Aging Grid, Tight Funds Signal Tough Decisions
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DAVE’S WORLD
By David Howell
I don’t want to put the cart before the horse, but I have a feeling we’re heading toward a difficult conversation in the not-so-distant future—one that’s going to involve electric rates.
Now, I’m not saying it’s happening tomorrow, and I’m certainly not campaigning for it. But after sitting through Monday night’s meeting with the newly formed Water Valley Electric Commission, it’s clear that this new team has inherited a system with serious problems and limited resources.
We learned in Monday’s meeting that the city’s electric department barely had enough in its operating fund to cover the monthly $476,000 power bill from TVA. That’s not good. In fact, it’s one step shy of defaulting on paying for the very power that keeps our homes, schools, and hospital running.
Thankfully the city’s largest customer came through with a payment just in time. Had they been a little later, Electric Department Manager Crystal Floyd was ready to move money from the substation repair fund to cover the gap—again.
That’s a tough way to run a utility. Or as Commission Chairman Brandon Presley put it, “When you have to rob Peter to pay Paul, at some point you run out of disciples.”
Thankfully the money that was borrowed earlier in the year from the substation fund for a monthly payment to TVA was returned, but that fund is not growing to meet future needs.
The alarm bells have been ringing. Back in February, 2024, long before the commission was formed, Floyd and Electric Superintendent Brandon Richardson went before the Board of Aldermen asking for a five percent rate increase. The request didn’t come lightly. Richardson told the board a TVA consultant—someone who crunches the numbers for city-owned electric systems—recommended the increase to help with rising maintenance costs and much-needed repairs to our aging infrastructure, including the city’s only substation.
He also warned about the pressure switch that failed on the city’s main transformer in 2022—the one that knocked out power citywide—still hasn’t been replaced. He pointed out the lack of backup transformers, the growing number of rotten utility poles, and the fact that many of our distribution lines date back to the 1960s.
“It is a very old system and it needs some assistance,” Richardson told the board.
The answer for the rate increase was no. And to be fair, it’s not hard to understand why. That five percent rate increase would have come just four months after TVA had already raised rates by 4.5 percent—a pass-through that customers were already feeling on their bills. A combined nine to 10 percent bump would’ve been a lot to swallow.
Now we’ve got a newly appointed commission that’s trying to steady the ship. They’re putting processes in place, reviewing contracts, and looking under the hood of a system. And they’re doing it with full transparency.
Is a rate increase inevitable? I don’t know. But it’s hard to imagine we can make the kinds of repairs needed, keep the lights on, and maintain a reliable system without some tough choices.
There’s a lot of work ahead. But I think we’d all rather face these issues now, honestly and in the open, than wait for the next crisis and be working in the dark.
