Las Crucens Left In The Dark Over Lack Of Communication With El Paso Electric

The lights may be back on, but Las Cruces residents are still in the dark over exactly what happened during last week’s rolling outages.

El Paso Electric CEO, David Stevens, was the first to admit before Las Cruces City Council Monday, the company left residents in the dark when it came to communication.

“What I do think we should communicate better is when we are going to have blackouts so one, they know when they are subject to a blackout and two, about how much time they can expect that blackout to last,” Stevens said.

Stevens said, El Paso Electric failed to pass along this key information to Las Crucens during the winter freeze.

Some City Councillors said, they were disappointed by the company’s lack of effort in getting the word out to residents.

Stevens said, El Paso Electric tried to do the best they could informing the public, but said, they did not even know exactly what to expect, not to mention resources were spread extremely thin between operating the plant and keeping the public up-to-date with what was happening.

But, Stevens said, while there is a great deal of reevaluation ahead, residents may not be in the clear just yet. A cold snap is expected again this week, and Stevens said, it takes more than a few days to make significant changes to the plant’s generation system.

“Unfortunately, I don’t want to give you a false impression that we’re going to solve the problem in a week or two,” Stevens said. “So what I’m going to say is, we’ll try to communicate much better, we are going to do as much as we can up front, but there are no guarantees.”

Stevens said all borderland residents should be prepared for the possibility of more rolling outages if temperatures dramatically drop later this week.

ABC-7 will have more information as it becomes available.