By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
Hays set two new record overnight lows Feb. 14 and 15 as Midwest Energy asked all its customers ā residential and businesses ā to turn their thermostats down a bit and not use appliances with heavy electricity consumption to help conserve electricity and natural gas for a few days.
The Southwest Power Pool, which is the regional transmission operator for a 14-state region, including Kansas, had issued a region-wide Energy Emergency Alert, the first of several.
"We turned the thermostat down and turned off some of the lights in all the (city) buildings," Toby Dougherty, city manager, told city commissioners Thursday night.
Dougherty commended Jeff Crispin, director of water resources, for going a bit further to help conserve energy.
"(Jeff Crispin) took the water reclamation facility and the water treatment facility off-line and ran them on generator in order to decrease the load. It was able to help out a little bit."
"Kudos to city staff," said Commissioner Shaun Musil, "because that's something I never would have thought of."
The generators at both water plants are tested regularly, Dougherty noted, but "it gave us a good test of running the full systems at length on (full) load. We learned we should probably take them off-line more and run them off generators for longer periods of time."
The cold temps caused several water line breaks, including two on West 13th Street late in the evening of Feb. 16. Department of Water Resources crews were on the scene overnight and into the next day.
Commissioner Ron Mellick also thanked the city employees.
"I'd like to thank all city staff that has to work outside. .... All those people, when the rest of us were huddled down inside talking about how cold it was, they were out there taking care of city business.
"That's what keeps our city going," Mellick said. "They're out there for all of us all year long, whether it be hot or cold."