“Corporate greed”: Outraged Gary locals take aim at utility over prolonged blackout

This story was originally published by Capital B and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

As power slowly returns to homes and businesses in Gary and across Northwest Indiana, Black faith leaders and elected officials alike are turning their focus to restoration, accountability, and solutions for future weather events. 

Fewer than 2,500 Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO) customers in Gary remained without power as of Tuesday morning, but that is more than 70 percent of the nearly 3,500 customers still without service countywide.

Gary’s prolonged restoration has sparked calls for accountability from residents, faith leaders, and elected officials, including Gov. Mike Braun, who has ordered state utility regulators to investigate NIPSCO’s storm response and spending. The utility also faces a class-action lawsuit over allegations that its vegetation management practices contributed to the widespread outages.

Pastor Eric Boone of Tree of Life Missionary Baptist Church in Gary was among the faith leaders who saw firsthand the hardships residents faced during the blackout. “You name it, we saw it,” Boone told Capital B Gary.  

“Some people are 70 and 80 years old, in hot conditions with no air conditioning, and it’s 85 degrees in the house,” Boone said. “People who were already living check to check are now trying to put gas in cars and generators while needing baby formula and diapers. We’ve seen it all.”

Some families even lost their homes, Boone said, prompting him to open the church to temporarily house multiple families.

The length and severity of the outage have drawn attention from religious leaders outside Gary, who have sent resources to the city while also organizing around questions of accountability. The National Baptist Convention on Sunday called for reforms at NIPSCO. Nearly 40 Gary churches have joined in the effort.

In a statement, the Rev. Boise Kimber, pastor of First Calvary Baptist churches in New Haven and Hartford, Connecticut, and the convention’s president, said the organization stood in “unyielding solidarity” with Gary residents who had been left without basic necessities.

“What we are witnessing in Gary is not an unavoidable natural disaster, but a man-made crisis born of corporate greed and environmental injustice,” Kimber said.

In an interview with Capital B Gary, Kimber said residents should be compensated for what they lost during the outage without being forced to navigate complicated processes.

“We believe all residents should be made whole quickly,” he said. “Too many times…promises are made,” he said, but “barriers have been put in their way. People should not be forced through this unnecessary hurdle.” 

The convention isn’t alone in seeking answers after what became Gary’s worst power outage on record.

After criticizing NIPSCO’s response, Braun called on the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission to investigate the company, including how it has spent money collected through rate increases approved by the commission.

“NIPSCO is a monopoly utility that Hoosiers pay every month with the expectation that it will use its considerable resources to maintain its system, prepare for severe weather and restore service as quickly as possible when disaster strikes,” Braun said in a news release. “NIPSCO has failed to keep its end of the bargain.”

The pressure from the governor’s mansion comes on the heels of a class-action lawsuit filed in Porter County Superior court on behalf of a woman in nearby Portage and “all similarly situated.” The lawsuit alleges NIPSCO’s vegetation management practices caused or worsened the disruption of electrical service and widespread power outage.  

NIPSCO has denied the allegations.

The company’s response time in Gary has also come under fire from residents and leaders across the state.

At the start, about 370,000 customers countywide were without power, with 36,000 of those being Gary customers. On August 19, more than a week after the storm, Gary still had 22,000 customers off the grid. 

Residents were forced to fend for themselves. 

Dale Pugh, a resident of the city’s 3rd District, said he was grateful to have his power restored, but said the time without electricity was difficult to get through. 

“The house was burning up. We had let up all the windows and open all the doors just to stay cool,” he said. “It was unacceptable.”

Latrice Farmer, a native of the Marshalltown neighborhood, said she was out of town when the storm hit. She said she returned to devastation wider than she’d ever seen.  “I was on the road, and my mom immediately tried to get my aunt out of Marshalltown,” she said. “There’s only two ways in that neighborhood and both of them had a tree down. Residents had to carve themselves out.”

Farmer has been assisting the elderly in her community who have been largely shut in by helping provide meals. Some of her neighbors went a full two weeks without power. 

Gary Mayor Eddie Melton has also criticized the length of the restoration process, drawing on his own experience working for the utility.  “I worked at NIPSCO for 15 years,” he said. “It does not take that long to turn the lights on.”

With power restored to most residents, Melton said his focus with NIPSCO now is on the immediate aftermath and helping residents. 

“What’s going to be different? What’s going to change?” Melton said. “We have a list of demands that we present to them. There should be no disconnections for the next 60 to 90 days. There should be no disconnect notices going after folks. What are you going to do to prepare us for the next storm?” 

As Boone continues to serve community members, he said this situation could be a turning point for relations between NIPSCO and the community. 

“It shouldn’t be NIPSCO versus us,” he said. “I believe we are better together, and this storm has fixed it for us to have a relationship that’s beyond them just reading meters and us paying bills.”