It Glowed.

What I heard Tuesday night during the Fairfield City Council meeting was frightening. Beyond frightening.

Our power system has not been adequately maintained and is dangerous to our city workers and the general public. During a recent outage, it was reported the floor at the power plant was over 200 degrees and the fence that surrounds the facility on Northwest 6^th actually glowed with electrical energy.

The engineer advising the city said there are main power cables within the facility that are frayed because they are 40-to-50 years old. He opined it will cot two-to-four million dollars for upgrades and repairs.

Where will that money come? TIF….or a bond issue? In either case our already-too-high electrical bills are going up again. Enough. Time for the city council to start earnest discussions with either Ameren or Wayne White Coop….or both. Time to get out of the power business.

The engineer said the next outage won’t be for two hours….it could be for two days. I told my wife when I got home from the meeting that we needed to plan on taking refuge in our Wayne-White Coop powered cabin south of town…because I can’t survive without power for two days. I use a C-pap. I need my sleep. I have a back-up plan. Maybe you need to think through one.

The bottom line is that our city-owned power grid is highly fragile and outright dangerous. Thank God we have a generator out here on the hill so that our business can continue to serve in the face of a week of no power. Other business won’t come here under these conditions.

The talks need to start now. It's time to consider a new way. 

This won’t work.