The panel that oversees the Lansing Board of Water and Light this evening will review the findings of a "top-to-bottom" internal probe of the utility’s response to a devastating December ice storm.
The Dec. 22 ice storm knocked out electricity to more than 35,000 BWL customers. It took the utility more than a week to get the lights back on.
Customers complain the utility was slow to respond to the outage, and even slower to respond to their telephone calls.
Utility officials have defended their handling of the power outage by pointing to the fact that other utilities took as long to get all their customers back online.
Lansing’s mayor has appointed his own panel to investigate BWL’s response. The Michigan Public Service Commission is also looking at how Consumers Energy and DTE responded.
Statewide, the ice storm knocked out power to more than 600,000 utility customers.
About 390,000 CMS customers lost power in the storm. DTE had to restore power to 210,000 customers after the late December ice storm.
