Lansing BWL Back on the Hot Seat

A special meeting today in Lansing to determine what went wrong with the response from the Board of Water and Light to the recent ice storm and what can be done to repay customers for their inconvience..

A special Commissioners meeting will take place tonight at 5:30 at the BWL Headquarters building in REO Town.  It's likely to attract a standing-room-only crowd of angry residents--some of whom were without power for two weeks.

At issue is trying to determine what went wrong--why company communications were so bad when customers tried to call in to report outages and ask for assistance in what to do next.  Peter Lark, the head of the utility, will likely take center stage again to explain why he left on vacation after the storm had hit.  He's been asked to resign, although that is unlikely since he still has the support of Mayor Virg Bernaro and other community leaders.

In addition to trying to figure out where the breakdown in service occured and if Lark's absence was a factor in the poor response and repair time, Commissioners want those affected by the outage to receive a credit on their bill.   They're also asking that a plan be put in place to make sure the Utility is ready to handle massive outages in the future.