ERCOT under scrutiny
A big shakeup underway at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Four board members say they will be resigning this morning in the wake of last week’s power outages, ERCOT has been under heavy scrutiny from Governor Greg Abbott, who has made ERCOT reform a top priority.
“Texans deserve answers about why these shortfalls occurred and how they’re going to be corrected and Texans will get those answers,” says Abbott.
Resignations include the chairman, the vice chairman, finance and audit chairman and the human resources and governance chairman. A fifth resignation is also expected. That’s a market director, but none of the five actually live in the state of Texas.
Meantime, Travis County District Attorney José Garza is investigating last week’s power outages. Garza says the outages amid the winter storm caused untold suffering. Some across Texas even lost a loved one.
“What we have heard from our community is that they expect the district attorney’s office to hold people accountable if there was criminal conduct, and so that’s what we’re going to do,” says Garza.
He did not specify who or what entity his office would be looking into simply pledging to hold those in power accountable for their actions or inactions should criminal behavior be found.
Water restrictions lifted
The City of Austin is expected to announce the lifting of all emergency water restrictions today. Austin Water says there are more than 120 million gallons stored in the reservoir now, which is very healthy on those. Restrictions are scheduled to be lifted at 8:00 this morning.
With most people able to access water now, the City of Austin will scale back its distribution sites. Today there will be six sites in operation beginning at 9 a.m. If you are still in need of bottled water, you could find those locations at: https://www.newsradioklbj.com/austinlocalnews/austin-to-scale-back-water-distribution-wednesday/
Elementary schools damaged by the storm
The Hays School district is resuming in-person classes today for all campuses, except for three. Fuentes, Hemphill and Tom Green Elementarys will continue classes virtually through the rest of the week due to storm damage. Those campuses will reopen on Monday. The district says 18 of its 25 campuses did sustain some level of storm damage.
Financial aid in Texas
Getting financial aid from Texas colleges and universities has become much more difficult that trend could continue for another couple of years. Higher Education Commissioner Dr. Harrison Keller told state lawmakers the combination of the pandemic and winter freeze financially devastated colleges and universities, and they need help funding financial aid.
“To keep our major financial aid programs intact, that would take a commitment of about $57 million over the biennium. But to maintain the proportions of eligible students who are currently supported by those programs that we don’t lose ground, that would take another $110 million,” says Keller.
They’re currently providing grants to less than 60% of eligible students.
COTA vaccination site
Travis County has a very ambitious goal of providing 800,000 COVID-19 vaccines by July 1. County Judge Andy Brown says Circuit of the Americas will become a drive through mass vaccination site modeled after a program that was tested out recently in Southeast Austin.
“In that clinic we were able to improve the throughput time for patients from about 45 minutes at the beginning of the efforts, down to 22 minutes,” says Brown.
He says that includes all the paperwork and the vaccination itself. The goal is 10,000 vaccinations a day, five days a week. The county will do a trial run on Saturday at COTA with 3,000 doses for people in phase 1-B, although teachers will be given priority at that. It will be by appointment only.
COVID-19 update
The total number of active COVID cases in Travis County has crept back upward a little bit since Monday morning. But the good news is the number of hospitalizations looks as though soon it will fall back into the two hundreds. As of this morning 1,154 active cases, 319 of which require hospitalization. 74,598 cases confirmed overall, with 72,717 recoveries.
Pflugerville Chief of Police resigns
The Pflugerville City Council has accepted the resignation of Chief of Police Jessica Robledo, who’s held that post for the past four years. The city will now begin to search for her replacement. Assistant Chief Jason Smith will take over for Robledo in the interim.
Contaminated water
The Lower Colorado River Authority is out with a new warning for pet owners after reports of some dogs getting sick after swimming in Lake Travis near Hudson Bend. The LCRA sent off water samples for testing, and results are expected back no later than tomorrow. In recent years, toxic blue green algae has actually sickened dogs in Ladybird Lake.
This news and more on News Radio KLBJ:
https://omny.fm/shows/klbjam-flash-briefing-1/am-newscast-2-24-21
