Essex County Council is urging Hydro One to accelerate infrastructure investments aimed at addressing recurring power flickers and outages across the region. Council approved a notice of motion Wednesday night calling on the utility to prioritize upgrades to transmission infrastructure in Essex County to improve electrical grid reliability. The motion, introduced by Essex Mayor Sherry Bondy, says residents, farmers and businesses in several municipalities continue to experience frequent power interruptions that have resulted in disruptions, equipment damage and appliance failures. While acknowledging Hydro One’s planned transmission investments in Southwestern Ontario, council said ongoing disruptions continue to affect residents’ quality of life and the day-to-day operations of local businesses. Bondy said the utility needs to be more accountable to Essex County residents. “It’s not just Harrow, it’s not just Essex,” Bondy said. “It’s Harrow, Essex, Amherstburg, Kingsville, and the scope is growing and growing and growing. So, it’s to the point where I think Hydro One needs to step up and take more accountability because it really is disruptive.” Amherstburg Deputy Mayor Chris Gibb said the issue has become more than a nuisance for residents and businesses. “It’s not just inconvenient, it’s past the point of inconvenience,” Gibb said. “It’s gotten to costing people money in appliances that fail, businesses lose productivity when it takes 20 minutes, 30 minutes for their point-of-sale systems to come back up.” Amherstburg Mayor Michael Prue said he was dissatisfied with a recent presentation from Hydro One to council. “They could not answer basic questions, they could not answer where they were spending money, they could not answer why the flickers are so constant in our municipality, and we have heard nothing from them since,” Prue said. As part of the motion, the county will send the resolution to Ontario’s energy minister, local MPPs, the Ontario Energy Board and all lower-tier municipalities, calling for a coordinated response to improve power reliability. Council members also encouraged residents to contact their local MPPs when power flickers occur, noting that Hydro One is provincially regulated. Hydro One operates major transmission lines and transformer stations throughout the region, including a transmission line connecting Chatham and Lakeshore. The utility supplies electricity to rural areas of several municipalities and shares service territories with local providers such as Essex Powerlines in Amherstburg and parts of the Town of Essex.
