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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Lucknow Sentinel, 2016-12-14, Page 18Wednesday, December 14, 2016 • Lucknow Sentinel 19 Father of two hopes his electricity will be restored by Hydro One Denis Langlois Owen Sound Sun Times A father of two from Kil- syth, whose family has been without power for six months, is hoping his string of bad financial luck will soon come to an end. Scott, who asked that his last name not be used, said he lost his well -paying job as a systems analyst in 2012 due to restructuring. Soon after, he was diag- nosed with kidney disease. He was on dialysis for a year and a half before undergoing a kidney transplant in March. Three months after his surgery, while he was still recovering at home, Hydro One disconnected the elec- tricity service to his rural home after his family had fallen far behind on their hydro bill. The family has been using a generator, which uses about $25 in fuel each day and has already broken down once, so they can at least heat up their water tank for showers, do a bit of laun- dry and cook some food. Scott said all he wants is for his hydro to be restored for the winter. "It's going to be a nightmare trying to keep this generator going in the win- ter. Keeping it going in the summer is one thing but in the winter, it's just going to be a nightmare," he said in an interview. "I just want the hydro back on long enough that we can put our house up on the market in the spring. Imag- ine trying to show a home and you have a generator running in the back or there's just no power. It's really hurting our ability to sell our home when there's no electricity in the home. "We just want at the very least to have our hydro on until we can get the house on the market and sold. We have lots of equity in our home, so we can pay off our bill. We can start over." Hydro One announced Wednesday that it will be reaching out to its roughly 1,400 residential customers without electrical service to arrange reconnection for the remainder of winter. Ontario's largest utility provider says it will waive reconnection fees, which can be as high as $300, work with its customers to come up with an afforda- ble payment plan and inform them about assistance programs available to help custom- ers in arrears. A Hydro One spokesper- son said Thursday that 56 customers in the area that includes Owen Sound, most of Grey County and a north- ern portion of Bruce County have had their hydro discon- nected due to unpaid balances. Nancy Clark said custom- ers without power are encouraged to contact Hydro One as soon as possi- ble. The utility will work with each customer to get their electricity services restored. Scott said he is hopeful his power will soon be reconnected. He said he began falling behind on his hydro bill after losing his job and it is now about $17,000 in arrears. Scott said his old stone home is not energy efficient and a big part of the problem is that it has an electric hot water tank. It used to be heated with electric baseboards, but he has been heating his home with a wood stove for a while now. He said he tried, before Hydro One announced its new Winter Relief Program, to work out a payment plan with the utility provider, but he couldn't afford the $2,000 monthly payment that they proposed. Scott, who is on the Canadian Pension Plan, said his wife runs a restau- rant in Tobermory, but it is only open in the tourist season. She works odd jobs in the off-season, he said. The couple has two sons, aged 19 and 16, who still live at home. A year and a half ago, one of his sons was also diagnosed with a kidney disease. Scott said his family is using most of their money to keep gas in the generator. "We never know when the thing is going to go down or break. We have worries because a couple times we get mild weather out here in the country and the drainage starts draining underneath our basement and normally there's a sump pump to move the water out. So if we don't have any hydro, our base- ment is just going to fill up and flood and that's where all our firewood is. So that's a fear I'm living with all the time;" he said. Francesca Dobbyn, execu- tive director of the United MedLINCS program discontinued in 2017 As a community partner with the Distributed Educa- tion Network of Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western Univer- sity, the Bruce Grey (Walk- erton) MedLINCS Commit- tee recently met to discuss the results of the 10 year review of the MedLINCS summer program and the subsequent proposal for revisions to the program. The proposal indicated the intention to discontinue the clinical experience for the Westem medical students and revise the high school sum- mer programweek. The Committee felt the new proposal lacked substance and failed to ensure a smooth and timely transition to the new format while meeting the July 2017 target. Due to these unfortunate circumstances, the Walkerton MedLINCS Committee regrets to announce that the program will not be relaunching in 2017 in Bruce and Grey. We would like to extend our deepest thanks to the Municipality of Brockton and all our community part- ners for their support in the past 10 successful years. MedLINCS (formerly known as MedQUEST) is an interactive summer program for local high school students in grades 10 and 11. The week-long program involved participants work- ing alongside medical stu- dents and other health care professionals to explore health career options. Way of Bruce Grey, said while she is "absolutely thrilled" that Hydro One is going to work to get all of its customers reconnected for the winter, much more needs to be done to fix the root of the energy poverty problem. "We still have to, ulti- mately, resolve the afforda- bility factor," she said. "It's great that we're not disconnecting people over winter. We want that to hap- pen. But we also don't want a slew of disconnects come April 1 because people sim- ply cannot afford to pay the bills." Dobbyn said the United Way, which oversees a utility assistance program, has sev- eral suggestions for helping to resolve the issue. They include increasing Ontario Electricity Support Program rates, which help low-income households with their hydro bills. The province could also increase the payout for Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program, which she said is "certainly not enough to cover housing costs:' Ontario must also deal with the issue of precarious work, she said. Dobbyn said conserving electricity is simply not enough to significantly lower a person's hydro bill due to global adjustment, delivery and other fees. She said she would like to see all hydro companies implement a winter morato- rium on disconnections like the one Hydro One has in place. Westario Power Inc., which provides power to 23,000 customers in parts of Bruce, Grey, Wellington and Huron counties, decided in 2015 against implementing a policy to not disconnect people in winter. The Sun Times was unable to reach Lisa Milne, president and CEO of the municipally owned distri- bution company, on Thursday. Dobbyn said she will be keeping a close eye on Bill 27, which is now before the Ontario Legislature. If passed, it will allow the Ontario Energy Board to ban winter disconnections across the province. Hydro One is encouraging customers who are having a hard time paying their hydro bill to call their communica- tions centre at 1-888-664-9376. St. Anthony's to host Christmas Day Community Meal St. Anthony's Church is welcoming the community to a Christmas Day Com- munity Meal on Dec. 25, 2016. The no -charge meal takes place at the Kincardine church hall at 749 Russell Street, with doors opening at 12:30 p.m. and dinner at 1 p.m. The meal will feature a homemade turkey dinner with all the trimmings, and the venue is wheelchair accessible. Freewill offerings are welcome. For planning purposes and to save a spot, call Sam or Heather at 519-396-2001 by Dec. 21, 2016. 1JrivirgVOUR ROADMAP TO ALL THINGS AUTO pNEWS , *** REVIEWS / lor COMPARISONS/ offers smart -opinionated commentary, lively debates and influential round -table discussions. Join National Post columnist, ;; N a t i o n a I Post Rad i o Matt Gurney, as he covers engaging conversations on Canadian news, business, politics, pop -culture, sports and technology. ... ... 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