair work was ongoing, and determined that more permanent work was needed after power was restored in the six-county area the cooperative serves. The usual procedure was followed in regards to FEMA reimbursement to put lines back into pre-disaster condition, Bickel said, but with different results this time.
Lines that have been stretched by the heavy ice load and breaks that were spliced together are likely to fail at some point — within months or a year, never at a good time, Bickel said. More than the usual number of short-term outages have been occurring since the storm.
“Obviously we will take care of our system, but we can’t do it in as quick a fashion without the FEMA assistance,” she said.
Private contractors were wrapping up damage from an ice storm in 2005 and a tornado in May 2007 when the most recent ice storm hit. Had FEMA assistance been available then, as it had been following the earlier disasters, rebuilding could have begun last spring, Bickel said.
Under federal law, electric cooperatives and municipal utilities may receive reimbursement for the costs required to restore damaged electrical systems to pre-disaster condition. The State of Kansas estimated the damage from the storm to be approximately $340 million, according to KEC, Inc. Thus far, FEMA has agreed to pay expenses of about $50 million related to the initial storm restoration effort.
Construction projects need to be undertaken now, prior to the next winter season, yet FEMA funding has not been approved and FEMA has informed utilities that any repairs they undertake on their own will not be eligible for reimbursement.
The City of Pratt has also been involved in meetings between utility companies and FEMA representatives, according to City Manager Dave Howard, who said, “we’re probably one of the smallest entities involved.”
He cited the difficulty in determining damage directly due to the storm and that which resulted because a line was simply old and worn out and said the meetings and probable appeal are “part of the process of coming to agreement.”
Pratt, Kan. —
