‘We do not have to live like this.’ Ann Arborites air frustrations over DTE outages

ANN ARBOR, MI — After enduring another days-long power outage, at least the second of the year for many, Ann Arbor residents aired frustrations at an emergency town hall Sunday.

“One thing I’ve discovered in talking to people here is that people from Ann Arbor don’t realize that how often these outages happen is unusual,” said Ann Arbor resident Kieran Hawthorne, who said she grew up in New England and never experienced outages like this until she came to southeast Michigan.

“This does not happen anywhere else,” she said, adding she can count on one hand the number of outages she experienced in 20 years living in New England and can’t recall a time when the power was out there for more than 24 hours.

“We had a hurricane, the power did not go out,” she said. “I think the first step to making a change is recognizing that what’s happening is not OK and it’s not normal.”

About 40 community members gathered in Burns Park for the July 30 event organized by Ann Arbor for Public Power, a grassroots group trying to convince Ann Arbor officials to form a city-owned power utility to replace DTE Energy locally.

No city officials were in attendance and group president Greg Woodring expressed disappointment no City Council members have taken a strong stance in support of the initiative yet. City officials are waiting on results from a feasibility study and Woodring said his group plans to keep lobbying to give them “the bravery to take on an enemy like DTE.”

A handful of people who’ve come to Ann Arbor from other parts of the country and other parts of the world spoke during Sunday’s town hall and shared the sentiment that what’s happening in DTE’s service territory is unusual.

Pierre Saby, who is from France, said he’s visiting Ann Arbor for the summer and experienced his first-ever major power outage after the storm on Wednesday, July 26, left about 167,000 DTE customers without power. He has experienced storms in France, but in more than 20 years there has never had an outage that lasted more than 10 minutes, he said.

“And when I think about it, I found it kind of sad that I have to be here in the U.S., the most powerful country, to live a 48-hours outage,” he said.

Other residents shared personal stories about older family members who’ve faced dangerous and deadly conditions as a result of prolonged outages during extreme weather, including some with medical conditions and some who need to keep medication like insulin refrigerated.

Washtenaw County Commissioner Yousef Rabhi, D-Ann Arbor, said he’s among the many who lost power for days this past week and he agrees public power is the solution.

“We do not have to live like this,” he said, encouraging residents to look at maps tracking outages from storms nationally.

“You can see that oftentimes when there’s these big storms, it’s just Michigan that loses power,” he said. “And when you zoom in on Michigan, it’s just southeast Michigan that loses power. This ain’t normal.”

Nearly 30,000 DTE customers in Washtenaw County lost power after Wednesday’s storm, along with streetlights and traffic signals at busy intersections in neighborhoods left dark. As of Sunday afternoon, DTE’s outage map still showed 1,165 customers without power in the county, and nearly 6,300 across DTE’s service territory. It was down to about 3,000 by Monday morning, July 31.

DTE said two severe weather events, including wind gusts up to 70 miles per hour and heavy rain, caused significant tree damage that led to downed lines and crews have worked to assess damage and restore power as quickly as possible.

“We know how difficult it is to be without power,” the company said in a statement. “That’s why we deployed 3,000 DTE workers, contractors and out-of-state support to restore the more than 160,000 customers who were without power across the region. We restored 95% of customers with 48 hours, after which we focused our crews on the remaining 5% of affected customers with more complex repair issues.”

Areas including Ann Arbor, Livonia and Grosse Pointe were particularly hard hit by weather that, in many cases, caused catastrophic damage requiring more time to repair, DTE said, apologizing to all customers impacted.

Ann Arbor for Public Power believes a municipal utility overseen by a combination of elected and appointed representatives would be more responsive to residents’ concerns than a for-profit company and would make the grid more reliable with less-frequent and shorter outages. The group wants to see better tree trimming around lines and burying lines in some cases, as well as more investments in renewable energy.

Ann Arbor for Public Power successfully lobbied City Council last September to move forward with a roughly $500,000 study to evaluate the city’s future energy options, including the feasibility of starting a city-owned utility to take over DTE in the city.

City Administrator Milton Dohoney reported to City Council on July 17 the study being led by the city’s sustainability office and 5 Lakes Energy LLC is in the final phases of data analysis and first drafts are expected in late summer.

Missy Stults, the city’s sustainability director, said she hasn’t seen any estimates yet as far as how much it might cost the city to buy out DTE and take over its infrastructure in the city.

While it could cost hundreds of millions of dollars and some may argue it’s not feasible, Woodring argues it is and he’s expecting a messaging battle with DTE to convince city leaders it’s a good move. If the city gets behind it, Woodring said he expects DTE to challenge it and there could be a three-year court process to settle on a final amount to acquire DTE’s assets.

After that, the issuance of municipal bonds to pay off the debt over decades would go to a vote of the people in Ann Arbor and it would require 60% support, Woodring said.

Ann Arbor for Public Power argues the outages happening are only sometimes because of storms and other times because of equipment problems related to poor maintenance, with DTE neglecting infrastructure in favor of corporate profits.

DTE maintains it’s making big investments to improve the power grid, including ongoing reliability and capacity upgrades in the Ann Arbor area, while pledging to partner with Ann Arbor to meet the city’s 100% renewable energy goal by 2030.

Don Lee, Ann Arbor for Public Power’s new executive director, joined Woodring in kicking off Sunday’s town hall. The group is entering its third year of organizing.

“When we began this journey, we never believed that it would only become more and more relevant as time goes on, as we are seeing the complete failure of this for-profit utility system through DTE,” Woodring said.

“We are on, I think, the third or fourth major outage of this year alone,” he added. “Over 30,000 people across Washtenaw County lost power just this last week for up to five days despite the wind only really blowing hard for about 30 minutes.”

Not long before that, downtown Ann Arbor lost power for up to two days, shutting down several businesses, and before that there was a power surge that fried thousands of dollars of electronics in Ann Arbor residents’ homes, he said. Hundreds of thousands of DTE customers also lost power for days — some over a week — when there was an ice storm in February.

“It’s absolutely unacceptable for us to be paying some of the highest electrical rates in the country and to be receiving the quality of service that we are receiving,” Woodring said, comparing it to other communities with municipal power.

“When you look at our neighbors in Chelsea, Wyandotte and Lansing, they are experiencing the same sort of weather that we are experiencing. However, when their power goes down, it does infrequently and it is restored quickly,” he said.

Woodring, who lives in Ypsilanti, said if Ann Arbor officials act as quickly as they can, public power can become a reality in the city by 2026. After Ann Arbor proves it’s possible to make the transition, he hopes to see it happen in more communities, including Ypsilanti, he said.

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