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Major Minnesota utilities can't disconnect customers <br />during the pandemic — but local ones can <br />Xsjuufo!Cz;Nbuuifx!Hvfssz!}!Kvm!35ui!3131!.!9bn/ <br />ST. PAUL — Carla McElmury was already struggling to pay for her utilities <br />when she lost her job. <br />Having taken time off in late 2019 to heal from an operation to remove excess skin, the result of <br />an earlier gastric bypass surgery, she was no longer able to afford her gas bill. When the Good <br />Earth Village retreat center in Spring Valley, where she returned to work as a housekeeper in <br />January, laid her off because of the coronavirus pandemic, she fell behind on her water and <br />electricity bills, too. <br />By July, she owed the city of Spring Valley roughly $1,500. <br />The city had publicly pledged to not shut off late-paying customers' power in light of the <br />pandemic's economic toll. Yet McElmury received a disconnection notice in the mail anyway. <br />"It's not just me either. I know quite a few people who got the same notices I did," she said in a <br />phone interview. <br />Ultimately, the city did not turn McElmury's lights off, nor will it turn off anybody else's, Spring <br />Valley Utilities office manager Kristen Beck said. But it will continue mailing disconnection <br />notices. <br />Other municipal utilities have been less lenient. While state regulators are requiring large <br />investor-owned utilities like Xcel Energy and Minnesota Power to not disconnect their customers <br />during the pandemic, local ones have only been asked not to on a voluntary basis. <br />It is difficult to say how many households in Minnesota have had their power or gas shut off due <br />to non-payment since the pandemic began. Unlike their larger counterparts, Minnesota's <br />municipal utilities and utility co-operatives — which serve an estimated 994,000 residential <br />customers in the state, according to the Minnesota Municipal Utility Association — are not <br />regulated by the state Public Utilities Commission and thus have fewer centralized reporting <br />requirements. <br />More than 130 municipal utilities and co-operatives, however, did respond to a <br />March requestfrom the PUC to not disconnect late-paying customers, offer payment plans to <br />qualifying customers and cease charging late fees during the pandemic, according to PUC <br />filings. Later in June, the PUC made it mandatory for investor-owned utilities to maintain those <br />protections for as long Minnesota's ongoing peacetime emergency declaration is in effect. <br />91 <br /> <br />