PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – A Rhode Island bill lauded by Gov. Gina Raimondo and Lt. Gov. McKee as holding National Grid accountable for its response to emergency outages has failed a second time to make it through the legislature.
The bill would require the utility to submit an emergency response plan and give the state authority to investigate the utility’s responses to outages and impose up to $7.5 million in fines.
A natural gas outage in January in the Newport area affected about 7,000 customers.
McKee first introduced the bill in 2017 after 150,000 customers lost power after a storm.
National Grid say the utility already provides an emergency response plan to various state agencies.
McKee told the Newport Daily News he plans to refile the bill and he’s disappointed National Grid has opposed it.
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Information from: The Newport Daily News.
