The West Virginia Public Service Commission has ordered more than a dozen utility companies to reveal how they notify their customers of service interruptions.
The April 8 order comes on the heels of the gas and water outage that affected hundreds of customers last year on Charleston’s West Side. It also comes after the death of a bill that would have forced utility companies to keep customers up to date about outages.
PSC Chairman Charlotte Lane said in an email through a spokesperson that “the gas and water outage last year sparked” her interest in how customers were notified.
Lane also said the order was issued to learn how utility companies notify customers and, if they don’t have any notification protocols, how they plan on notifying customers of potential outages.
“The PSC will work with utilities to achieve the goal of notifying customers of outages,” she said of companies who do not have notification protocols in place.
The order also comes a month after the 2024 legislative session, where Del. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, introduced HB4010 which would have mandated that utility companies notify their customers before, during and after service outages.
“I’m very glad to see the Public Service Commission launch this same query,” Pushkin said. “There was widespread support in House Delegates for House Bill 4010, and it passed unanimously, and that’s because it’s just common sense.”
The bill made it to the Senate Government Organization Committee in late February. Chairman Jack Woodrum, R-Summers, previously said he removed it from the agenda because he felt the bill was too broad.
The one-paragraph bill also stemmed from the gas outage on Charleston’s West Side, where an estimated 1,100 Mountaineer Gas customers were affected by the three-week service outage late last year.
On November 10, 2023, a water line owned by West Virginia American Water Company ruptured causing water to puncture an adjacent Mountaineer Gas pipeline, according to several documents the gas company filed with the PSC.
Some West Side residents said they were not notified of the issue until they called the company about their furnaces not working.
