Xcel Energy’s decision this month to proactively shut off power to 55,000 customers ahead of a wind storm has drawn scrutiny from state leaders and those affected by the outage. An investigation by KUNC's partners at Boulder Reporting Lab revealed there was widespread confusion among city staff as the situation unfolded.
Reporter Tim Drugan has been covering the aftermath of the outage for the Boulder Reporting Lab. He joined KUNC's Michael Lyle, Jr. to discuss their findings of the investigation.
"We wanted to know if the city was as culpable as Xcel Energy for the lack of information provided to the general public," said Drugan. "As our open records request for city emails revealed, it seems they were as almost as in the dark as the rest of the public was. And we were also interested to understand why the city's wastewater treatment plant lost power."
"This treatment plant processes sewage before the water is then put back into Boulder Creek," Drugan continued. "It doesn't have any backup generators, and that is acceptable because it has two different substations, per a 2006 agreement with Xcel Energy. That year, the city agreed to pay Xcel $140,000 to have an additional power source fed to the wastewater treatment plant to act as a backup, because generators with the amount of energy that the plant requires wouldn't be a feasible solution."
Drugan said the emails revealed there were flaws in how Xcel communicated with city officials as the situation unfolded.
"It appears that Xcel not only forgot about the agreement, but they also didn't check in with the city to understand what infrastructure could not lose power," said Drugan. "Because of this, sewage almost spilled into Boulder Creek."
Earlier this month, state regulators launched an investigation in the days following the preemptive cutoff. Xcel officials said the decision was a precautionary measure to avoid a situation similar to the 2021 Marshall Fire that destroyed over 1,000 homes, partially due to an unmoored power line managed by Xcel.
Drugan said residents continued to voice their frustrations at a Boulder City Council meeting last week.
"The big one was the overwhelming frustration around the lack of notification for not only the city but residents in the area," said Drugan. "Many people lost power with little or no notice. And then Xcel was not very responsive during the outage, and what they did provide was poor maps showing the outage areas."
Drugan said that many of those sentiments are likely to be shared at a public hearing this week where state officials and the public will learn more about Xcel's decision and ways the company can be better prepared should a situation like this arise again.
Meanwhile, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission has received over 700 comments from people affected by the outage. A response form on their website will be open for several weeks, if not months.
