Personal Injury Attorney in McClellanville, SC.

MCCLELLANVILLE, S.C. (WCSC) — Residents in McClellanville say power outages and surges have been a constant frustration this summer, and a structural problem decades in the making is at the root of it.

Berkeley Electric Cooperative says part of the community is served by a single power line that runs 24 miles through the woods and along the coast. This is a stretch; the co-op acknowledges leaves the area unusually vulnerable.

“The outage activity out there is pretty consistent with what we’ve seen over the last several years. And it’s unfortunate; it’s unacceptable,” Libby Roerig, Berkeley Electric’s director of marketing and communications, said. “That’s why Berkeley Electric and the other co-ops in the state have been fighting for two decades to improve the infrastructure out there.”

Roerig said the reliability problems are not tied to recent growth in the area. She said the core issue is the length and isolation of the single line serving the community.

“It is 100% an exposure issue,” she said. “Nowhere else on Berkeley Electric’s system that I’m aware of do we have a line that long through that many different elements — the woods, the coast. And despite our maintenance efforts, it’s just anything can happen. Mechanically, a tree can fall from outside the right-of-way.”

She said the line also lacks the redundancies Berkeley Electric builds into the rest of its system. Without a backup route, any disruption cuts power to the entire area until repairs are made.

McClellanville resident Lee Leland said he has lived with the problem for nearly three decades.

“I’ve been up here for 29 years. And it’s been going on for 29 years since I’ve been here,” Leland said. “My wife has been here since the early 70s, and it’s been going on since then.”

Leland said the surges have caused real damage at home.

“The power still comes on and off. And, you know, computers and all, chips, everything is kind of connected to the internet now. And these surges play havoc with that,” he said. “The surges mess with your appliances, your TVs. They can really wreak havoc on computers.”

Berkeley Electric says the biggest obstacle to a fix has now been cleared. After 25 years, the federal government approved a route for a new high-voltage transmission line to serve the McClellanville area.

“Just recently, after 25 years of fighting for it, the federal government recently approved a route for a new transmission line to serve that area,” Roerig said. “And once the transmission line is built, Berkeley Electric already has a new substation site fenced in with a gate ready to roll. So once the line’s done, it’ll plug into that new substation and dramatically improve reliability for that area.”

Roerig said the co-op can build the new substation at the same time the transmission line work moves forward.

“The biggest hurdle that we faced is getting the federal approval for the route,” she said. “Now we have to look at the different planning and design for that, acquiring the land for that. So that process takes about two years, and then construction will be another two years.”

Despite the progress, Leland said the timeline offers little immediate comfort.

“We don’t know when that’s going to happen. And so, we’re just kind of treading, treading water,” he said.

He said some neighbors are more exposed to the consequences than others.

“We are lucky here. Because six years ago, we put in a whole-house generator,” Leland said. “But still, we have friends who don’t have that option. If the power goes out, they don’t have any air conditioning, any heat. And you know how hot it is out there. And if it’s off for more than a couple of hours, the fans don’t work. The heating system, the cooling system doesn’t work. And these people are stuck.”

Leland said he wants a clearer commitment from utilities on a solution and a timeline.

“I just really want Dominion to come up with a solution and let us know what the solution is and a timeframe for it,” he said. “Rather than, well, we’re planning on putting a line here, but we don’t know when. Well, that’s not doing us any good. That could be 10 years down the road. And in those 10 years, we’re going to get more and more development, more and more strain on the power grid that we do have. And it can’t keep up.”

Roerig said the co-op understands the urgency.

“We’re a member-owned, not-for-profit cooperative. The people that build the lines and serve our membership, we live on the lines. So, anytime our members experience outages, we’re experiencing the same outages,” she said. “This is definitely a long-term solution. There is hope on the horizon.”