MLGW wraps up smart meter fixes, but billing problems linger
Whitehaven resident Patricia Smith is one of about 10% of MLGW customers affected by billing issues over the past year due to faulty smart meters.
Reporter
Keely Brewer is a Report for America corps member covering environmental impacts on communities of color in Memphis. She is working in partnership with the Ag & Water Desk, a sustainable reporting network aimed at telling water and agriculture stories across the Mississippi River Basin.
There are 322 articles by Keely Brewer :
Whitehaven resident Patricia Smith is one of about 10% of MLGW customers affected by billing issues over the past year due to faulty smart meters.
During the United Nations’ annual climate change conference, the Mississippi River mayors signed an agreement with an Indian river advocacy group and announced a new pilot program with Munich Reinsurance Co.
“I cannot guarantee that nothing will happen,” Doug McGowen, president and CEO of Memphis Light, Gas and Water said. “But I can guarantee that we’re much better prepared than we were last winter.”
“It has been one heck of a year, and it’s culminated with this most recent decision by City Council,” MLGW President and CEO Doug McGowen said of this week’s vote to approve a 12% electricity rate hike.
“I heard loud and clear from City Council and from other people that moving the headquarters from Downtown was not the right signal at this time,” MLGW’s president and CEO told The Daily Memphian.
MLGW is planning to do routine gas maintenance Dec. 7 near the Mississippi state line.
“I believe, and my team believes, this is the necessary remedy for decades of disinvestment and failed decisions under previous presidents and previous councils,” said MLGW CEO Doug McGowen.
The U of M’s Center for Disaster Recovery and Resiliency will be tasked with securing funding for infrastructure improvements to help the area better weather future disasters.
A new generation of community gardeners is helping Memphis overcome food insecurity with urban farms and lessons in growth.
For the first time ever, the City of Memphis is also looking for a composting service who could also compost biosolids — the sludge created by treating domestic wastewater — to save local landfill space.
MLGW’s CEO said the utility has operated with a “run to fail” mindset, meaning it only fixes what’s broken, and there haven’t been regular investments in MLGW’s infrastructure for decades.
Another north-south route through Shelby Farms Park has been a priority for local leaders for more than two decades, but the proposal for a new Shelby Farms Parkway has now been abandoned.
MLGW President and CEO Doug McGowen said underground power line improvements show the benefits of MLGW’s 2020 rate hike.
Since June, the Army Corps of Engineers has spent $38 million maintaining the Mississippi River channel, mostly through dredging the equivalent of 5,000 Olympic-sized pools of sediment.
As the City Council nears the end of another term, they’re being asked to increase power rates — again.
After the Mississippi River hit another new low, NASA released images of the river in 2021 and how it looked this past September, showing the change in the Mighty Mississippi.
Memphis has bet on the Mississippi River cruise industry and its tourism dollars, but as the river hits record lows, cruise operators and the city prepare for an uncertain future.
TVA built a training house on the Midtown Memphis campus where contractors can learn to identify weatherization problems, and how to correct them. The new course will start in January.
Beginning in February or March of 2024, work at Beale Street Landing will also render the dock there unusable for most of next year.
Memphis Light, Gas and Water is on track to change all of Memphis’ streetlights to LEDs by year-end, but the project hasn’t been without criticism.
The federally owned utility is exploring an idea to install six new aeroderivative combustion turbine units in southwest Memphis.
Even as the Corps was still confirming data from September’s record low, it registered a new reading Tuesday that was even lower.
Preliminary data shows the Mississippi River’s level at Memphis likely hit a new all-time low in mid-September.
Memphis Light, Gas and Water officials said an equipment failure impacted a “large portion” of Downtown Sunday morning, Oct. 8.
Voting was off to a slow start at Solomon Temple MB Church in Whitehaven, with nine voters trickling in during the first hour and a half of voting.