В штате Миссисипи введены внешние управляющие в коммунальную службу из-за долгов и постоянных отключений электричества

HOLLY SPRINGS, Miss. (WMC) — The Holly Springs Utility Department (HSUD), one of the smallest utility districts in the Mid-South, has repeatedly shown the biggest problems when it comes to keeping the power on for customers. The department covers not just Holly Springs but also parts of five surrounding counties: Marshall, Lafayette, and Benton and small slivers of Fayette and Hardeman counties across state lines in Tennessee. Family says outages damaged home for years Long, frequent outages have plagued the area, the result of decades of infrastructure neglect and overgrowth, something Heather Thweat was not aware of until it was too late. You see, she and her husband built what was supposed to be their retirement dream home in Red Banks, Mississippi. “Found this property, loved it, liked the area,” Thweat said. “It’s convenient. It’s close to the interstate. It’s close to life.” When it came time to hook up utility services, Thweat though it would be a simple call to HSUD. It took 16 weeks to get a technician to her house. A few weeks into that wait, she started to get the sense something wasn’t right. “One of the neighbors included me on a Facebook support group, if that’s what you want to call it,” Thweat said with a nervous laugh. “I started reading some of the testimonies from other people, and I was like, ‘Oh.’” The Thweats moved in on Christmas Day 2023, and since then they’ve dealt with near-constant brownouts, power surges, and blackouts, causing them to lose appliances and internet connection. That second part is hard for Heather, who works from home full-time. There’s a running joke among her co-workers that if Heather suddenly hops off a virtual meeting, it’s because she’s lost power. There’s almost a second language she and her husband speak with to one another, a language homeowners should never have to learn, but after losing a washing machine, a deep freezer, and countless light bulbs they needed to speak this way. Giving an example, Heather said, “Honey, hurry! The power’s blipping. Kick the main breaker off, or we’re going to lose everything in the house.” Tired of trying to manually track outages in her home, Thweat spent $99 on Amazon for a plug-in sensor that monitors home electrical systems. Over a 58-week period, the device reported 186 total blackouts, 177 surges, and 2,141 brownouts. The Thweats decided to bite the bullet and buy a whole home generator. They had, fortunately, just paid off Heather’s truck, “trading a car note for a generator note,” she said. Every day, she wishes she’d done more due diligence, but then again, she shouldn’t have to. “Why would I ever think to look into a utility company? Who would’ve thought we would have moved to a third world country?” Thweat said. Mayor points to infrastructure neglect Holly Springs Mayor Charles Terry doesn’t shy away from the fact HSUD is in dire straits. In fact, he campaigned on fixing the department. “I know the ratepayers are frustrated, and it’s going to take a while to remove that stigma to give them trust,” Terry said. Since taking office in 2024, Terry has made several changes as acting general manager of HSUD: an online outage map, a meter replacement initiative, and a payment plan for ratepayers behind on their bill. All three didn’t exist before. However, Terry said the main problem is overgrowth that has taken over the grid and its right-of-ways. “I think that’s where 90% of our issues may come from,” Terry said. “It’s just that we don’t have the funds at this time to do the necessary hiring of right-of-way crews,” Terry said. Terry said HSUD currently has two right-of-way crews working the area. Years of investigations and lawsuits Mississippi Northern District Public Service Commissioner Chris Brown said the system cannot currently provide reliable service. “You can’t live a normal life as long as you can’t rely on the system, and that’s where we find ourselves at with HSUD,” Brown said. Brown investigated HSUD in 2024 and found the utility had only three linemen at the time, four if you count a man who’s in his late eighties. There’s also decades of system neglect to address, massive amount of overgrowth on the right-of-ways, and millions in debt to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) for electricity. One thing Brown hasn’t been able to see yet is where HSUD’s money has gone. Utility bills, as the commissioner explains, are calculated to include funding for infrastructure and right-of-way clearing, but upon looking throughout the area, it’s clear very little has been done. Brown has been asking for a forensic audit on HSUD’s books for years. “Where has the money gone?” Brown asked. In May 2025, TVA sued the City of Holly Springs for breach of contract. That September, Brown and the other Public Service Commissioners voted unanimously that HSUD failed to render adequate service to its customers. Mayor Terry, the Holly Springs Board of Aldermen, and HSUD leadership admitted as much during the meeting. The following month, Holly Springs sued the Public Service Commission, saying it exceeded its authority. This past July, TVA amended its lawsuit, adding that HSUD owes more than $18 million. To add to that, the Public Service Commission issued a daily fine of $12,500 to HSUD for failure to provide adequate service. At last check, the total of those unpaid, daily fines sits at over $4 million. Asked where things stand from the city’s perspective on the TVA claims, Terry said, “That’s litigation that I don’t really want to get into right now. It’s an ongoing process, so we’re going to wait and see what the outcome of that is.” Asked when change might realistically be seen, Brown said, “We’re going to exhaust every avenue that we have to make sure that this HSUD crisis is solved.” City brings in outside receiver In late 2025, Mayor Terry made the decision to bring in a third party consultant to address HSUD’s problems, tapping Michael Watson for the role. A former MLGW engineer and longtime utility consultant, Watson has helped implement the changes Terry pointed to. In early August, Judge Lawrence Little out of Oxford appointed Watson a receiver of HSUD, stripping the city’s authority over the department and making Watson the decision-maker. The receivership doesn’t have an end date, currently, but Watson is required to report to the court every 45 days. Judge Little has the power to return authority back to Holly Springs or order it be sold to another utility company. “I see (receivership) as being a positive because (Watson is) taking the politics out of it,” Terry said. “He has proven to me that he knows how to run a utility company.” Thweat said she is uncertain about the change. “I don’t know Mr. Watson. Maybe he’s doing things behind the scenes that those of us in the public just aren’t privy to, but I just don’t feel warm and fuzzy that we’re going to get changed,” Thweat said. Brown feels Watson will not be impartial, given Watson has already been working with the city for nearly a year. According to Brown, there are two companies have expressed interest in buying HSUD’s system, investing millions into modernization and right-of-way cleaning, and clearing the debt to TVA. HSUD recently started a new communications Facebook page, where Watson posted a long explainer on the receivership and what it means for the near future. That explainer read, in part, “I will continue the work already in motion: right-of-way clearing and vegetation management, replacing failed and unreadable meters, correcting the instrument-rated metering that has left revenue unbilled, upgrading substation and sectionalizing equipment, completing the engineering model and the map of every pole and meter on the system, making a public outage map part of the website, fixing the phone and outage-reporting problem that so many of you have complained about, and hiring a permanent General Manager to lead this utility for the long term.” Asked why a judge doesn’t order the utility sold to the best bidder, Brown said, “That’s what we’re hoping (the judge) does.” Asked if there is any saving Holly Springs Utility Department, Brown said, “The city cannot save it. We have to save this district, but the city can’t do it.” Family says they feel stuck Thweat said the ongoing situation feels like the city is delaying a resolution. She and her husband want to move but can’t. “I don’t know if I’ve got it in me to do it again. My husband wants to retire, and... I don’t know. We’re stuck. Who’s going to buy (the house)? It’s so public now about the utility crisis in this area, who would willingly come out here and purchase a property?” Thweat said. What’s next Brown and the Public Service Commission have appealed the Lafayette County Chancery Court’s decision to appoint Watson as HSUD’s receiver. Mayor Terry has asked the public not to associate Watson with previous HSUD management. A trial date in the TVA lawsuit has been set for August 2027. Click here to sign up for our newsletter! Click here to report a spelling or grammar error. Please include the headline.