By Shannon McFarlin News Director
Paris, Tenn.–A dead tree falling onto a transmission line was the cause of Saturday morning’s outage that interrupted power to some 6,000 Paris Utility Authority customers.
At a busy meeting of the Authority’s Board of Directors, CEO Terry Wimberley reported that the tree smashed onto the line coming out of a primary substation located between Paris and Puryear.
Board of Public Utility (BPU) crews were mobilized immediately but had to find the exact tree that fell before repairs could be made. “Things are not always as quick or easy as you would hope,” he said. “It took our crews some time to find the tree but we moved as quickly as we could.”
The outage covered a large area including traffic lights, residences and businesses.
Updates on the outage were posted on the BPU Facebook page and Wimberley said, “If people would get used to going to our Facebook page, that’s where the updates are going to come.” The public can also download a BPU app on their phones which will show them the locations of outages.
The Board approved an $80,000 loan to North American Caviar from the BPU Revolving Loan Fund to finance purchase of a blast/flash freezer for their business. North American Caviar is located at 78 Barnhill Road and is a family-owned wholesale caviar and fish company.
The business has been at the forefront of removal of Asian Carp from Kentucky Lake.
Wimberley explained the freezer will allow them to store and process two times the amount of Asian Carp that is being processed currently. North American Caviar contracts with local commercial fishermen to catch Asian Carp for processing at their facility.
Terms of the loan are: two-year replacement at 1 percent interest as long as North American Caviar retains two new full-time employees. The interest rate would increase by 0.5 percent for each employee under two.
“This is quite a strong business,” Wimberley said. “There’s a lot of processing involved in the removal of Asian Carp and that’s a positive for our area.”
In other business:
–Board members looked over the 2021 Chevy Bolt electric car bought by the Authority in early April. The all-electric car was debuted to the public at the World’s Biggest Fish Fry Grand Parade on Friday.
“We’ve planned on this purchase for quite some time and if it hadn’t been for the COVID pandemic, we would have done this last year,” Wimberley said. General Motors will be a leader in pushing the electric vehicles, which he said will have a tremendous effect on the auto industry.
Wimberley said the Dana Corp. is already preparing for the manufacture of different car parts to accommodate the electric car trend.
A total $40,000 was budgeted, but the car cost $28,000. “We purchased it off a retail rebate like any of the rest of us could,” he said.
“We need to be forward thinking and we plan to be ready for this trend,” Wimberley said.
Photo: BPU Energy Solutions Manager Barry Flood, left, shows the Chevy BVolt to Board Members Terry Fuller, Ralph Anderson, Michael Murphey, Butch Powers and Attorney Steve Greer. Shannon McFarlin photo.