Eville Rich
Well-Known Member
I agree. It's a mess. It's not known if there was any market manipulation or not, but the end effects on the ground are severe. I'm also a little surprised as while Texas doesn't normally experience these cold snaps, they aren't unheard of. Is it that it's statewide? When I see the gulf coast temps still down around freezing, that's pretty tough for folks down there. Hopefully the federal assistance will help offset some of the impact, but it's still going be a big deal to recover.I'm sure that's there's quite a bit that goes into it, but what's chappin' my ass, is that IF "they" used all of their available resources, the present conditions wouldn't be as severe as they are. The power outages are shutting off the water systems. . . . which causes a whole 'nother set of issues. I know that there has to be a lot of frozen/broken water mains now, but we won't know which ones until the thaw. But, THEN, there won't be water, because the breaks have to be fixed. And, it's not like people have piles of money laying around to fix their broken pipes. . . . all because a certain group of people wanted to manipulate the market for personal gain.
I recall a few years back we had a stretch of -20F weather and we saw a fair amount of that in WI, where we're supposed to be able to handle that. The cities asked people to keep a trickle of water flowing to prevent freezing and did something on not charging for the added consumption. I felt lucky that our well and septic didn't freeze up. The previous owners made the septic deeper than normal, but there were a number of cases of frozen septic systems, which is a really bad experience as you might imagine.
Fingers crossed the damage is less than feared and that Texas has a quick recovery. At least this cold is going to break over the coming week.
Eville Rich