Despite extra federal funding, many of Tennessee’s power providers are still cutting off service to families who can’t pay during the coronavirus pandemic.
High-voltage power lines in Memphis, Tennessee. Toni worked for the Tennessee Valley Authority before being furloughed. Now she may lose electricity at home.
Last week, she called the Dayton Electric Department, the municipal power distributor in her small town in central Tennessee, to let them know she’d be late on her bill. The response was unsparing, she told HuffPost on Friday evening. If her unemployment check doesn’t come Saturday and she can’t muster the cash, the cost of getting the power back on will go up more. With the $65 reconnection fee, the total bill will come to $327.
In the Southeast, particularly in Tennessee, the electrical system dates back to the early 20th century, when the New Deal funded vast public power projects to electrify a poor region that private utilities, unable to turn a profit, simply left in the dark. In an ironic historical twist, that system now leaves millions at the mercy of small-town nickel-and-dimers.
“The strength of public power is a passionate commitment to serve people over balance sheets,” Jeff Lyash, the TVA’s chief executive, said in aWhere there’s a scattered response, you see some utilities implementing these policies and others telling customers and members they can’t make exceptions in hard times or it’d encourage some to abuse the system.
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