Aquila: Customers won't pay for outage

Natural gas service has been returned to practically all Beatrice residences, while Aquila officials pledge that the costs for restoring service after last week’s natural gas outage will not be passed along to customers.

“Basically, we’re now relying on customers to contact us,” Bob McKeon, Aquila spokesman, said Wednesday.

Company officials said as of early this week, gas service had been returned to about 99 percent of Beatrice customers. Most customers whose gas service remains out are people who have been out of town, they said.

In addition, Aquila is asking landlords of vacant apartments or rental houses and realtors with vacant homes for sale to contact the company so gas service can be restored to those locations.

Around 4,500 of Beatrice’s 4,800 Aquila customers had their natural gas meters turned off last Thursday after the gas system lost pressure after an underground valve was accidentally left off during routine maintenance.

Close to 100 Aquila service technicians from Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas were called in to Beatrice to help shut meters off to each of the affected customers to allow Aquila to repressurize the system. Many of the technicians remained in Beatrice through the weekend to return service to normal.

Rick Schwartz, Aquila Nebraska southern regional manager, said the company has not computed the total costs for such expenses as mileage, meals, hotel and hours worked. Some of the technicians came from as far away as Liberal and Garden City in southwestern Kansas, a distance of about 350-400 miles from Beatrice.

However, Schwartz said the expense would not be passed along to customers.

“It was our responsibility, and we’re going to take care of it,” he said. “We’re not going to be charging our customers for it.”

Aquila officials also repeated their appreciation for Beatrice customers’ patience and understanding during the outage. They especially commended Gage County Emergency Management Director Mark Meints and other Beatrice and county officials for having a plan to open emergency shelters if they had been needed.

“The assistance from local officials helped a lot,” McKeon said. “It allowed us to focus entirely on getting service restored.”