Members of the Boulder City Council on Thursday told representatives from Xcel Energy that the utility should reimburse customers for financial losses incurred during the planned power outage earlier this month. The utility cut off power to about 55,000 customers to try to prevent high winds from damaging a powerline and sparking a wildfire.
The April 18 meeting was the first time the entire council was able to question the utility since the power outage, which began on April 6 and lasted nearly three days for some city residents.
Councilmembers used the meeting largely to request future commitments from the utility. In addition to financial compensation for customers, they asked Xcel to provide earlier and more frequent communications during a planned outage, as well as more detailed maps of the outage area.
“We do stand ready to work with you on the next steps and we’d like to hear how we could assist to make sure that all of this works better in the future,” Mayor Aaron Brockett told Xcel officials during the meeting.
The requests are part of growing calls by elected officials seeking accountability for what is widely viewed as the utility’s inadequate communication and coordination ahead of and during the outage.
Power was cut off to many critical facilities, including medical centers, assisted living homes, the homeless shelter in North Boulder and the city’s drinking water and wastewater treatment plants. Businesses were caught off guard. Emails obtained by Boulder Reporting Lab revealed rising confusion among city officials during the outage and a rush to prevent raw sewage from entering Boulder Creek after an unexpected loss of power at both substations serving the wastewater treatment plant. About 35,000 City of Boulder residents lost power in confusing patterns that sometimes saw neighbors with different electricity situations.
The Public Utilities Commission, a three-member board that regulates utilities, is investigating the company’s handling of the planned outage following a request from Gov. Jared Polis.
Local businesses have been particularly vocal in expressing their frustration with Xcel. According to a survey of 96 respondents by the Boulder Chamber, businesses reported approximately $1.3 million in lost revenue, $240,000 in unpaid wages and $125,000 in inventory or product losses.
It remains unclear who will cover these financial losses. In certain cases, private insurance will not cover losses caused by a power outage, according to the chamber. Other business owners are worried about the impacts of filing claims on their premiums and coverage. Hosea Rosenberg, a chef and owner of Blackbelly and Santo, said he has already filed claims due to power outages and flooding in recent years. “I may get dropped by my insurance company. So I clearly can’t risk that. We’re just sucking it up and taking the loss,” he told Boulder Reporting Lab.
“If there ends up being a class action lawsuit, I will certainly be involved,” Rosenberg added.
Paula Johansen, owner of BoCo Life, an apparel and gift shop on the east end of Pearl Street, told councilmembers that she was closed for three days. “I opened in 2019, hit Covid, and I’m still open. So I did not want a three-day shutdown over electricity to be the reason that I lose my business,” she said. “Please keep the small business in mind when asking questions and when making demands.”
In light of such stories, councilmembers urged the utility to compensate customers.
“A lot of people lost a whole lot of money,” Councilmember Tara Winer told Xcel officials during the council meeting. “I’m wondering if, first of all, you would consider helping the small businesses that suffered so much?”
In response, Robert Kenney, president of Xcel’s subsidiary in Colorado, Public Service Company of Colorado, said the company is making a $50,000 donation to Community Food Share, a food bank in Louisville. The food bank reported losing roughly one ton of refrigerated and frozen foods at its warehouse during the outage.
Beyond that, Kenney was noncommittal.
“We’re not ruling anything else out and we’ll give some consideration to other ways in which we can help our communities,” Kenney told councilmembers.
During the meeting, councilmembers also asked why power was cut off to critical facilities, including the city’s wastewater treatment plant, which nearly resulted in untreated sewage entering the creek. They asked about specific protocols that could be put in place to prevent a similar shutdown in the future.
Kenney acknowledged there is an opportunity to improve communications regarding critical facilities. He mentioned that such measures might be included in the company’s updated wildfire mitigation plan. He said the utility took action to avoid a “public safety incident” after being notified of the power outage at the wastewater plant. But he did not provide any firm commitments to prevent future power cutoffs at the facility. Mike Chard, director of Boulder’s Office of Disaster Management, reported that only 10 minutes separated Boulder Creek from wastewater contamination, as city officials urgently requested the utility to re-energize one of the substations powering it.
“I would not necessarily rule out the notion of having backup generation in addition to being fed by two substations,” Kenney said. “I’ve come to understand that there were certain expectations of the wastewater treatment facility based upon those two substations being fed. I would maybe think through whether, and to what extent, such a critical piece of infrastructure should have additional backup generation as well. And so I think that’s a conversation to have. And I think we can have that conversation starting now.”
Councilmemebers also asked the utility about what it is doing to ensure its powerlines do not cause a wildfire in the future. This includes burying powerlines so that high winds do not damage the poles and wires.
Kenney said about 40% of Boulder’s power lines are already underground. He added that burying powerlines costs about three times more than using traditional poles. He also said the utility is considering using stronger poles to be able to withstand the impacts of a swiftly changing climate.
“We know that wildfire risk is rapidly evolving and changing, primarily driven by climate change. The risk today is greater than the risk even a year, two years, three years ago,” Kenney said. “Winds are more intense, conditions are drier, driven by drought, both in the atmosphere and on the ground. And as that risk continues to evolve, so too are the mitigations that we have to apply to mitigate that risk.”
Reporter Tim Drugan contributed reporting to this story.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of Xcel Colorado’s president.
Bouderites seem to forget that we out here in Louisville, Lafayette community lost 1200 homes and displaced hundreds of families, some to never return. At least a fire didn’t roll down the Flatirons and burn Boulder down. We too lost power for 3 days, we too had to dump our freezers but we didn’t have billowing smoke from Boulder because the power was intermittently off.