Commentary: Modernize the infrastructure, or face future of more failures
Henry Cisneros and William Fulton, For the Express-News
Feb. 19, 2021
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A worker in Dallas seeks to restore power during the arctic blast. A failure to invest in infrastructure is a failure to invest in our present and future.Smiley N. Pool /Associated Press
The loss of electrical power in neighborhoods across Texas last week has been attributed to breakdowns in the ERCOT system.
ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, was set up to share and distribute power across the interconnected utilities of Texas. The failure of the statewide electrical system resulted in emergency conditions for families huddled in cold homes, separated from all the electrical devices upon which we have come to depend. That meant doing without heat, personal communications, emergency news reports, recharging of cellphones, hot water and medical contacts.