WAPA Comes Under Fire at Senate as Outages Continue
In the wake of a more than five-hour power outage that affected customers across St. Thomas-St. John Tuesday night, V.I. Water and Power Authority officials came under fire during a Wednesday Senate hearing, with Government Operations and Consumer Protection Committee members peppering them about everything from the agency’s reliability to hiring practices.
2022-10-20 16:54:34 - VI News Staff
During the hearing, WAPA’s Chief Executive Officer Andrew Smith initially said that all the power had been restored, but later had to announce that a generator had tripped off again and some customers were without power for a short time. A couple of members of his staff could not attend the meeting, which started in the morning and ran after 7 p.m., because they were dealing with power outages.
Meanwhile, Sen. Franklin Johnson said Wednesday that WAPA employees were doing great jobs and instead of getting promotions, outsiders from the states were being hired. He told Smith, “This is very sad. It cannot continue.”
Johnson was specifically upset by the filling of a safety director position by an applicant from Wisconsin, which pays $140,000. Johnson said that everyone in the WAPA administration was new, but Smith countered that most of the administrators present at the hearing were experienced WAPA employees.
Johnson’s comments were echoed by Senator Carla Joseph, who chaired the committee, and Sen. Novelle Francis. Francis said the territory could not “continue as a culture of importation.”
Still, the critique of the Authority’s hiring practices was not Smith’s only problem.
Senators also raised concerns about street lights not being fixed. Francis called the lack of lighting at the end of Melvin Evans Highway near Frederiksted “a public safety issue.” Smith responded that not all the streetlights in the territory were WAPA’s responsibility; some were the responsibility of the Department of Public Works. Sen. Kenneth Gittens said that finding out who was responsible for what lights and getting them fixed should be a priority.